The love affair between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley is one of the most famous in American fiction. The way the affair progresses and the way Hemingway describes it in the narrative are both not only influenced by the war but are in a sense emblematic of the war. Discuss the ways in which Hemingway makes this affair central to a novel called A Farewell to Arms.
We talked last time about narrative. This time, consider the role and the form of dialogue in the novel. If Hemingway revolutionized narrative, he had virtually as profound an effect on the way authors would present dialogue from this time forward. Consider the style and strucure of the dialogue passages and suggest features that make it unusual.
Ernest “Papa” Hemingway has a reputation — not entirely positive — of being a hyper-masculine personality. He hunted big game in Africa, loved bullfighting (he had bullfighters as friends and became a true aficionado of the sport), drank hard liquor in vast quantities, smoked cigars, married and was divorced by a series of beautiful and intelligent women, and when his health and mind were deteriorating (due to an undiagnosed genetic illness that was not identified for years after his death), he ended his own life with a shotgun blast to the head. He is, simply put, an icon. On the other hand, Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife) memorably described him as “bullfighting, bullslinging, and bullshit.” We will talk more of Hemingway’s ethos, but for now, let’s start with this question: what qualities in a man does Hemingway admire? What about in a woman? Does he admire the same qualities in both, or are they different?