#A CALL TO ARMS HEMINGWAY CODE#

Rinaldi's zeal over wanting to marry Catherine - whom he still refers to as 'Miss Barkley,' indicating their lack of intimacy - does not merely stem from his raging hormones. The captain again mocks the priest, but the major tells him to leave him alone and they all leave. Henry wishes he had gone instead, he only drank and cavorted about cosmopolitan nightspots. Henry loans Rinaldi some money so he can impress Catherine.Īt dinner, the priest is upset, but ultimately understanding, that Henry did not visit his hometown of Abruzzi. He discusses his trip with his surgeon roommate, Lieutenant Rinaldi, who tells him he is in love with and plans to marry an English nurse in town, Catherine Barkley. Henry returns from his trip in the spring.

#A CALL TO ARMS HEMINGWAY CODE#

This refinement will recur to demonstrate what is known as the code of the Hemingway hero, specifically the concept of 'grace under pressure': the ability to withstand great conflict, especially that of imminent death, and gracefully execute an action. This brand of diversion shows up as the men eat spaghetti 'very quickly and seriously.' In a chaotic war where the men have little control over anything, at least they have precise control over one area - here, the act of eating. In war, with violence all around, they do not wish to propagate, but only to divert themselves from the specter of death. The act of casual, emotionless sex takes on special meaning when we consider the subtle fear of fertility Henry and the others have, as demonstrated in Chapter I. They go to the brothel.Īs is frequently the case with soldiers, the brothel is the main form of entertainment. They all discuss where Henry should go on leave in Italy, since it is doubtful an offensive will take place in the snow. The conversation takes a nastier turn when the other men, who are atheists, insult religion.

One snowy night at dinner, Henry's captain mocks the unit's priest with remarks about his sexual practices, which the priest accepts with good humor. Life is fairly idyllic there over the fall, as it has not been badly bombarded, and there are hospitals, cafés, and two brothels. The next August, Henry's unit moves to a house in the captured town of Gorizia while fighting goes on in the next mountains over. While fertile, wet April is 'the cruelest month,' cold, sterile 'Winter kept us warm.' Rain will become a prominent symbol in A Farewell to Arms (as well as being the last word of the novel), and it is important to note its ironic application: it is not an agent of fertility and creation, but rather of sterility and destruction. In the famous opening of 'The Wasteland,' Eliot writes Eliot sketches out in great detail in his poem 'The Wasteland.' Though the Lost Generation disdained this sterility, they seemed to take a strange comfort in it. Dryness and dust frequently represented this sterility, a system T.S. Many writers of Hemingway's Lost Generation, the disillusioned youth who felt The Great War had irrevocably devastated both their bodies and values, saw an emptiness and sterility in their modern culture. In addition to pregnancy's equation with weaponry, rain makes the country 'wet and brown and dead' and brings on the cholera the dusty opening, on the other hand, is idyllic in its pastoral splendor. That image is particularly well chosen, for even in this opening Henry connects rain with an undesirable type of fertility that actually heralds death and destruction. Though the detached narrative at times seems almost mechanical, great feeling emerges through what is unsaid and through specific images, such as the soldiers with guns and ammunition under their capes that make them look 'six months gone with child.' Hemingway was probably the most influential American prose stylist of the 20th century, and his spare, journalistic method is in top form in this famous chapter. When the winter begins, it rains incessantly and brings with it cholera, and 7,000 men in the army die of it. If a car goes very fast, it probably carries the King, who checks daily on the horrible battle situation.

It is World War I, and troops and cars with officers frequently go by on the road - dusty at first, then wet during autumn - to fight in the nearby mountains. The narrator, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, describes life in an Italian village he lives in during the summer.

A call to arms hemingway