Modern Features of A Farewell to Arms Viewed Trhrough...

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the great novels of World War I. It introduces the theme of love, while war occupies all of Europe. It is a complex novel with many characteristic aspects of modernism. After looking into Hemingways biography, the reader can tell that he included details from his personal life in his novel. He based the main character Frederic Henry upon his own experience as an ambulance driver during World War I. He made him a hero who develops and changes throughout the novel. Henrys relationship with British nurse Catherine Berkeley is based on Hemingways faded love affair with the beautiful American nurse he met while recovering from his wounds at a Milan hospital just like his†¦show more content†¦Their life story incorporates many modern characteristics, including the loss of major religious belief, abandonment of traditional rules, and a sense of isolation, rejection, and disappointment. Hemingway decides that it is easier to show how meaningless and catastrophic the war is through an individual caught in it. The individual is Frederic Henry, a former architecture student who joins the Italian army. Throughout the novel, the author shows how Henrys personal attitude changes. He progresses from a drinking, depraved soldier to a loving, caring husband. When he joins the army he does not have many feelings. He takes love and war rather lightly. He does not believe in honor and glory and does not have any particular goal in his life. He says: Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies. I wished to God it was over though. Maybe it would finish this summer. Maybe the Austrians would crack....I wanted to go to Austria without war. I wanted to go to the Black Forest. I wanted to go to the Hertz Mountains...They were fighting in the Carpathians. I did no t want to go there anyway... I could go to Spain if there was now war (37). His life seems to be empty: I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty (41). Henry eats and drinks heavily and