Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" is a profound exploration of war, love, and the human condition. The story follows Frederic Henry, an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I, and his relationship with the Scottish nurse Catherine Barkley. The dialogue between them is both tender and poignant, as they navigate the uncertainties of war and their growing feelings for each other.

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\\n    \\"- Não tens a impressão de ser um criminoso, pois não?
- Não - disse eu. - Quando estou contigo não tenho.
- Tu és um rapaz sem juízo - disse ela -, mas hei de olhar por ti. Não é esplêndido, querido, que eu nem sequer sinta náuseas pela manhã?
- Estupendo!
- Tu não sabes apreciar a esplêndida esposa que tens. Mas não me importo. Hei de arranjar um lugar onde não te possam prender, e então seremos muito felizes.
- Vamos já para lá!
- Sim, querido. Irei para onde quiseres e quando quiseres.
- Não pensemos em nada.
- Está bem.\\"\\n  

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Ernest Hemingway was born in July 1899, near Chicago. At just 19 years old, he managed to get the Italian army to accept him into its ranks during World War I, where he served as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. It was during this time that he may have experienced love, possibly his first, with the nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. All of this seems to be the raw material for "A Farewell to Arms," written ten years later. Like the author himself, the main character, Frederic Henry, is an ambulance driver in the Italian army, allowing Hemingway to draw on his knowledge of the Italians' reality, culture, and peculiarities.

The first work I read by Hemingway was "Across the River and into the Trees," published in 1950 when he was 51 years old and had a different (matured) perspective on war, love, and women. I considered it misogynistic and dull. I disliked the dialogues, which were on one hand lacking in cohesion characteristic of oral communication and on the other hand so disconnected that they exasperated me. In "A Farewell to Arms," I understood him better. I understood that an 18 or 19-year-old boy voluntarily went to the horror of a European conflict, an ocean and a world away, where he was wounded and had over 200 shrapnel pieces lodged in his leg. I can't imagine the shock and alienation. So far from home, surrounded by strangers, full of youthful energy, yet confined to a hospital bed. The beautiful, foreign nurse appears. It's all very exotic, and the boy, having survived, is in love and she reciprocates. He must feel invincible, immortal. Suddenly, she leaves with another man. He is returned to the war zone. Once the horror is over, he comes home with his ghosts and finds America on the verge of the crazy 1920s. His head is full of bombs, gunshots, bayonets, and grenades, of the mud of the trenches and the blasts of artillery, but all around him, people are dancing the foxtrot.

The result? Capitalism is repulsive. Women are flighty and heartless. War is all he knows, and he will return to it again and again, yet war never makes sense in any of the books he writes. All Hemingway knows is that you enter war with all that you are and all that you have, and you come out of it stripped of yourself. War consumes everything. It consumed him, chewed him up, and spat him out into a world that was strange to him and in which he felt like an alien. It shaped him forever. Perhaps it's no coincidence that he committed suicide in 1961 after a life of controversy, alleged alcohol abuse, and some scandals. He liked cats - I can't forget that Hemingway liked those mysterious felines that have so little of the bellicose about them.

I really liked this war narrative, and the dialogues, although sometimes repetitive and disjointed, are light and help move the story along. I think one of the main criticisms of this novel is that the love between Henry and Catherine seems superfluous. I eventually came to understand that in war, you feel so alone, even when surrounded by "the boys," that it's not difficult to fall in love. To make plans for peacetime. To be with someone in war is like the illusion that perhaps there is a little of our essence, our emotional side, that can be safeguarded from the daily horrors.

The ending touched me and validated the novel, mainly because the book maintains the same tone throughout, without major highs and lows even in the supposed climactic emotional moments. I think Hemingway managed the tone very well in those final events. In the end, the feeling you're left with is that it's war. And you can't escape war.

Little did he know that war would still haunt him for another 30 years until a bullet finally lodged in his temple.

