Rain and Death in Ernest Hemingway's "Farewell to Arms"
From the first chapter to the last word, Ernest Hemingway's "Farewell to Arms" is saturated with rain and other images of water. In the story, rain is typically the omen of death. The usage is significant since rain is typically employed to symbolize fertility and life. Despite the foreboding associated with rain, Hemingway uses other forms of water to symbolize positive events. Rain has been used in literature since classical times to symbolize fertility and life. "Rain has a primary symbolism as a fertilizing agent. It represents a descent of the heavenly influences and symbolizes penetration, both as fertility and spiritual revelation." (home.html). Hemingway's use of rain as a prominent symbol of death is ironic; rain is not employed to create and nourish, but rather to destroy and ruin.
When the winter begins, it rains incessantly and brings with it cholera, and 7,000 men in the army die of it. Henry marches through the wet weather and evacuates the wounded along the way. Hemingway also uses frozen water, in the form of snow, to symbolize happiness. As soon as he has an opportunity, Henry runs into the river, stays underwater, and lets the current carry him downstream. Throughout the course of the novel, the onset of winter snow brings an end to the fighting providing the soldiers and support staff with relief and happiness. The image of the winter rain is particularly significant, as it connects rain with an adverse type of fertility that bears death and destruction. Catherine gives birth to a still born child and eventually she hemorrhages to death. In Chapter 30, Henry is forcibly taken by several military police, who have executed several other officers before his eyes. Hemingway does make use of other forms of water throughout the novel. In Chapter 41, it is again raining and Henry's pregnant fiancee, CatherineBarkley begins to go into labor, again foreshadowing death and tragedy. It is World War I, and troops and cars with officers frequently go by on the road - dusty at first, then wet during autumn - to fight in the nearby mountains. The rain establishes a dark mood and signifies the misery associated with the shame of retreat and foreshadows the death to come during the retreat. In Chapter 28, the Italian frontline breaks and the Army is forced to retreat from the advancing Germans and Austrians. He is shot at, but he floats away too quickly to be caught.
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