A Farewell To Arms

A Farewell to Arms, takes place during the World War I era. While there 's a couple of other important characters in the novel, the story takes focus on Frederic Henry, an ambulance driver for the Italian military. To sum up the story, Frederic Henry fails to understand how the world and himself work, leading him to take care of it with alcohol and sex. He is then introduced to an English nurse named Catherine Barkley by his good friend Rinaldi. Catherine is clearly much more mature and better understanding of the world as she had suffered the loss of her fiance and sees war differently. Despite their differences, they still manage to end up dating but with a less mature Frederic. While they were dating, Henry faces his first true devastation

At the hospital the doctor reveals that her pelvic bone is too small for the baby to come out and a C-section is going to be needed. Moments later a baby boy was delivered, a stillborn one. The cause: he was choked to death by the umbilical cord. Once Frederic finds out he begins to talk to himself about the child and says, “But they killed you in the end”(280); Frederic is referring ”they”; as life and the hopelessness it holds. During the same part, he starts talking about his life and says, “I wished the hell I’d been choked like that. No I didn’t”(279). This clearly shows his survival characteristics as of one as a code hero. He knows life is inevitable and that he must survive. He then finds out that Catherine is going to die by a hemorrane. He goes in to see her but is unable to unleash a single word. While he is there she says, “I’m not a bit afraid of it. It’s just a dirty trick”(Hemingway, 283). Her cynical outlook on life proves to Frederic that life is no more than a hoax. During Catherine’s last moments, Frederic is very like a statue. It is during these final moments that Frederic comes the conclusion that the struggle of life is inescapable and is something one must go through alone . His conversion into the code hero finally comes to an end as he becomes the code