4.5

If you have watched the movie "Silver Linings Playbook", you will remember that the main character of the movie reads this book for hours and hours. And after finishing it, with a sentence that it's not pleasant to bring it here, he throws the book out of the window. I remembered from there that the book has a bitter ending. But unlike the main character of the movie, my problem is not the end of the story, and in fact, I think this end is very bright.

Among all the books I have read about war, the book "Goodbye with a Gun" cannot have a unique position. Let me tell you that in a fair ranking, this book ranks several steps lower than the books of Heinrich Boll. Regardless of the technique and form of the story, the novel progresses very slowly and has little energy. The war that is so close to the author is not close to the reader. And when he departs from the reality of war, it does not affect the reader much.

However, this does not mean that the book is without value. It still provides a certain perspective on war and its impact on people's lives. It makes us think about the consequences of war and the importance of peace. Maybe we should not expect every war book to be a masterpiece, but rather look at them as a whole to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this complex topic.

Muitos diálogos que permitem uma leitura fluida (apesar de eu detestar esta palavra) são tão desinteressantes que se podem ler em diagonal sem prejuízo da compreensão do enredo. É como se eles fossem apenas uma forma mecânica de avançar a história, sem nenhum real valor ou emoção.

Uma história de amor trágica, que geralmente eu aprecio bastante, neste caso me emocionou tão pouco quanto andar vestido de amarelo e riscas verdes. Não consegui conectar-me com os personagens ou sentir a profundidade daquela tragédia.

Uma personagem feminina submissa a raiar a imbecilidade é outra coisa que me deixou frustrado. Ela não tinha nenhum caráter ou personalidade própria, apenas seguia os impulsos e ordens dos outros.

Uma personagem masculina cujos sofrimentos me sensibilizaram menos do que os da mosca que o meu gato está a perseguir neste preciso momento. Isso mostra o quão pouco consegui conectar-me com a história e os personagens.

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Prémio Nobel da Literatura 1954

Ernest Hemingway nasceu nos Estados Unidos da América (Illinois) em 21 de julho de 1899 e morreu nos Estados Unidos da América (Idaho) em 2 de julho de 1961. Sua obra literária é amplamente reconhecida e influenciou muitas gerações de escritores.

This is the story of an American who served as a non-combatant ambulance driver in the Italian army during the Great War. It details the injury he endured, his long convalescence, relationships, and experiences of that war. This story is inspired by, at least in part, if not exactly portraying Hemingway's own experiences in the same role. Apparently, this was a period that Hemingway regarded as one of the most formative of his life.

This is the only Hemingway work I have read so far. I chose this one because I had understood that 'Farewell to Arms' was generally seen as Hemingway at the 'height of his literary powers'. With that in mind, I had cautiously high expectations, unfortunately, most of which were not met.

I found the book generally and unfortunately disappointing on most fronts. I struggled to engage with the narrative or, for the most part, the characters. The prose seemed to me to verge on the uninteresting. Maybe it's a lazy comparison, but 'Farewell to Arms' came across to me almost like an earlier, weaker Steinbeck, but without his literary strengths, mastery, and skill for storytelling.

The most effective and compelling parts of 'Farewell to Arms' for me were the relationships and scenes between Henry, Catherine, Rinaldi, and the Priest. These at least had a certain air of authenticity about them (despite Catherine's occasionally strange depiction as 'half-crazy'), as well as the closing passages, which, while the result of the war, are depicted as entirely separate from it.

If there was any attempt to portray the heroism, futility, and savagery of war, it was mostly lost or absent for me.

Published in the same year as Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (sometimes cited as the 'best war novel of all time', understandably), 'Farewell to Arms' does not compare and perhaps shouldn't be compared. Although both books were published in the same year and the general subject matter of the Great War is the same, they don't attempt to tell anything like the same story. However, while Remarque produced a staggering work of near literary genius, Hemingway came up with a novel that is considered more'modern' in style and construction. The problem for me is that 'A Farewell to Arms' is ultimately neither moving, nor beautiful, nor harrowing, nor engaging, nor for the most part thought-provoking.

