Publication Name: PESA News
Authors: Peter Purcell
Publication Issue: 119
Date Published: August 2012
Number of Pages: 1
Abstract:
Ernest Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' is one of the most famous novels of the 20th Century. Frederick Henry and nurse Catherine Barkley, volunteers in Italy in WW1, fall in love but she dies in childbirth, as does their child. The ending is one of the bleakest written, as Henry leaves her bedside. It was like saying goodbye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain. This is quintessential Hemingway: he doesn't describe Henry's feelings but embeds the loss and emptiness in those two stark sentences.