Friday, September 21, 2012
A Farewell to Arms - Books Four and Five - POST BY FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 28th
Comment on the end of the novel. Did the ending surprise you? Anger you? Disappoint you? Satisfy you? Comment also on the theme of weather. What did rain symbolize in the novel? Use quotes and page numbers from Books Four and Five to support your comments! Make sure to comment on other posts as well!
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The ending of the book A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway is very interesting. I feel very bad for Henry who is now alone. While I was reading Book 4, I did not expect the ending to happen like that. I thought Henry and Catherine were going to live with their baby happily together. Then once I started Book 5, I began to notice some signs of the deaths of both Catherine and the baby. Overall, I was not really surprised by the ending, but angry. Ernest Hemingway ended the book by not giving the reader much closure. The book just abruptly ended. Although the ended was abrupt the theme of weather throughout the story was rain. Rain was mentioned throughout the book often. It was a prominent symbol in the novel. To me, the rain symbolized sadness. The very last line in the book is “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (332). Rain also symbolizes Henry and Catherine’s love for each other washing away. Catherine previously said she was afraid of rain. I think this was a symbol that something bad was going to happen. All throughout Catherine’s pregnancy she had such a positive outlook on things. “How are you darling?” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” “I feel very well. We had a lovely night” (250). While she is in labor her positive attitude starts to dissipate. Henry and Catherine both start to suspect things are going down hill. “Sometimes I know I’m going to die.” “You won’t you can’t.” “But what if I should” (323). These quotes show that Catherine is starting to become weaker, and she is giving up. When Henry finds out the baby is dead, he compares it to his experience in the war. “…They killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you”(327). Henry starts to think he should of stayed in the war and died so he wouldn’t have to go through this despair. “Poor, poor dear Cat. And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other. Thank God for gas, anyway. What must it have been like before there were anesthetics?” (320). This quote shows that contrary to belief men do care and have feelings for women in this time period. Men are always depicted as tough, and women are seen as sweet and weak. The ending of the book shows Catherine being tough through the delivery, and Henry is shown as more vulnerable. This quote also shows how much Henry has changed throughout the story. In the beginning, Henry was more like Rinaldi. He was outgoing and careless. Once he meet Catherine he started to settle down more, and when they were in the hospital together is where the major transformation happened. Towards the end of the book, when Henry starts to become more mature, he really starts to care for Catherine. Overall the book A Farewell to Arms shows the heartbreak and despair of war and how in the end despair prevails over happiness in Henry’s case.
ReplyDeleteI like how you explained how you predicted a happy ending, but that it didn't turn out that way. I agree with you though on how it ended abruptly almost as if the author gave up.
DeleteI like how you described the way Henry changed throughout the story. I also like how you pointed out that Catherine was tough during the delivery and Henry was vulnerable, and that it was opposite of the expectations of men and women in that time period.
DeleteNicole, you did an amazing job summing up the end of the book. You were very thorough in your response. I also like how you described how Henry changed throughout the story. You brought everything together and looked at the book and characters as a whole.
DeleteI love what you said about Henry being vulnerable and Catherine being tough at the end of the book, and how they changed throughout the story.
DeleteI love how you mentioned the differences between Henry and Catherine at the beginning and end of the story, it was a great comparison. Also when you talked about when Catherine was in the hospital, it really put it into depth.