Perhaps Hemingway readers out there can recommend some of his other works that might restore my hopes in him. Based on 'Farewell to Arms', however, I don't feel inclined at this stage to explore the rest of his output.

Apparently, the title 'Farewell to Arms' is a pun, although I don't think it's funny, clever, or ironic. Maybe I missed something.

Overall, then, despite some engaging and effective passages, some memorable quotes, and perhaps being ahead of its time in terms of being'modern' (?), 'Farewell to Arms' is ultimately underwhelming, fails to engage, and for the most part lacks a sense and feeling of real authenticity. I've generously given it a three-star rating, only just.

I have a rather mixed feeling about this book. I finally gave it 4 stars, although my rating fluctuated between 3 and 4.5 stars while reading.

There are indeed moments of brilliance in the novel. In several parts, I was completely gripped and moved. Throughout the entire book, I truly felt for the protagonist and was eager to know what would happen in the end. This book contains several important and compelling themes, and I do think it captured the horrors and reality of war to a certain extent.

However, at times, I found it difficult to engage with Hemingway's sparse and direct writing style. Additionally, some aspects, especially the portrayal of female characters, seemed a bit lacking. There was a lot of repetition in the dialogue, and some of the secondary characters lacked depth.

Overall, it was an okay reading experience. But as I was reading, I couldn't help but compare it to other extraordinary wartime novels such as The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. I was able to become more fully immersed in those books compared to A Farewell to Arms.

Here are a few quotes that stood out:

"I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it."

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."

Thanks to the book
This is how it is. You are going. You don't know what the subject is going to be about. You have never had the opportunity to know. They throw you into the middle of the game and tell you the rules and with the first mistake they make from you, they pull you out. Or they pull you out aimlessly. But in the end, they pull you out. For this reason, let the memories be collective. Be a little patient, they will pull you out too.

Expanded version:

Thanks to the book,
This is the way it unfolds. You are on your way, completely unaware of what the subject matter is going to entail. You have never had the chance to find out. They simply throw you into the midst of the game, and only then do they inform you of the rules. With the very first misstep you make, they yank you out. Or perhaps they do it without any particular reason. But in the end, regardless of the circumstances, they pull you out. For this very reason, let the memories that are formed be ones that you can share with others. Just be a little patient, as eventually, they will come to take you out too.

(Book 663 From 1001 books) - A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms is a captivating novel penned by Ernest Hemingway. Set during the Italian campaign of World War I, it was published in 1929. The title is ingeniously taken from a poem by the 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. The story revolves around the passionate love affair between the expatriate American Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, against the backdrop of the chaos and turmoil of the First World War. It vividly描绘s the cynical soldiers, the brutal fighting, and the displacement of populations. The publication of this novel solidified Hemingway's status as a modern American writer. It became his first best-seller and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as "the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I."

The novel has been translated into Persian multiple times by various translators such as Najaf Dariabandari, R. Marashi, Nazy Azeema, Hanieh Chopani, and many others. Each translation brings its own nuances and interpretations to the story. The different editions and printings over the years have made this classic novel accessible to a wider audience in Iran.

One of the translations includes a passage that beautifully描绘s the setting: (In the late summer of that year, we lived in a house in a village that overlooked a river, dried and white under the sun. The water was clear and moved gently, and in the deep places, it was blue. Soldiers marched along the road by the river, raising clouds of dust that settled on the leaves of the trees. The solitary trees were also dusty. That year, the leaves began to fall early, and we watched the wind blow along the road, raising dust and making the leaves fall with the weight of the breeze. The soldiers marched on, and behind them, the road was white and bare, and only the leaves on the road were visible...)

This passage gives a sense of the desolation and beauty that coexist in the war-torn landscape, adding depth and richness to the overall narrative of the novel.

