There seem to be two major reoccurring images in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms. Rain comes to represent death and destruction, along with its accompanying emotions such as grief, pain and despair. It also has a foreshadowing quality, for it always rains when troubling news is learned. Snow is an image which directly contrasts the symbol of rain throughout the novel. The cold winter months come to represent peace, happiness and safety. It is hinted early in the novel the signifigance rain and snow will have throughout the story. The two symbols elude to many events throughout the war, as well as forecast the relationship between Henry and Catherine. Hemingway's use of contrasting pathetic fallacy parallels the changing mood during the novel.
             From the very first pages of the novel we are introduced to the rain as a major symbol through Henry's description of the Italian front. Similarly, he gives us some direct reference to snow as a reoccurring image. In Henry's use of images and language to describe the setting, he direcly contrasts these two symbols. Henry describes the landscape and the state of the war at the beginning of the novel:
             There was fighting for that mountain too, but it was not successful, and in the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain. (Pg 4, 1)
             Death is directly related to a tree losing its leaves as well as the colour black, as in "the trunks black with rain." Henry continues the description stating that the soldiers are wet and muddy all the time and their spirits low, thus associating autumn and rain with depressing thoughts and feelings. The first obvious connection between rain and death, however, is found soon after when Henry states,
             At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thous...