DeleteThe end of the novel “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway both surprised and almost made sense to me. It surprised me because the author, Hemingway, spent hundreds of pages and thousands of words building up and describing this crazy elaborate wartime love story between the two main characters, and then in two sentences he tore it all apart and told us that Catherine had died from multiple hemorrhages after giving birth to a stillborn. Henry had gone through crazy things; being injured in the beginning of the war, escaping towards the end of it to avoid getting shot, floating down a river and hoping a ride on a train to get to Catherine, then finally getting Catherine and rowing all night into Switzerland so they could be safe. He did all those things and in the end both his child and Catherine died. It almost made sense to me because of the way they treated the child. Neither he nor Catherine cared about him, and he paid so little attention to him when he was born that he didn’t even know he was dead. He thought that it was just an unfortunate after effect of the nights in Milan. I almost feel like it was fate at that point because as soon as Henry did something wrong karma came back and kicked him to his knees. When it saw that Henry didn’t care for the child it took away what he did care about, even though he had already been through a ton. “Aren’t you proud of your son? The nurse asked. “No, he nearly killed his mother” “It isn’t the little darling’s fault. Didn’t you want a boy?” “No”(pg. 325 Hemingway). The ending didn’t satisfy me because it wasn’t the typical “Walt Disney ending” when everyone lives happily ever after, but I can understand the ending because it shows that sometimes we just can’t win no matter how hard we try, but that you still have to at least try. I believe the rain throughout the story symbolized the future end of their relationship because Catherine always hated it. In they end though it symbolized his former life and happiness washing away. He kept thinking and telling Catherine that she was his world and that without her he would have nothing. I believe the rain meant that now that his “world” had been taken away, he would have to start over new. It was washing away his past. It was washing away his future with Catherine so that all he had left was memories of her, and a future by him self. Overall it was a sad ending, and kind of ended really quickly but it was a good story and showed a lot about what someone’s life might have been like, or ended up like during the war.
ReplyDeleteI like how you said that karma from the bad things Henry did might have played a part in the ending.
DeleteI like the way you described the symbolism behind the rain and how Henry has to "start over new".
DeleteI agree with how you said that they didn't take very good care of the child- that's a good point!
DeleteIn A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemmingway, the ending during part four and part five was very surprising and disappointing to me. During the earlier parts of the novel I was under the impression that Henry and Catherine would end up living together with their baby after the war was over. “Christ that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again. That my love Catherine. That my sweet love Catherine down might rain” (Hemmingway 197). Throughout the book we see Henry’s progression from someone who has never loved anyone into a person who truly cars for Catherine. For Catherine there is a definite change in her perception of the world because she started out the book as a lonely women who had lost the first man that she ever loved to a different war before they were able to get married. Their relationship changes from just something to do into a realistic form of love even in the trying times of a war. They get to the point in their relationship that Henry would like to marry Catherine and she is about to have his baby while he is away at war. “Poor, poor dear Cat. And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other. Thank God for gas, anyway. What must it have been like before there were anesthetics?” (Hemmingway 320). I thought that it was a disappointing ending because Hemmingway spent so much time making the reader feel attached to Catherine and Henry that when it ended with Catherine dying after childbirth and giving birth to a still born child it felt almost as if Hemmingway hadn’t done the wonderful story he had written justice. For me it was a letdown for them to have died in such a sudden way and it was anticlimactic. Although it showed all of the hardships of those who are brave enough to suffer through war and the sacrifices that fighting in a war forces them to make. The ending was also ironic because earlier in Catherine’s life the love of her life was killed in a war and she was frightened that the same thing would happen to Henry, but in the end of the book it was really Catherine who ended up dieing. Rain played a big role in this novel from the point where Catherine mentions that she is terrified of the rain. The rain goes on to represent all of the pain and suffering that comes along with the war which they are fighting. It seems to always be rainy and poor weather throughout the book which could possibly represent the way that Henry has felt about the war. “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (Hemmingway 332). This was the very last line of this novel and in this situation it seems that rain is representing that Henry’s life will never be the same now that Catherine and their baby are both gone.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned how ironic it was that Catherine died in the end since she was always worried about Henry dying while he was off at war.
DeleteI also thought that they would live happily ever after together- it was very disappointing that the whole book lead up to Catherine and their son dying. I agree that most of the book was spent trying to get the reader to be attached to Catherine, and then in the last few pages Hemingway decides to end her life just like that.
