Summary of A Farewell to Arms
“A Farewell to Arms” is set on the Italian front during the First World War. The story follows Frederic Henry, an American who serves in the ambulance corps of the Italian army. Stationed near the front in Gorizia, Henry meets Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. When Henry is wounded in a mortar attack and sent to a hospital in Milan, Catherine nurses him, and their relationship grows from a flirtation into love. Yet Henry is sent back to the front, where he is caught up in the chaos after the Italian defeat at the Battle of Caporetto (1917). When military police execute army officers during the retreat, Henry narrowly escapes death. He later reunites with Catherine in Stresa on Lake Maggiore, and the couple flee across the lake to Switzerland, hoping to begin a peaceful life together. Yet even far from the battlefield, their hopes for happiness are overshadowed by the harsh realities of life.
Reasons to read A Farewell to Arms
Published in 1929, “A Farewell to Arms” became Hemingway’s first major bestseller and remains one of the most famous novels about the First World War. Rather than focusing on military heroism, Hemingway presents the war as chaotic, impersonal, and often meaningless. The novel describes the exhaustion of soldiers, the breakdown of authority, and the growing disillusionment within the army. At its heart, the novel is a tragic love story, with Henry and Catherine trying to carve out a small refuge of happiness in a world dominated by violence and uncertainty. Ernest Hemingway – who received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature – drew heavily on his own experiences. In 1918, at the age of eighteen, he served as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy, where he was seriously wounded and later fell in love with a nurse while recovering in hospital. Other celebrated works by Hemingway include “Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “A Moveable Feast”, and “The Old Man and the Sea”.
Setting: Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland
“A Farewell to Arms” moves through several locations in northern Italy, including Gorizia, Milan, the Tagliamento river, and Stresa, where the protagonist stays at the historic Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées. Some of the wartime scenes take place along the Isonzo Front in areas that are today part of Slovenia, including the region around Plava and the Bainsizza (Banjšice) Plateau. The final part of the novels takes place in Switzerland, in Montreux and Lausanne.
Original title: A Farewell to Arms
Year of publication: 1929
Nr of pages: 288
