A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Major Characters)

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

(Major Characters)

  

Fredric Henry

A Farewell to Arms is the story of a man and a woman wrought by the intolerable to the pitch of extreme desperation. It is an attempt on Frederic Henry’s part to get down to some kind of bedrock in a world that has been stripped of all meaning for him.

Henry, an American citizen, was studying architecture in Italy when the war broke out, joined as Lieutenant in the Italian army because he could speak Italian, hence joined the war for the fun of it, only to tragically realize that war is no fun. It kills a person psychologically before liquidating him physically. A man given to the celebration of senses; he has no qualms visiting brothels for comfort. In brief, he is not involved in the action for the sake of action. Whenever he returned to his unit after his romantic escapades, he was obsessed with the meaninglessness of his life. The feeling of the futility of his participation in war infused in him “a false feeling of soldiering.”

A man of no commitment Henry regards women as playthings. His initial response to Catherine Barkley was very casual: “I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers. He did not love Catherine, nor did he have any intention of loving her. It was just a diversion for him, probably a better than a brothel. Henry’s exposure to the brutalities of war had filled him with the sense of futility of human experience. The sham of patriotism he had witnessed from close quarters when soldiers inflicted wounds on themselves in order to escape going to the front. The war, like pestilence, afflicts everybody. In spite of Henry’s lack of involvement, he wants the war to end.

Cupid’s arrows begin to affect Henry, in spite of his avowed professions to the contrary. The intimacy with Catherine transforms him. Earlier, he had celebrated the life of senses in order to overcome his boredom and meaninglessness. After meeting Catherine, he feels “lonely and hollow.” After his tryst with death on the battle front when the trench mortar hits Henry, the unreality of the war in the movies, is converted into the reality of his own existence. This is the first lesson he learns as far as war is concerned.

The second, more important at personal level, is his realization that the life of booze and brothels is unreal vis-à-vis the life of genuine love of the beloved. It will be thus seen that the character of Henry evolves itself, that is one of the most significant stages in the portrayal of a character. For Catherine, love is her religion, she tells Henry: “You’re my religion. You’re all I’ve got.” For Frederic Henry who “went to the smoke of the cafes and spent nights in rooms which whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop,” the unqualified and selfless love of Catherine is a new experience, and his transition from an uncaring one to a caring one is complete.

On the battle front Henry’s metamorphosis from a spectator to that of a participant, takes place unconsciously. The killing of one of the ambulance drivers, Aymo and the desertion of Bonello, coupled with the unsympathetic, inhuman and indifferent attitude of the battle-police, created in him revulsion for the war machinery. When he was mistaken for a German and about to be shot, Henry jumped into the swollen river to save himself with a strong feeling that he could no longer be bothered with this war: “You were out of it now. You had no more obligation . . . Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.”

The tragic but premature demise of his lady-love, Catherine, drilled into Henry a strong feeling that death was the ultimate reality. Some were killed in war; some were killed by disease and some just died. The separate peace which Henry had proclaimed for himself when he saved his life by jumping into the river to escape the battle-police, was no longer “separate peace” for man. In fact, it lay only in death. Henry’s experience becomes symbolic of the crash of the pre-war values and culture. He, also, is a representative of the new generation, “the lost generation,” that looked for new values to replace the old. His experience as represented in the novel is an eloquent testimony to the desperate search for new values.” Henry finds significance only in personal relations that are again fraught with the danger of dissolution. He finds no meaning in the abstract words, abstract ideals, and even religious ideology. In a significant way, Frederic Henry articulates Hemingway’s bitter experience of war and his confrontation with death. In brief, Henry exemplifies what man can achieve — the stiff upper lip, stoic endurance of pain and suffering.

Catherine Barkley

Catherine Barkley is presented as a charming English nurse deployed in the war hospitals in Italy. She is a woman of singular charm. She is exquisitely simple, extremely gentle, deeply sincere, intensely emotional and admirably brave. Her concept of love is complete surrender of herself to the man whom she loves. She is a tall, blonde girl with grey eyes and beautiful hair. In the beginning she is seen depressed for she has recently lost fiancé in one of the actions of war.

Dr. Rinaldi

Rinaldi is an Italian doctor serving in the war, close to the front at Gorizia. His excessive sexuality, his garrulity, his sense of humour, his predilection for drinking his impiety, his capacity for friendship, his painstaking performance of his duties as a surgeon, make him a likable character in the action of A Farewell to Arms. He is an open minded fellow though vulgar in thought and action. It is he who introduces Catherine, the heroine of the novel to Henry. When he finds that Catherine is different type of girl and she has interest in Henry, he transfers his attention to Miss Ferguson, who is a Scottish nurse at the same hospital. Henry calls him, ‘foul mouthed’, ‘uniformed’, ‘sloppy’ but all in fun. They are good friends. He feels depressed by the continuing war. He is fed up from performing excessive operations, although it has made him an experienced surgeon. In order to forget war disgust, he drinks and offers Henry to have drinks. When Henry says, he had jaundice recently so he should not drink, Rinaldi tells him: ‘I will get you drunk and take your liver out and put in you a good Italian liver and make you man again.” He, then talks about Henry’s love affair with the English nurse Catherine. Though, war has filled his heart with disgust, he visits brothels regularly even when he suspects that he had caught syphilis. He never goes off his sense of homour even when he is in distress. His affection for Henry remains undiminished, Besides, Rinaldi doesn’t stop baiting the priest. He would provoke to priest: “To hell with you, priest, that Saint Paul, he was a rounder and a chaser and when he was no longer hot, he said it was no good. When he was finished, he made the rules for us who are still hot.” However, we see that Rinaldi is a practical man. His friendship with Henry establishes his importance in the novel. In all he is a person who lives by hard work but cheerfully, unmindful of worldliness and social concept.