DeleteThe ending of A Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemingway where Catherine dies was honestly not that surprising to me. If there is one thing I have learned from all my years of reading books it is that you have to expect the unexpected and look for the signs. Authors love to throw you off their trail and for good reason. I mean let's be honest your favorite book is probably not the one with the predictable, happy ending, yet it is probably one that threw you through a loop and kept you wondering what was going to happen in the end, but there are always clues to the end. You just need to connect the dots to figure it out. My first clue came way before I read the fifth book. It was that the book in whole seemed to have a theme of love and loss. In the beginning of the book Henry and Rinaldi were extremely close. Yet after they were stationed in different places they lost contact all together. Also in Book Three he became friends with the three other ambulance drivers, but soon all of them were out of his life as well. First it was Aymo, who got shot and died, then Bonello, who decided to be taken as a prisoner, and lastly Piani, who Henry was taken away from to be questioned. The sad truth is in the book Henry lost everyone he became close to. It was only a matter of time until Catherine was lost as well. Another clue to the ending was that Catherine drank alcohol during her pregnancy because her doctor said it would help to make the baby smaller and therefore easier to deliver. "Do you think I ought to drink another beer? The doctor said I was rather narrow in the hips and it's all for the best if we keep young Catherine small."(294) After reading that I automatically knew that there was going to be complications with the delivery of their baby. Both sentences present us with the problems she may have in her pregnancy/ delivery. Drinking alcohol when you are pregnant can have numerous bad side effects. Also the doctors back in that time did not have the advances that we did today so narrow hips could provide serious problems when delivering. My third clue was that Hemingway makes a point to put in conversations with Catherine and Henry about death. An example is on page 319 when she was having delivery pains. "'That was a very big one' Catherine said. Her voice was very strance. I'm not going to die now, darling. I'm past where I was going to die. Aren't you glad?' 'Don't you get in that place again.' 'I won't Im not afraid of it though. I wont die darling.'" The great thing about books is that no conversation is put in "just because." Almost every one has some pertinence to how the story is going to go along. That conversation was particularly important in my opinion because it's almost identical to what she says when she's on her deathbed. "'I'm going to die,' she said; then waited and said, 'I hate it'...'I'm not afraid. I just hate it.'"(330)
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I've learned about books is that you need to pay attention to symbols. Rain was a very important one in this book. Rain symbolized death. In Book Three Bonello says "I like a retreat better than an advance. On a retreat we drink barbera" to which Aymo replies "We drink it now. To-morrow maybe we drink rainwater."(191) Aymo's words predict his death the following day. To-morrow maybe we drink rainwater. Tomorrow maybe we die. In the end of the book death captures not only Henry and Catherine's baby but Catherine herself as well. After finding out he had lost both he went into the room Catherine was in to say goodbye to her. The last few sentences of the book describe this experience. "But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."(332) The rain in the last sentence symbolizes the death of his "wife" and child, his loss of his love.
DeleteIt wouldn't let me write my response all together because it said it was too many words so I just continued it above. I hope that's okay.
DeleteI like your quote and connection on rain predicting deaths. That was something that I had never really picked up on.
DeleteI like What you said about Catherine's narrow hips leading you to predict complications with delivery, I didn't think of that when I read it!
DeleteYour opinion on Henry's "loss of love" was a very good perspective! great writing!
DeleteThe ending of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway was actually quite surprising to me in a way. I expected Catherine to die, but I did not expect the baby to die! That completely surprised me and when I read it, I did not believe it, and had to go back and reread that section. The ending disappointed me because the entire novel was based upon Catherine and Henry’s love, and everything fizzled away at the end. They never even actually got married! I felt so bad for Henry at the end of the story, his one true love has passed and he does not even have the child as a little piece of her. The birth of their unintentional child killed Catherine, and I wonder how that makes Henry feel, considering he was the one who got her pregnant without knowing. Henry has had a hectic life; being injured in the war, spending time in the hospital, going back to war, running away to Switzerland, and in the midst of it all, falling in love! He must now live a life alone, and I can imagine he will live the rest of his life very depressed.
