Ernest Hemingway’s ‘A Farewell to Arms’ explores impressions environing both love and war. However it is non a love narrative. and nor is it a war narrative. It is a combination of both that allows for Hemingway to discourse what he is genuinely interested in: Existentialism. Existentialism is a doctrine that developed from the construct that there is no built-in significance in life. However. we can make significance.

A Farewell to Arms is an geographic expedition of this. but more than that. it’s an geographic expedition of the world of this in that ; significance in life doesn’t last forever. and when it’s gone. it leaves us with no logic and no hope. merely nothingness. Hemingway uses his supporter Frederic Henry to back up his existential philosopher positions. He does this. foremost by making significance in Frederic’s life. Hemingway creates Catherine for him. Their love is merely a game at first. Frederic admits “God knows [ he ] had non wanted to fall in love with anyone.

” However. it becomes so much more than that. Towards the terminal of the novel. if Catherine isn’t with him he “ [ hasn’t ] a thing in the world” . Hemingway makes a point of boding this inevitable fact early on. when we are secluded to Frederick’s ideas as he contemplates that “It was a long clip since [ he ] had written to the States and [ he ] knew [ he ] should compose but [ he ] had allow it travel so long that it was about impossible to compose now. ” Throughout the book. the people he associates with ; Rinaldi. the work forces in his regiment. everyone. they all disappear.

Finally. he’s left with Catherine. and their unborn babe. Other than them. he has no 1. If they were to go forth. he would be left anomic. Hemingway was non interested in the love narrative. or the war narrative. He was simply interested in pass oning his positions on the universe to his readers. Predominantly. he was interested in pass oning his positions on existential philosophy. He was interested in what he considered to be world. In world. people die. In world. our loved 1s leave us. and in world. when that happens there is no significance. no logic and no hope.

Hemingway demonstrates this through the climactic. yet distressingly blue stoping to his piece. In conveying about the possibility that Catherine. Frederic’s merely significance in life. could decease. he creates a springboard for discoursing his philosophical positions through Frederic. This forces us. as an audience. to contemplate upon his contention ; “That was what you did. You died. You did non cognize what it was approximately. You ne’er had clip to larn. They threw you in and told you the regulations and the first clip they caught you off base they killed you…

they killed you in the terminal. You could number on that. ” Hemingway uses his supporter to set up this. and through Frederic’s reaction to Catherine’s decease. he reveals to us the truth within his doctrine. It’s a point that is easy built up to within A Farewell to Arms. but it’s one that hits Hemingway’s audience with a sounding resonance. The last line to his fresh conveys the perfect. blue imagination of a adult male with nil left ; a adult male who has “left the infirmary and walked back to the hotel in the rain” .

Throughout the whole novel ‘rain’ has symbolised loss and heartache. It leaves a strong feeling. doing it the concluding last word of the novel. Frederic holding now lost the last thing that made his life worthwhile. Hemingway’s full novel is a lead up to this one point on existential philosophy. The universe has no built-in significance. We can make significance within it. and any significance that is within it has been created by us. However on the impudent side of that. when the significance that we have created is gone. there is nil left for us to fall back on.

When that significance is gone. we’re left gazing into an abysm. A Farewell to Arms is non a love narrative. and it’s non a war narrative either. It’s a remark upon the actuality of. and the nature of. existential philosophy as a prevailing doctrine. By making Frederic and the characters around him. Hemingway demonstrates the logic of this theory. and he shows how when a adult male loses everything that he has created himself. in his life. in the terminal there is no more significance. there is no logic. no hope. In the terminal. there is truly nil left. but the rain. Kaitlin Cushing.