Lifes many burdens

“…long 6.6 mm cartridges, bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child.”

This quote is deffinatly one of my favorites. It is a great dichotomy used by the author. Hemingway describes the many bullet cartridges that they must carry,  and he compares it to the heavy burden that men carry in war at the same time as comparing it to the burden that women have of bearing a child, while he is also at the same time comparing it to new life. This is a great example of one of the major themes: life and death.

Catherine and Henry

“Tell me, how many people have you ever loved?”
“Nobody”
“Not even me?”
“Yes, you.”
“How many others really?”
“None.”
“How many have you stayed with”
“None.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“Yes.”

In this conversation, Catherine and Henry are beginning to learn more and more about each other. They have become somewhat closer and more personal. Here, Catherine starts to hint at Henry’s sex life. She is quite curious to know whether or not she may be the only one. In response, Henry tries to play around with her by lying and then stating that he is in fact lying. Hemingway uses conversations like these throughout the novel to allow the reader to better understand Catherine and Henry’s relationship.

The War, living and dying

1972- In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about
the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.

Very often in great novels the author exposes or gives away the main theme, the big secret, by some sort of descriptive or tragic drama in the beginning or first chapter. In A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, this is exactly what he does. Within the very first page, he explodes like a firework on the fourth of July with many literary devices that subconsiously capture the reader and gives them a good view of the main themes that are to decoratethe rest of the novel. One of these themes is war. Hemingway does a remarkable job in portraying the men and their struggles as they fight through one of the most gruesome and horrendous and brutal wars of all time. Another one of the major and important themes is death and the destruction that goes along unfortunatly all too well with the previous. He begins by describing how beautiful and magnificant the Earth was, then he quickly goes on to show how dead and barren everything that had once been so very alive had become. He shows how quickly life’s circumstance can change, how quickly the tables can turn, by using the descriptions of the changing seasons while eluding to the war, death and destruction.
“The plain was rich with crops, there were many orchards of fruit trees…” Hemingway begins by giving the reader a vivid description of the luscious land and it’s vegetation. “The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn.” Here, he uses the season Autumn as the pivotal point of the extremes of life and
death. By contrasting these two, the reader can actually feel the emotions that are in play at the time of the actual war. “…long 6.5 mm cartridges bulged forward under the capes so that the men, passing on the road, marched as though they were six months gone with child.” Here we see how cleverly Hemingway spins the dichotomy of life and death as seen through the opposite of new birth and carrying the weight of the war. Also by describing the men as walking as though they were “six months gone with child,” it allows the reader to actually feel the heavy burden that they must carry as soldiers in war.
These themes however, are not the only ones within the novel. There remain quite a few more left to be discussed. But these are some of the major themes of the novel that were exposed, like a predator exposes it’s prey, within the first chapter. The first chapter not only sets the pace for the rest of the novel, but grabs the reader, hook line and sinker, and holds them in suspense as he carries to them the constant themes of war and living and dying.

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