ReplyDeleteRain is a major symbol in this book, it symbolizes sadness and despair. “But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the lights it wasn’t any good. 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.” (Pg. 332) This quote ends the book and the symbol is clear. Catherine and her baby are dead, and Henry is left to live a life of solitude and despair. This is an extremely depressing time in the story and it always happens to be raining in the sad times. Catherine mentions in the beginning of the book that she is scared of the rain; that it frightens her and it ruins things. Catherine feels sorrow and sad when it rains, and when she is dying, it is raining outside. When Catherine and Henry run away together and have to sail away in a boat, there is a huge rainstorm, symbolizing another sad, rough time. They must leave their old life behind and begin the journey into a new one, together. Weather in general, but more specifically rain, played a huge symbol throughout the book A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway.
The ending of the book A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemmingway surprised me a little. I expected Catherine to give birth with minor complications, but in the end Henry, Catherine, and their son would live a happy life together. I was shocked when the nurse told Henry that his son was dead. When the author continued to describe Catherine with gloomy, dreadful descriptions after she had given birth, I thought Catherine would die. "I [Henry] thought Catherine was dead. She looked dead. Her face was gray, the part of it that I could see" (325). When Catherine said "I'm going to die" (330). it foreshadowed her death in the end. I felt sorry for Henry. He abandoned the war, became a war criminal, fled to Switzerland with Catherine and lived fairly happy there with her until the day she gave birth. He lost his first and only child and his first true love. Throughout the story, there is a lot of talk about rain. I think it was ironic how in book two Catherine says "I'm [Catherine] afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it" (126). and it is raining when she dies. I think the rain symbolized death and despair throughout the story. When Aymo is shot in book three, he slips in the mud and it rains on him and his friends as they try to help him. "He [Aymo] lay in the mud on the side of the embankment, his feet pointing downhill, breathing blood irregularly. The three of us [Henry, Piani, Bonello] squatted over him in the rain. He was hit low in the back of the neck and the bullet had ranged upward and come out under the right eye. He died while I was stopping up the two holes" (213). A sign of despair was when the barman woke Henry up to tell him he was to be arrested in the morning and he needed to get to Switzerland. "There was a storm and I woke to hear the rain slashing the window-panes" (264). The storm represents Henry and Catherine’s despair and sorrow of having to leave so suddenly and for the reason that Henry was considered a war criminal. A Farewell to Arms shows the effect of World War One on someone who played their part in the war and the risks they took to try and make their life normal again.
ReplyDeleteThe end of A Farewell to Arms, made me very upset. Henry is heartbroken and alone, second guessing his choices. The rain set the mood very well. It is a depressing gloomy ending, much like rain. Rain just lets everything wash away. As Henry's life collapeses all the bad is starting to be washed away so that he can start over.
ReplyDelete“ 'Aren’t you proud of your son?' The nurse asked. 'No, he nearly killed his mother.' 'It isn’t the little darling’s fault. Didn’t you want a boy?' 'No,' "(325).
I think this is an important quote because it really shows that Henry never REALLY cared for his son. All he cared about was Catherine. I hadn't picked up on this at first in the book, up until this part, that Henry never really did care. He didn't care enough to realize that it was a stillborn.
I can't believe that Catherine died. I mean it was all so sudden. “Sometimes I know I’m going to die," (323). She says this to Henry. I just think it's all so sad. I wanted them to be together and have a family. Leave the war. Having the ending be so bitter with so little closure makes me angry at Hemmingway. Why? What would make him want to make such a depressing ending. What was he trying to teach his readers? That's my biggest question.
