A Farewell to Arms 547of the novel, however, there is an insistent insecurity
about the promise of new life. Once labor begins,
Lieutenant Henry is gripped by foreboding. “People
don’t die in childbirth nowadays. That was what all
husbands thought. Yes, but what if she should die?
She won’t die. She’s just having a bad time.” Birth is
the beginning, the first moment of life; the world is
new and full of wonder. But for Lieutenant Henry, it
is “the byproduct of good nights in Milan,” the last
vestiges of a life marked by violence and pain. The
nights themselves were aberrances, punctuated notes
of joy and pleasure breaking the monotony, agony,
and omnipresent fear. What was meant to be harm-
less fun becomes a lifetime commitment, no matter
how much of a blessing it might be, and Lieutenant
Henry is left powerless. Birth, for Lieutenant Henry,
represents all that is outside of his control: Cath-
erine, marriage, children, the future, life, and death.
The relentless back and forth in his mind, the agi-
tation that cannot be satisfied by simple satiation,
and the separation between self and situation each
manifest as a commentary on Lieutenant Henry’s
inability to cope with a future that is entirely beyond
his control. The story happens around him, is
described by him, but never happens to him. Unlike
the war, this is Catherine’s story as much as Lieuten-
ant Henry’s, and this frustrates him. His anxiety is
relieved after certain tragedy: The baby is stillborn,
Catherine dies, and only Lieutenant Frederic Henry
remains. Birth is the tragic reminder that happiness
is beyond control. It is outside the self, coming from
loved ones and bright futures and goodly promises.
In the stillborn birth of his son, Lieutenant Henry
recaptures his own life, his own days, and his own,
solitary destiny.
The reader should be reminded that the novel
itself is a fictionalized account of Hemingway’s
wartime adventures, including a romance with a
mysterious nurse. The real-life drama ended rather
prosaically, but in the reimagined world of the heroic
Lieutenant Henry, Hemingway builds to a climax
both tragic and philosophical. Both his son and
Catherine die in childbirth, victims of circumstance
(and possibly medical malpractice). But there is a
definite ambivalence in Hemingway’s portrayal of
birth. The closer to reality it comes, the further the
prose seems to separate from the characters. Lieu-
tenant Henry’s descriptions become more abstracted
from the moment. There is a palpable sense of
distance between the narrator and his story. The
first three-quarters of the novel show a very present
Lieutenant Henry: aware, engaged, sporting. He is
always in the moment. But as the lieutenant and his
consort escape the wartime drama, it becomes a tale
of minutiae. He spends a full chapter on the qual-
ity of his beard. The pacing is uneven. Time snaps
forward in fits and starts, until the protracted birth
sequence, during which Hemingway attempts to
capture the anxiety of being in the other room. Life
goes on behind closed doors. Drama and tragedy
occur off-stage, as the reader waits with the audience
for the action to unfold. This gives the anticipation
of birth a quality of distance and paranoia that pro-
duces the sense of relief when Lieutenant Henry is
informed that his child is stillborn and his lover will
soon die. Instead of the shock of tragedy, Lieuten-
ant Henry’s narration is saddened but distant; he
is a victim unburdened of responsibility. He leaves
the war with nothing but a gentle limp. The war
promised him heroism, valor, machismo, a wife, and
a child but delivered nothing. Its promise is stillborn.
Aaron DruckerSur vival in A Farewell to Arms
“Survival” is the only word in a time of war. Hol-
lywood has spent the past century glamorizing war:
the challenges, the heroism, the victories. While
recent renditions of war have made the effort to
make the terror, demoralization, and violence more
visceral to the modern audience, the narrative of the
war hero-protagonist victorious against overwhelm-
ing obstacles is still the standard. A Farewell to Arms
makes a different claim. For Lieutenant Henry and
his fellow soldiers in the Italian army, World War I
is neither heroic nor valorous. Men sit together and
try to pass the time, with their world punctuated
by violent, senseless attacks and counterattacks in
order to gain, and then lose, a few hundred meters
of hillside. These men might be fighting for country,
honor, duty, or idealism, but ultimately they simply
strive to survive the experience. Hemingway under-
stands that survival requires a vision of the future
and the confidence and desire that there will be a
tomorrow.