A Farwell to Arms :: Essays Papers

A Farwell to ArmsFor hundreds of years, writers have used pietism as a fundamental issue and point of discussion in their novels. Joseph Conrad expressed his views in Heart of Darkness, George Orwell did the same in 1984 and in separate writings, and even Ernest Hemingway used his writing to develop his own ideas concerning the church. This is fully plain in his novel A Farewell to Arms. Even in a book in which the large majority of the characters profess their atheism, the ideas of the church materialise repeatedly as both characters and as topics of conversations. Religion is presented through reflections of the title-holder Lieutenant hydrogen, and through a series of encounters involving Henry and a character simply identified as the priest. Hemingway uses the treatment of the priest by the soldiers and by Henry himself to illustrate ways of approaching faith in a situation in which God has no place, and employs these encounters among the priest and other characters as a means of expressing religious views of his own. close evident to the reader is the distinct difference between the priests relationship with Henry and that which he has with the other soldiers. Hemingway repeatedly emphasizes this in all sections of the book, even after(prenominal)ward Henry is injured, when he is completely isolated from the other soldiers. The first compositors case the reader sees of this is solitary(prenominal) six pages into the novel. Hemingway writes, That night in the mess after the spaghetti course the captain commenced picking on the priest (6-7). The manner in which Hemingway frames this line is suggesting that not only do the soldiers start picking on the priest, but picking on him was the predinner entertainment. Almost the same scenario is portrayed only a few pages later The meal was finished, and the argument went on. We two stop talking and the captain shouted, Priest not joyful. Priest not happy without girls. (14)The soldiers r idicule of the priest is again highlighted when Henry, bed-stricken with his injury, asks the priest How is the mess? (69). The priest replies I am still a great joke (69). The reader sees an evident pattern in the relationship between the priest and the others. More important, though, than the feature that the other soldiers ridicule the priest, is for what he is ridiculed.