Put Out on the First “Date” : The Selective Representation of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arm The deeply philosophical work of Ernest Hemingway was taken under artistic licence and perchance political docket when it was produced in movie. In A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway pigments. with wide shots of disenchantment. over the ideals of award. war and love as a preoccupation or distraction from the worlds of life. The reader is left with the feeling of the changeless human thrust to deflect itself whether with intoxicant. force. anaesthesia or passion.
But the movie focuses on the love narrative and the tests it faces through a background of religion and war. The changes made in the representations of the characters. love and war leave the spectator with merely a intimation of the deeper inquiries presented in the novel. Lieutenant Frederic Henry is portrayed in novel as a by and large good disciplined. reserved and good natured. He did non partake in the tease of the priest despite his deficiency of religion and even endeavored to pacify any sensed rebuffs with the adult male. Henry could ne’er rally any ground for fall ining the Italian ground forces other than merely being in Italy at the clip and talking the linguistic communication.
He does non experience any peculiar commitment. even holding the sentiment that. “It was impossible to toast aliens as an Italian. without embarrassment” ( Hemingway 23 ) . Henry merely doesn’t seem to care one manner or the other which army he was a portion of so long as the action would deflect him from anything else. In the novel. he assists a adult male seeking to acquire off from the front line. grows attached to a adult female because she is at that place. becomes an alcoholic. and shoots work forces in his bid because they wouldn’t aid with the retreat. And yet these actions were allowable in the fact that they were a consequence of his circumstance and non his character.
He was presented to the reader as a adult male of all time looking for something to busy his head and organic structure from world. In the movie nevertheless. all of these actions were cut out except for the 1s affecting Catherine. An wholly different character is established when he brushes aside the feelings of his friend when he stubbornly steals Catherine’s attending from him and returns to ruin her in a church courtyard. Catherine was non every bit altered in the passage to the Ag screen. other than the skip of her initial remembrances of her dead groom-to-be and her misrepresentation and traveling off pregnant and on her ain when Henry must return to the front line.
The complications that were involved with the development of her character in the novel somewhat mistranslated in the movie every bit seeming as though she was invariably populating in a dream universe. declining world. While she surely was non entirely in her psychotic beliefs of digesting felicity in the text. she was portrayed as entirely in the movie for most of her gestation. In the novel there was changeless discourse with Henry as the two of them were off in the state or sequestered away in some hotel room. In the movie there is a intimation of feminism when Catherine’s friend Ms.
Ferguson complains about the current function of adult females in the war and her reoccurring discouragement on her ain solitariness. The function of adult females was traveling under a Reconstruction. though non as hot a subject it would go after the Second World War. The war. itself. is improbably downplayed in a entire screen representation of possibly 10 proceedingss. The simplistic but enchanting mode in which Ernest Hemingway writes his chapters sing the war attempt are wholly thrown off in order to movie a love affair.
There is chumminess among the soldiers and an active life style that Henry girls while he is off with Catherine in the state. The war was non something that this industry was seeking to sell ; it was seeking to advance it as a gratuitous obstruction to happiness where the novel merely presented it as a map of adult male. When reading this novel. the thought of love fell into the same ideals that Henry found empty and overused. But. the movie portrayed the love affair as a definite and overmastering thing. In the text. this twosome was merely juxtaposed and a love affair ensued.
There was a war traveling on and people were deceasing. That vibrating world drives a individual to happen consolation in any manner they can. In the movie. Henry is portrayed as a adult male on the Hunt and Catherine was easy quarry. They are non described as being sexually adumbrate until much later in the narrative. and while this could hold been interpreted as the first clip any really experiencing emerged between the two. it was an improbably broad reading that the nurse put out in the first encounter—considering Catherine. Henry. Ferguson. and Rinaldi were all present at the juncture.
In the novel. love was an aspiration and a preferred business no affair what clip you have with a individual or their past. Catherine seems to still hold her antique groom-to-be in her head when she remarks on obscure differences between him and her new suer such as. “‘You don’t pronounce it really much alike’” ( Hemingway 31 ) . It was merely a convenient matter of emotions that kept a adult male and a woman’s head off of the war. But the film did non include these nuances that amassed into disenchantment.
The terminal of the movie there is a dramatic scene in which Henry soothes Catherine’s fright of forsaking and she courageously dies and he lifts her up in his weaponries. drawing the white sheets with him off the bed as church bells pealing out into the rain. This is a much more romanticized version of the. “she was unconscious all the clip. and it did non take her really long to die” ( Hemingway 331 ) . The novel was rich in anti-illusion and focused on the worlds of humanity and life. but the movie merely hinted at these subjects.
Peoples will happen distraction from hurting. even if the actions cause more hurting. All ideals of award. trueness. and love will be a menace to reason. But the thrust for distraction is natural. After Henry leaves the attempt of the war he feels like he has no intent in life. In a treatment with Catherine he explained the utility of the distraction that was the war. “‘that’s how I worked it at the forepart. But there was something to make then’” ( Hemingway 257 ) .
The movie cuts this part out of the narrative every bit good as invents its ain play as Catherine hides the fact she is pregnant and runs off to Switzerland and letters are kept from their receivers. This added play ironically adds to the message the book sends of the demand for play as distraction from an uncomfortable world. Sing Henry doubt his actions after reuniting with his love and visual perception that even existent emotion is fliting in life is non what the film would destroy the love affair.
Aristotle coveted the integrity of clip. topographic point and action as the key to enchanting an audience—and this could be an alibi snatched up by the movie industry. but cutting so much from the novel changes the message of the narrative. The farewell in A Farewell to Arms is both to the struggle of war and his current preoccupation of love as Henry and the reader is left to eventually confront the harsh and hollow worlds of life. Works Cited Hemingway. Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner Classicss. 1997. Print.