In books four and five in A Farewell to Arms, many things change. Henry escapes the war and is finally reunited with Catherine. When they first see each other, you can tell they’ve missed each other and do not want to be separated anymore. They catch wind that Henry is going to be arrested, so in the middle of the night they boat all the way to Switzerland. They row for hours and hours, but finally make it. They settle into life there and are quite happy. It seems Henry has left the war behind once and for all, “The war seemed s far away as the football games of some one else’s college” (pg. 291). As the seasons change and Catherine’ pregnant stomach gets larger, they can’t help but be overjoyed and excited for their future together, “’I’ll be very glad to be an American and we’ll go to America won’t we darling? I want to go see Niagra Falls” (pg. 295). They go for walks and talk about what they will do as they grow older. They are truly happy, it seems as though all of their troubles are left behind. However this is far from true. Catherine continues to get bigger and bigger and closer to her due date. She gets very excited about the arrival of the baby and talks excitedly about all the clothes and supplies they will need for the delivery. Throughout this time, it is winter, but Catherine and Henry’s view on the weather is that it is good. They are happy even though it isn’t warm. The weather continues to be good through the spring, but the night Catherine goes into labor, it starts to rain. Earlier in the morning, it hasn’t started pouring yet, and I think this is because Catherine wasn’t in extreme pain and her life was not yet in danger. As the hour pass, however, it starts to rain more as Catherine is in more and more pain. Catherine condition started to worsen fast. The doctor decides to do a C-section on her, and she quickly deteriorates. After the operation, Henry discovers his son was born, but he has no feelings for him, “I had no feelings for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with me. I felt no feelings of fatherhood” (pg. 325). But what they don’t tell him until later is that his son died in the process of childbirth, and even worse, Catherine was not doing well. “I though Catherine was dead. She looked dead. Her face was gray, the part of it that I could see.” (pg. 325). Her condition is stable but once she gets a hemorrhage, she quickly dies. I was shocked by the ending, I honestly thought they were going to have a great life with their new child together and he was never going to have to think of the war again. I was very sad, but it was predictable towards the end because the tone of the book was very grim and depressing and Henry kept saying that she might die. I wish that either his son had survived or Catherine because now Henry has lost everyone. To me, the rain symbolized Catherine’s condition. When she started to die, the rain picked up, but when she was in minimal pain, there was no rain. At the end, it starts pouring outside, maybe even symbolizing Henry’s emotions and thoughts. the end of a Farewell to Arms was definitely not what I expected.
ReplyDeleteI found the ending of Farewell To Arms by Earnest Hemingway creative but predictable. Earnest Hemingway does a lot of foreshadowing in the book, especially with the idea of the rain. It was clear that bad things were going to happen when it rained after Catherine made it clear to Henry that she was not comfortable with it at all. Also, in the beginning of the book when Catherine and Henry first meet, the weather is always sunny and warm. Catherine even states when her and Henry are together, “Isn’t it a lovely day?” she says this more than once throughout the book. But suddenly, when Catherine dies, the weather takes a turn and begins to rain, “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” (332) states Henry at the end of the book after he leaves the hospital. Also when Catherine is in the hospital, I noticed a drastic change in her emotions and outlook on her situation, for example, when she would talk to Henry in the beginning of the book, she would be worried, but still optimistic about her life. Towards the end of the book Catherine says, “ I’m going to die… I hate it” (330). Quickly though, she realizes she must stay strong and put up a strong front for Henry, and she returns to her normal self saying, “Don’t worry, darling… I’m not a bit afraid. It’s just a dirty trick”(331). Even though it is clear she is dying, Catherine puts up as much of a fight as she can, and I think that this shows her true personality. It is clear that Henry was deeply affected by her, while him and the doctor are together the doctor tries to explain how he tried to do all he could do, but Henry suddenly tell him to be quiet, making it clear that, “I don’t not want to talk about it”(332). By losing both Catherine and his child, Henry must have felt deep emotional pain. In the end of Farewell to Arms, Earnest Hemingway does not give you a lot of closure towards the end of the book. He leaves you with questions like, Did Henry ever love again? And How did things end up between the army and Henry? I was disappointed when nothing was said about the future of Henry and what he truly felt. It mentioned that he didn’t want to talk about it, but was he angry, disappointed, perfectly fine? There are so many questions left at the end of Farewell to Arms.
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