Ignorance In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms

In his novel A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929, Ernest Hemingway writes: “He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know it then, although I learned it later” (12). He is asserting that to be ignorant is truly to have bliss. However, he complicates this by also maintaining that this state of bliss cannot last forever, as it creates illusions of false well-being. The main character, Frederic Henry, is often met with the temptation to break the barrier between ignorance and reality through sin. Although he tries to remain oblivious by ignoring the potential consequences of his actions, Henry is tempted to corrupt his ignorance and bliss with truth--a truth which once he

Hemingway, through the character of Henry, implies that a life can only begin after breaking the barrier of ignorance, which creates a false reality that everything is right and fine in the world, even when people are dying, wars are happening, and love is breaking. In accordance with this, Catherine, who remains in her fantasy of a world without issues and where her late fiancé did not die, ends up dying herself, but before then is frequently depicted as insane. This demonstrates that anyone who refuses to accept fact is of an unsound mind. However, the aspect of religion complicates this––Hemingway himself seems to struggle with where religion is in the situation of fantasy versus reality, with the Priest and Henry’s religious experiences, but also including that “ ‘ all thinking men are atheists’ ” (7). To Hemingway, it seems that religion could be considered a creator of a false reality. Could this hence imply that in the view of Hemingway, those who preach extreme religion are, to a certain extent,