Calling all those studying A Farewell To Arms!

[brain95]

Fellow students basking in the glorious writing that is Hemingway,
We should start a thread discussing the novel.
Which I have done now.
I hope there are enough people on here to start talking about certain aspects of the novel, if not, I shall retain my dignity.

Some questions to ponder:
Does Henry love Catherine?
Is Catherine a submissive, Fifty-Shades-Of-Grey-Gal or is she a code hero?
Is Rinaldi gay?
Why does the priest not have a name?
Does Hemingway hate religion?

Please share your opinions.

[Fluttershy]

1. Yes.
2. Code Hero
3. No.
4. Because Hemingway wanted to portray a religious figure that could be interchanged with any other religion. Maybe.
5. He doesn't hate it but he feels as though it is unnecessary in living a meaningful life.

[brain95]

Why do you think she's a code hero? I agree with you, but what would you use as evidence?

[Fluttershy]

copy pasted from my English oral at the start of the year

"The Hemingway Code is basically Hemingway’s existentialist’s code of conduct whereby an individual will refute all forms of divine existence, social and moral conventions as explanations for the absurdities in their life. Instead, they will garner life experiences and in the process, search within themselves for the right choices to make their life more fulfilling, even if it will all be consumed by death in the end. 

Catherine Barkley herself is another example of the Hemingway Code Hero.  However, unlike Henry, her lover, she is not an “apprentice hero”. Catherine’s tragic loss of her fiancé to the war after an eight-year long engagement has robbed her of any trust in a well-ordered life.  She has known suffering and learns about the futility of war and life the hard way: “They just blew him up into bits and that’s the end of it.” But instead of becoming disenchanted with life, Catherine battles on and eventually finds love and her “religion” in the now more mature Henry.  Her insight into existentialism is unmistakable as she tells Henry that “we are going to have a strange life….and all sorts of dreadful things will happen to us”. She is only too well aware of the randomness of life and the “dreadful feeling to have nothing at all suddenly”."