The world has a way of breaking everyone. It throws challenges, hardships, and disappointments our way, and often leaves us feeling battered and bruised.

However, it is interesting to note that afterward, many people find strength in those broken places. They rise above their difficulties, learn from their experiences, and emerge stronger than before.

But there are also those who will not break. They resist the forces that try to bring them down, and in doing so, they are sometimes killed by the world. The world seems to be impartial in this regard, killing the very good, the very gentle, and the very brave without discrimination.

If you are none of these, if you are not exceptionally good, gentle, or brave, you can still be sure that the world will eventually take its toll on you. It may not happen immediately, but there will be no special hurry.

We must all face the challenges of the world, and it is up to us to decide how we will respond. Will we break and find strength in the brokenness, or will we resist and risk being killed by the world? Only time will tell.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.

  There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.

If Voltaire had read Hemingway’s famous war novel, I’d wager that he would pronounce that it is neither about war nor a novel. Compared to All Quiet on the Western Front, the descriptions of war in this book are ludicrously tame. The narrator is mostly not at the front; when he is, he is far behind, driving an ambulance. Instead, a love story takes up the bulk of the book. The war is the backdrop, though a conspicuous one, not the main thread.


Hemingway has both strengths and weaknesses as a writer. The longer the book, the more his shortcomings show. Even though this novel is slim, it still feels padded. For some reason, Hemingway thought it necessary to narrate every time his characters ate or drank. We learn little from these frequent repasts except that his characters drank a lot and liked good wines. The conversations are also repetitive, especially between the narrator and Catherine Barkley. Their relationship, while tender and frank, lacks the sparkle of personality interplay.


These are part of a larger fault: Hemingway’s tendency to get carried away with nostalgic, atmospheric descriptions. At his best, he creates the wistful, bittersweet, melancholic tone he is known for. But too often the book becomes pointlessly autobiographical. While “write what you know” is good advice, there is a danger in this method. Everyone’s life is interesting to themselves, but it can be hard to know what parts will be interesting to others. This book suffers from this.


Of course, there are many strong bits. Some scenes are unforgettable, like the narrator’s injury and the long retreat. The conversations between the narrator and Rinanldi are also great. But do these add up to a coherent book? I ask this especially about the ending. After reading A.C. Bradley’s book on tragedy, I was struck by how un-tragic the end of this book is. The fatal stroke is due to pure misfortune, not a personal flaw or a bad decision. The final effect is pathetic, not tragic. In Hemingway’s novel, the universe is malevolent, and humans are defenseless creatures.


I’m perplexed that some people see this as an anti-war novel. The narrator’s downfall is not caused by the war. You could argue that the novel’s bleak atmosphere reflects the fatalism and pessimism of the war, but the narrator himself is not pessimistic most of the time. So, aside from a few anti-war passages, the general tenor has little to do with pacifism or political reflection. Instead, the final message is: Everyone gets broken in the end no matter what. And I don’t think this is true or valuable.

Well, that was truly disappointing.

For several months now, I've been intently focused on delving deeper into classic literature. It's been my way of enriching my life during these rather trying political times. Up until now, it has been an incredibly rewarding journey. However, this Hemingway novel turned out to be my first dud.

I really wanted to like this book. Over the past year, I've been reading more about World War I, and I thought "A Farewell to Arms" would be a perfect fit for both my interest in WWI and my goal of truly appreciating the classics. But ol' Hem (as I affectionately learned to call him in "A Moveable Feast", a book of his that I actually did like) didn't make it easy for me when he created the character of Catherine Barkley. Catherine, who plays the love interest in this novel, is so insipid, silly, and annoying that I actually started dreading picking up this book.

The story follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during the war. He meets Catherine, a British nurse, and they fall in love. Catherine eventually becomes pregnant, and they manage to escape to Switzerland. The ending of this book is depressingly similar to most war novels.

