The book A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic about the
love story of a nurse and a war ridden soldier. The story starts as Frederick
Henry is serving in the Italian Army. He meets his future love in the hospital
that he gets put in for various reasons. I thought that A Farewell to Arms was a
good book because of the symbolism, the exciting plot, and the constant moving
of the main character. The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much
apparent. Ernest Hemingway has always been one who is big on the symbolism of
night as being bad. To the main character in Hemingway's novels, nights have
always been a sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of the
symbolisms in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from the Italian
army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on and running away
from the army. This symbolism was the water that he jumped into was a symbolism
of the new, clean life that he was going to live from now on. At this time,
Henry goes off and finds his wife to be. The plot in A Farewell to Arms was
always active. They were never staying in one place too long. It had a very good
story line, which was a love story that ended up in a tragedy. The main
character's wife got pregnant and she was off to have her baby when problems
started occurring. They had to have a caesarean, and the baby dies, and when the
mother of the child starts to hemorrhage Henry knows that it was over for his
wife and he was right. From the beginning of the book until the end, the action
was up. Ever since the front page Henry was traveling around to different towns
so it was not boring for the reader. That made it very interesting for the
reader because it was always a new town coming up so they were being introduced
in the new characters quite often. As the story goes on, the reader is not
introducing as many new people, but they are still traveling around quite a bit.
Hemingway has a way with arranging the plots of all his stories. They all have
that right timing to them. He always introduces only people that will affect the
story, he does not introduce someone who will be in the scene for five minutes
and then leave. I felt that the author's planning on putting this novel together
was very good. Ernest Hemingway has always been one of the world's best known
classic writers. His style and technique of symbolism is much different than
others. He uses then in very strong ways that you the reader does not always
pick up. I am sure that I missed some of the symbolism that went on in the book.
I picked up a few though and they were very interesting. I recommend this to
anyone who is interested in a love story that does not get too intimate.