A Farewell to Arms

In these chapters, Frederic has returned from leave, only to discover that he is not needed; everything seems to be running fine without him. Despite this feeling of insignificance, he knows the spring offensive is coming, and he knows he has to have the ambulances ready to carry the wounded men from the front.

His questioning of his value to the war effort runs throughout these chapters. He seems acutely aware of his position as hovering on the periphery of the army. Of course, he is an officer, and he is clearly identified as one by the stars on his uniform, the gas mask, and the steel helmet. He doesn’t quite inhabit his role fully, and he often seems to be acting the role of a soldier. It’s never quite clear why he is in the Italian army anyway, especially as he is an American. Throughout the novel, his identity is questioned, as people wonder if he’s American, Italian, English, Austrian, or German. Frederic never reveals his motivations for being in the army. When Catherine asks him about it, he can’t answer Catherine’s or the head nurse’s questions about his motivation for joining the war except to say that sometimes there isn’t an answer. Although he clearly bonds with his fellow soldiers, he often must become drunk in order to feel brotherly toward them. This sense of not being quite “inside” the soldier’s identity will be developed throughout the novel, leading up to Frederic’s eventual desertion from the army.

Even though he doesn’t explain his motivation for joining the war, Frederic makes a point in clarifying his motivation for choosing Catherine. He clearly states that he does not love her, but instead he is playing the game in order to make her think he does so that they can have a physical relationship. He seems ready to take advantage of her vulnerability since she is clearly still grieving over her dead fiancé. Just as he acts the role of the soldier, here he acts the role of the persuasive lover.

As for Catherine’s motivation in quickly succumbing to the game, the narrator thinks that she might be “crazy” (26). In asking him to repeat the phrase “I’ve come back to Catherine in the night” (26), she too seems to be asking him to play a role, having him re-enact something that her fiancé might have said to her. She seems to see Frederic as a substitute for the dead soldier, but the role doesn’t last. She abruptly tells him that he can stop playing the part.

Before, the reader saw how the war had marked the natural environment. Now, the reader sees how the war has marked people. Catherine’s fiancé is blown up. Clearly Catherine is grieving and traumatized and must learn how to move on. The ways in which Frederic has been marked by war is harder to discern. His relationship with Catherine is revealed in clipped dialogue. Little is given about the narrator’s thoughts as he talks to her except in brief moments when he expresses surprise at her questions, like when she asks: “You will be good to me, won’t you?” (23). This flattened, detached language hardly seems capable of carrying the emotional depths of Catherine’s grief, making the reader wonder not only about why the narrator talks like this, but also about the narrator’s ability to tell this story.

The discussion of the marble busts points to Hemingway’s own views on art. Hemingway seems to be connecting the marble sculptures to certain types of literature, emphasizing that there are some forms of literature that also seem dead, like the marble. Clearly, in inventing his own form of writing, he wants to create something living.