But the sad ending isn't the main reason I disliked this book so much. Hemingway is renowned for his "terse prose", but in this book, I think it actually works against him. The characters seem two-dimensional, the war scenes lack the necessary grit and realism, and the whole novel just felt rather flat to me. Hemingway does have a few famous lines that emerged from "Farewell" (some of which are noted below), which is what prevented this book from receiving a 1-star rating from me.

I listened to this book on audio, performed by the talented John Slattery (of "Mad Men" fame), but not even his skills could make me excited about reading this Hemingway book. It reminded me of when I listened to Colin Firth read Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair", and even Firth's marvelous performance couldn't salvage that novel either. Both are excellent actors doing their best with what I consider to be mediocre texts.

If I were to recommend a World War I novel to someone, I would highly suggest they read "All Quiet on the Western Front" and skip "Farewell". I'll definitely circle back around to some other Hemingway novels in the future, but for now, I'm going to enjoy a break from his often overly terse writing style.*

*Note: My initial instinct when writing this review was to imitate Hemingway's signature style, with lots of "fine and true and good and courage" and such, but quite frankly, Warwick wrote his review so well that I abandoned the idea and encourage you to check out his much better version.

Good Quotes

"All thinking men are atheists."

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started."

Final Thought

One addendum is that I had a print copy of "A Farewell to Arms" that included Hemingway's introduction to the 1948 edition, and I actually liked those 3 1/2 pages better than I liked the entire novel. If you do decide to give this book a chance, try to find a copy that includes that author introduction.

"The fact that the book was a tragic one did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could have only one end. But finding you were able to make something up; to create truly enough so that it made you happy to read it; and to do this every day you worked was something that gave me a greater pleasure than any I had ever known. Beside it nothing else mattered."

I have, like a couple of the other reviewers, always harbored a desire to like Hemingway. However, "A Farewell to Arms" might just be one of his worst offerings. There are some novelists who never pen a bad novel, and I wouldn't necessarily label this as bad. It's simply not the kind of novel that appeals to me. I would describe it as tragic treacle. It is so overly sweet and cloying that it weighs you down. You finish reading it with a sticky feeling, and it's not your own blood or the syrup from a snow cone dripping on your lap.

I find Hemingway as a character in biographies about him, such as the one by Carlos Baker, more interesting than any of his fictional creations. I concur with another reviewer that his best book was "A Moveable Feast". Some writers strive to be writers in truth, while others aspire to be characters within their own novels.

When I ridicule false bravado and moustachioed machismo, an image of Hemingway flits through the humor box in my mind. At times, I wonder if he wasn't, in some respects, a physical coward. Probably not. I am left to wonder at his insistence on boxing men he believed he could defeat convincingly in the ring or his tagging along into "combat" as a correspondent. I once read that he actually participated in the execution of a captured German soldier. Maybe Baker said that, but if it's true - shame and double shame. And go to hell, Hemingway.

Anyway, although he was indeed tough, suicide does not equate to bravery.

I do like his short stories, though, especially the Nick Adams stories and his tales about Africa. I wouldn't have liked him as a person, though, even after flattening him in the ring.

4.5 ⭐

This is a very powerful and touching novel. Hemingway, in a simple yet effective way, describes the cruelty and stupidity of waging war. The book tells the dramatic story of an American who participates on the side of Italy in World War I. In my opinion, "A Farewell to Arms" does not reach the level of the great "All Quiet on the Western Front", but it is still a valuable work and undoubtedly deserves to be read!

"— You speak like a real orator.

— We think, we read. We are not peasants, we are mechanics. But even the peasants are not so stupid as to believe in war. Everyone hates this war.

— The leadership of the country consists of a class that is stupid, that understands nothing and will never be able to understand anything. That's why we are waging this war.

— It brings them money.

— Most of them don't gain anything from it — said Passini. — Many are stupid. They do this for nothing... out of stupidity."