A Farewell to Arms 545stomach, and bits of the stewed tomatoes
Snowden had eaten that day for lunch.Snowden dies in Yossarian’s arms as he helplessly
consoles Snowden in his final moments with the
words, “there, there,” because that is all he can think
to say.
This grisly scene robs Yossarian of his courage,
nearly captures his sanity, and finally forces him to
see the fragility of life and the utter insanity of war.
Snowden’s death propels Yossarian on his crusade of
self-preservation at all costs. He ultimately escapes
the clutches of Catch-22 by essentially quitting the
war. He flees to neutral Sweden, because he will not
sponsor Colonels Cathcart and Corn’s plan to saddle
the squadron with 80 missions in exchange for his
discharge. To save his life, his honor, and the respect
of the squadron, he deserts.
Suffering and death in war is often meaningless
despite its great consequences; however, sometimes
death can be redemptive. Snowden’s death galva-
nizes Yossarian and empowers him to save his own
life.
Drew McLaughlin
HEmingWay, ErnEST A Farewell to
Arms (1929)
Written in 1929, A Farewell to Arms is the semi-
autobiographical story of an American, Lieutenant
Frederic Henry, and his love affair with his Brit-
ish nurse, Catherine Barkley. Lieutenant Henry
(often referred to in the novel as tenente, Italian
for “lieutenant”) is an ambulance driver near the
Italian-Austrian Front in World War I. He is injured
in an Austrian mortar attack, and during his conva-
lescence in Milan, he woos and becomes lovers with
Catherine, a nurse transferred to Milan from the
previous town where the two met. He returns to the
front, where a retreat is sounded; due to a series of
missteps and dangerous double-crossings, he deserts
the Italian army. Surreptitiously collecting Cath-
erine from her new post, they go to Switzerland
together. Escaping the war, they wait out Catherine’s
pregnancy; in childbirth, both she and the baby die.
But the book is far more than just the elements of
this plot.
Hemingway took his real-life experience as a
19-year-old ambulance driver in World War I, the
injuries he sustained in a mortar attack, along with
the extended hospitalization and physical therapy
that followed, and a brief love affair with an older
nurse, and turned these events into one of the great
novels of the 20th century. A Farewell to Arms is,
in part, about the adventures of Lieutenant Henry
and his affairs in war-torn Europe, but it is also a
personal exploration of the soldier, wanting to see
action, adventure, and life but stuck in the violent,
depressing, immoral, unanticipated realities of war-
time. Hemingway captures the relationship between
the man and the war in intimate, and often pro-
found, ways as he risks the rejection of the glories of
war for the more human, and possibly more tragic,
intimacies of husband and father.
Aaron DruckernationaliSm in A Farewell to Arms
In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway evokes a running
commentary on nationalism through ridicule and
omission. This may best be described as an anti-
nationalistic impulse in the book, but one that never
quite reaches the sense that nationalism is negative
so much as it is not held in particularly high esteem.
Lieutenant Henry represents, almost by definition,
a problematic position. He is an American in the
Italian army. Rather than defending his country, the
rights of his men, the land of his birth, he is sav-
ing strangers as a kind of adventure and romance.
His compatriots are Italian, and they fight to hold
the line against Austrian incursion. Of one fellow
soldier, Lieutenant Henry notes, “Gino was born
a patriot, so he said things that separated us some-
times, but he was also a fine boy and I understood
his being a patriot. He was born one.” Neither
adhering to Americanism nor evolving an expatri-
ate’s sense of Eurocentrism, Lieutenant Henry’s
presence in the Italian army explicitly questions the
value and ethics of nationalism.
There is no compelling explanation for why
Lieutenant Henry is in Italy fighting for the Allies.
At the outset of the novel, the Americans have yet
to enter World War I. It is not that Lieutenant
Henry feels particularly obliged by conscience to
fight against the Austrians and Germans. To be