“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway
This is a story about life and love in the middle of World War I.
The story evolves around Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army. He meets and fall in love with a British nurse Catherine Barkley while serving on the front lines, and their relationship deepens when Henry gets injured in a mortar attack and specifically requested for Barkley to be transferred to his hospital so that she can nurse him back to health.
After returning to the battle, Henry becomes increasingly disturbed by the war’s brutality and senselessness, which leads him to eventually dessert the army after he narrowly escape execution by his own forces during one chaotic battle. Henry and Barkley then run away to Switzerland to start a life together, although unlike most love tales this one does not have a happy ending (a fitting ending, I must say, in an overall gloomy mood in times of great war).
It is a simple enough general narrative worthy of a short story. But the strength of the book lies within the conversations that the many characters have with each other.
They provide interesting angles that show there’s still life happening in the middle of a massive war, with plenty of human emotions, worry, drama, loss, and sacrifices. Even time to do leisure. It shows the political opinions of the war by ordinary people, the difficult life choices they have to accommodate within the dire situation. And of course it shows the human cost of war not just by the death toll, but also the psychological and financial impacts.
It is a book with such a powerful anti-war message, coming from a writer who, like Frederic Henry himself, served as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I.
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