war and love
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War and Love
A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is among the most frank anti-war novels that have ever been published.
Ernest Hemingway, born on July 21 in Oak Park, Illinois, is generally regarded as spokesman for the Lost Generation. He is famous for his novels and short stories, influenced by Mark Twain's colloquial style, written in his spare, laconic, yet intense prose with short sentences and very specific details, and almost all his stories deal with the theme of courage in face of tragedy, which reveal man's impotence and despairing courage to assert himself against the overwhelming odds.
With the success of A Farewell to Arms (1929), he firmly established his reputation as a great American writer. This novel shows that not only war threatens people, but the very texture of life itself involves violence and death.
First, the major theme must be figured out in order to better review the novel, that is, to be concise, love as a response to the horrors of wars and the world. Hemingway repeatedly emphasized the horrific devastation war has wrought on everyone involved, but he does not merely condemn war. Rather, he indicts the world at large for its atmosphere of destruction, being afraid of which, the young lovers submerge into their own fascinate intimate world.
Henry frequently reflects upon the world's insistence on breaking and killing everyone; it is as if the world can not bear to let anyone remain happy and safe. Indeed, whenever Henry and Catherine are blissful, something comes along to interrupt it ---be it Henry's injury, his being sent back to the front, his impending arrest, or, finally, Catherine's death from childbirth...