Literature Review on A Farewell to Arms

李翠翠

【Abstract】A Farewell to Arms made Hemingway a famous author. It violates conventional standards and arouses the objection of one group or another and attracts lots of critics debate upon it in many different ways, which are listed in this literature review.

【Key words】A Farewell to Arms; Ernest Hemingway; Literature Review

1. Introduction

One of Ernest Hemingways masterpieces, A Farewell to Arms, offers powerful descriptions of life during and immediately following World War I and brilliantly maps the psychological complexities of its characters using a revolutionary style, it brought him the kind of public and critical acclaim he had been seeking.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Themes

Robert Penn Warren brought the themes of the novel into focus for the first time. He said the characters in the novel had lost their bearings and felt themselves bereft, homeless, adrift, yet in an apparently God-abandoned world, they were seeking a code by which to live. The love of Frederic and Catherine begun on the(下转第284页) level of appetite develops into what Count Greffi calls “a religious feeling.” Though concerned with secular and not divine love, it should be regarded as a religious book. Philip Young was noteworthy for pointing out the themes of love and war are paralleled.

Reviewing over several decades of literary history, it is difficult to understand the outrage expressed some readers. The book should be classified as “venereal fiction”, Lieutenant Henry seemed an “utterly immoral man who took the woman of his desire as lightly as he deserted from his command in the Italian army.” The issue of desertion troubled a number of reviewers. Altogether Hemingway was far too concerned with realistic detail and not nearly enough with those higher purposes and larger relations that constituted the proper province of fiction.

The most troublesome of these attacks came from the well-known Chicago novelist and critic Robert Herrick. On the basis of his reading of the first two sections, he was confident this novel could only be regarded as dirt or garbage. He concentrated on two scenes that demonstrated his contention. One occurs on the train from the field hospital to Milan when Fredric and another traveler get drunk a grappa and throw up. The other offending scene was the reunion of Fredric and Catherine in the Milan hospital when he persuades her to make love.

2.2 Language Styles

Hemingways handing of Frederic Henrys narration has consistently been considered one of the novels strengths. The first two sections of the book were singled out for applause. The description of the Italian retreat from Caporetto was “perhaps the finest single passage that Hemingway has written.” The other section reviewers selected for commendation was the novels ending. They found the final paragraph particularly effective because its muted tone so well suited the emotional loss that Frederic had suffered. Ford described what it was that qualified Hemingway as an “impeccable writer of English prose,” he made the language seem new and alive. Walker Gibson was also interested in illustrating how Hemingways unusual prose style works in the context of the novel. With the aid of a “Style Machine” that measures the structure and length of sentences, the use of adjectives and adverbs, the proportion of verbs in the passive voice, and so on through sixteen criteria.