How Does Hemingway Use Rain In A Farewell To Arms

A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms, written in 1928 by Ernest Hemingway, is the story of Lieutenant Frederic Henry and his time as an ambulance driver for the Italian Army during the first world war. After being injured at the front Henry is sent to a hospital in Milan, where Nurse Catherine Barkley, a woman he met where he was stationed, cares for him and they fall in love. As the story progresses Henry and Catherine’s relationship goes through a drastic change when we find out that Catherine is pregnant, so the two run away to Switzerland and wait for the baby to be born. Throughout the novel, Hemingway uses simple and complex imagery to portray the effects of the war and Henry’s emotions, paired with detailed

Rain is prevalent throughout the book and comes most often when Henry is feeling sad or upset, or when something has gone wrong. The first example of this can be seen in the last two sentences of the first chapter, “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and by the end of it only seven thousand died of it in the army.” (Hemingway, 4) The rain symbolizes sadness and death and can sometimes act as foreshadowing. A secondary example occurs when Henry is in the hospital, “It turned cold that night and the next day it was raining. Coming home from the Ospedale Maggiore, it rained very hard and I was wet when I came in.” (Hemingway, 142) Hemingway mentions that Henry was wet. This gives a clue as to what will happen and we can infer that he will get sick. Hemingway goes on to describe the severity of the rain, how it was “...coming down heavily…” and how the “...wind blew it against the glass doors.” (Hemingway, 142) The storm signifies that something unpleasant in this case is to come. By the end of the chapter, we learn that Henry has contracted

Words and phrases are repeated frequently throughout paragraphs and certain chapters, for example, “...Yes, but what if she should die? She can't die. Why would she die? What reason is there for her to die?” (Hemingway___) At this point in the book Catherine is in labor and we can tell that Henry is worried and anxious due to the complications she’s suffering. Another aspect to note is how short the phrases are in this quote, majority of the book is written in short phrases including the dialogue which is typically two or three words per character when they’re in conversation. The descriptions are quite long, some being run-on sentences but everything else is short and to the point, hard to follow and not something we see reoccur so much in most modern novels. Hemingway also writes his dialogue similarly to Cormac McCarthy in that he doesn’t often tell you who is talking so you have to follow along closely to keep things straight. In one section Catherine and Henry are talking about a woman who visits and brings the soldiers gifts and suddenly Catherine brings up the rain, then asks Henry is he loves her, something she does often which could be considered another example of repetition. He says yes, but she asks if the rain will make a difference and says she’s scared of it. ““I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it.” “No.” “And sometimes I see you dead in it.””