Farewell To Arms Setting

As a human, a person’s surroundings have a significant impact on them, perhaps without them even knowing it. Their geographical location, cultural setting, or even the abstract settings such as the idea of war or home can shape a person’s character and change their outlook on life. Ernest Hemingway explored the effects of various settings on his characters, like Frederic Henry. Throughout the course of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, the settings that Frederic Henry is placed in, such as Italy and the Great War itself, shape his emotional detachment, illuminating that soldiers experience a rise in apathy during war, which is further asserted by Attilio Frescura, a message carrier who experienced the Battle of Caporetto and the beginning

While pondering the war, Henry claims “I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies” (Hemingway 31). Being constantly exposed to battles makes the whole situation surreal to him. Henry does not see the danger in fighting a war, so he speaks carelessly about it. He even sounds resigned when asserting that he will live, which would make anyone else relieved and happy, thus proving that being exposed to endless war makes one apathetic. Also, Henry becomes unphased by horrific injuries, because, as an ambulance driver, he is forced to behold similar atrocities regularly. After the bombing, Henry looks to his comrade Manera, and see that, “One leg was gone and the other was held on by tendons and part of the trouser and the stump twitched and jerked, as though it were not connected” (Hemingway 47). Henry sees that his friend’s legs have been severed and mutilated, yet he reports the incident with his voice devoid of any emotions. Henry is neither repulsed nor terrified, rather level-headed and emotionless. The incident is gruesome, but Frederic Henry maintains his journalistic tone, substantiating the claim that being exposed to the violence of war makes one less disturbed by gruesome sights and causes them to show apathy in the setting of war. Critiquing Hemingway's use of pseudo autobiography, Millicent Bell claimed that the entire Italian retreat from the Battle of Caporetto was used as a motif for apathy. Relating Henry’s experience to that of actual soldiers, she explained, “[Henry’s] downward adjustment of feeling is the one often made by soldiers—or by concentration camp victims, or long-term prisoners—by which emotions are reduced to the most rudimentary since the others have become insupportable...