Passage Analysis- A Farewell to Arms :: essays research papers

One measure of a powerful author lies in her ability to write literature in which any loss can be set apart from its place setting and still express the qualities of the whole. When this occurs, the integrated profundity of the entire work is a sign of true artistry. Ernest Hemingway, an author of the Lost Generation, was one much(prenominal) writer who mastered the art of investing simple sentence structure with layers of composite plant meaning. Hemingway, who was a journalist in the earlier years of his writing c arer, was cognise for writing in a declarative or terse stylus of prose. The depth of emotion and meaning that he conveyed through such minimalistic textual matter is astounding. He also experimented with a stream-of-consciousness technique developed by writers such as James Joyce and William Faulkner to an interior dimension to his prose. In A adieu to Arms, the story of wartime romance between an American soldier in the Italian Army, Frederic, and Catherine, t he British nurse who cares for him, there are a multitude of passages which could intimately stand alone as poetry because of their symbolic meaning. However, when these exceptional passages are woven into the fabric of the novel as a whole, the reader is capable to reach an even greater level of understanding. One extraordinary passage is found near the end of the novel during which Frederic Henry agonizes over the jeopardy his lovers in while she struggles with the birth of their baby. By juxtaposing the impendent birth of Frederics child with the possible death of his beloved, Hemingway explores a dense ambivalence about the meaning of manner and loss. Throughout this passage, structure plays an substantial role in illuminating Frederics emotional metamorphosis from allude to desperation.The passage opens with Frederic watching poor, poor dear Cat (line 1) in her likely state of helplessness as she struggles through giving birth. Through strengthened word choice, Hemingw ay continues to display Frederics obvious contemptuous feelings about the biologic consequences of love. He views Catherines pain and suffering as the price you pay (line 1) for pleasant someone. Ironically, a birth is usually shown in a positive airheaded as the pain one suffers to birth a child pales in comparison to the tremendous joy of receiving a newborn baby. Despite conventions, Frederic feels as if he has been trapped by some malignant force of life and is anything but happy about the impending birth.