A Farewell to Arms

10 Pages 2428 Words

ar and his own actions (to fix up the wounded only to send them back to the front again). Unlike Henry, he cannot deal with the knowledge, and resorts to sex as a means to forget.

Helen Ferguson
Helen is a friend of Catherine, but unlike Catherine does not share her disregard for social conventions. She strongly disapproves of the love affair between Henry and Catherine, but ultimately chooses to help the lovers. In doing so, she demonstrates a higher fidelity to personal values (loyalty, dignity) rather than abstract ones (morality) and is esteemed because of it.

Thematic Discussion
The novel concerns itself primarily with the development of Hemingway's philosophy of life, which will be explained here. The story focuses on Henry's discovery of this philosophy, and all of the main characters of the novel serve largely as foils to Henry-they are caught in different stages of their developing the philosophy.
Hemingway, and indeed many of his existential peers, believed that the universe is unordered one. There is no God to watch over man, to dictate codes of morality, or to ensure justice. Instead, the universe is indifferent (sometimes even hostile) to man's plight. In the book, this indifference is best exemplified by the war-an ultimately futile struggle of man against man. There are no winners in a war, and there is no reasoning behind the lives which are taken.
The true Hemingway Code Hero (exemplified here by Catherine, and later also by Henry) must first accept this fact of the universe. This calls for many things, the first of which being a disbelief in God-to Hemingway, such faith was a cheap way of falsely instilling order upon existence (this is where the priest falls short). Because there is no God, there are no universal moral codes, no abstract values such as "justice" or "glory," and certainly no need for moral conventions. The code hero rejects these, but imposes order upon his life through personal values-inte...