A Farewell to Arms

In these opening chapters, Hemingway’s renowned style of using minimal, spare writing is on display. As Hemingway said in a Paris Review interview: "I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows” (quoted in Michael Reynolds's Hemingway’s First War). Chapter 1 has no names, no dates, and no enemy. All that information remains submerged below the surface. Instead, the author uses simple language: mountains, river, dust. That is the one-eighth of the iceberg that the reader can see. The narrator does not attempt to paint a picture full of details to help illustrate every leaf, every man, or every feeling. Only later does the reader learn that the story is set in the middle of World War I, at the Italian front as the soldiers fight the Austrians in the mountains. When describing the troops as they march to the front, Hemingway does not describe any actual fighting, but instead he describes the impact the army’s movements make on the landscape. The constant marching kicks up so much dust that the dust covers everything around them. The presence of the army transforms all of nature. The use of camouflage further mixes the military with the natural so that it is hard to tell the difference between the two. When the fall rains come, the dust turns to mud, which covers everything, further conflating the two.

Hemingway’s noticeable use of “and” to connect his nouns has the effect of flattening the language. There are no decorations and no interpretations. Frederic’s eye scans the world around him, and this is what he sees. The lack of subordinate clauses ends up making everything equal, even the king. This leveling of the language emphasizes the ironic shock of learning that “only” 7,000 soldiers have died from cholera.

In the second chapter, despite the victories, the trees are now nothing but stumps. Nature shows herself to be a worthy opponent because when it snows, the war must end, at least temporarily. The white blanket of snow covers all the ravages of war for the time being. Hemingway’s handling of time also works to further flatten any emotion. Time moves seamlessly from summer to fall to winter. There are no special victories or losses that stand out, but rather the main event is the processing of the year in a detached, methodical manner.

In Chapter 3, his roommate, Lieutenant Rinaldi, questions Frederic about his leave. Frederic can’t come up with much to say about his time away except to mention the many places he has gone to: “Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Villa San Giovanni, Messina, Taormima” (10). Rinaldi is not satisfied with this minimalist answer, joking that Frederic sounds like a time-table, which could be Hemingway poking fun at his own minimalist way of writing.

But at the end of the chapter, Frederic comes back to question of what he did on his leave. This is the first insight the reader gets into the narrator’s thoughts. Until this point, the narrator has been very restrained in admitting any emotion. In this passage, the feelings come through using stream of consciousness to reflect on the flow of thoughts and feelings that he had once he was away from the army. He wonders if life is simply a series of unconnected nights and days that don’t mean anything. The war has obliterated any sense of values.