A Farewell to Arms
by
Ernest Hemingway
(Hemingway
Hero)
The heroes of Hemingway fall into two slots.
Let us first know about Hemingway hero. He is comparatively young, learning to
live in an embattled world characterized by violence and uncertainty, confused
and bewildered in a society torn by the First World War. An honest, manly,
outdoor male who dies a thousand times before his death. Through his encounters
with brutish reality, he learns how to live with the contraries, though without
fully recovering from the physical and psychological scars inflicted by hostile
circumstances. Cut off from his moorings and thrown into a strange
world/circumstance, Frederic Henry, in A Farewell to Arms, is an American but
fights in an Italian army to serve a cause of which he has no clear notion.
As
opposed to Hemingway hero, another specimen in the fictional world of Hemingway
is his The Code Hero. The Code Hero is usually an older man who has realized
his potentialities, a professional man, a bullfighter, a fisherman, a soldier
and a prize-fighter. A man of indomitable courage and endurance, the Code Hero
excels in the field of his choice. Since of a ripe age, the code hero has more of
poise and balance. He represents a code according to which he would be able to
live properly in the world of violence, disorder, which he inhabits. The code
hero exemplifies certain principles of honour, courage and endurance and
demonstrates “grace under pressure.” The fine specimen of a code hero could be
cited as Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea who loses the battle he has won.
The winner takes nothing but the sense of having shown what a man can do when
it is necessary. Santiago’s victory is the moral victory of having clung
without permanent impairment of his belief in the worth of what he has been
doing.
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