A Farewell to Arms
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Farewell to Arms
Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
1929
First off, let me just say that I have absolutely loved all the Hemingway that I have encountered thus far. He makes me want to go camping and hunt with my bare hands or fight a bull or something. This was no exception, even though the ending left me furious and frustrated (and sad, sad, sad, sad, sad!).
A Farewell to Arms is a love and war story with some of the most interesting characters I’ve ever met on the page. Lieutenant Henry, the main character, is serving in World War I in the Italian army, despite the fact that he is an American. Complicated, yet oh so macho much? Check. He falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse who is stationed in Italy. Catherine starts off crazy and soon becomes, well, interesting. I’ve read some comments that describe Catherine as a sexist portrayal of a woman, but I found to be much more intriguing and complicated than that. She and Lieutenant Henry embark on an intense, war hospital-based courtship that is all fairytale and no reality. There’s love, there’s sexy banter, there’s some tough guy war stuffs (it is Hemingway, after all), a bit of adventure and them, of course, some tragedy. It’s all very good and I think this is one of those classics for everyone.
Also, I should add that I listened to this in audio format. How did this come to be? I desperately needed a new audiobook for my commute home and my holds for the latest teen werewolf love story hadn’t come through yet, so I found myself browsing until I picked this one up. I usually avoid the classics or anything really that could be defined as “literature” when it comes to audio format, but I figured that Hemingway is so short and blunt and downright uncomplicated that I could follow in audio format…and I was right!
