hay guize i hav teh bset esasy pls raed
“This was the end of the trap.” Is ‘A Farewell to Arms’ predominantly a story about being trapped?
Through his thought-provoking novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’, Ernest Hemingway details the journey of his protagonist Frederic Henry through the war-torn battlefields of Italy in World War One, and his romance with the English nurse Catherine Barkley. Throughout the novel, Henry often finds himself both physically and emotionally trapped in a number of situations, from his relationship with Catherine to his placement in the Italian army. So, too, is Catherine ensnared by the cruel hand of fate that causes her to pass away, just as she is finding true happiness. But ultimately, it can be discerned from the text that all of these entrapments stem from Frederic Henry’s true identity as an extraterrestrial being, disguised as a human in Earth society.
As an alien being amongst humans, Frederic Henry has an obvious disconnection from the world around him, and as such is limited in his ability to make meaningful and informed choices that affect his human form. Henry, as a hostile extraterrestrial intent on the domination of Earth, explores a simulated reality from the safety of his spaceship in order to learn how best to infiltrate the planet he is intent on conquering; as such, his speech is stilted and does not have a true human warmth to it, explaining the disjointed and simple language used throughout the text, often mistaken for a “stream-of-consciousness” writing style. As such, he is unable to express emotion and empathy, leading to a type of entrapment where he cannot freely express his desires and needs. He is conscripted into the Italian army out of an inability to comprehend what he is being forced into, wasting time that could have been used for plotting further torments and horrors for the human race. As such, Henry’s lack of communication skills is a true example of the theme of entrapment in ‘A Farewell to Arms’.
But Frederic Henry is not the only character in the novel to be trapped. Catherine Barkley, in falling in love with Henry’s human shell, condemns herself to a terrible fate. Catherine initially believes that Henry can replace her lost fiancé, who was killed during the Battle of the Somme. She is confident that by becoming pregnant to Henry, she has bound him to her for the rest of his life, using her submissive act as a means to divert Henry’s suspicions. But as Henry tells Catherine, “you always feel trapped biologically”, and thus by forcing Catherine to give birth, Henry traps her into an early and horrifying death where she gives birth to a mutated and monstrous abomination before ruptured organs cause her to pass away. Even the baby is described as “a skinned rabbit with a puckered old man’s face”, a true abhorrence. Catherine dies a traumatic death that she has ultimately manipulated herself into, catalysed by Frederic Henry’s alien nature.
While Henry is free to make choices and live a human life in ‘A Farewell to Arms’, he cannot help but to explore the relationships that humans share with each other, as a means to further torment and destroy the human race. As such, he is forced by his mission to begin a romance with Catherine Barkley, and proceeds to impregnate her with a human-alien hybrid. He is compelled by his orders to stay with Catherine until given further instructions, and so he is forced to accompany her throughout Europe until she eventually dies giving birth. Such a terrible fate is relieved only when Catherine is killed by the monstrosity that she gives birth to, but also costs Henry several months of valuable reconnaissance that pushes his plans for world domination significantly back. Henry’s plans ultimately result in his own entrapment in a relationship that is doomed to end horribly.
‘A Farewell to Arms’ is indeed a novel focused on the theme of entrapment, due to Frederic Henry’s alien nature. As an extraterrestrial, Henry’s plans for world domination ensnare both him and Catherine into a tangle that ultimately results in death for Catherine, and wasted time and effort for Henry.
But seriously, I'd like to see how a VCAA examiner would mark this, if a similar prompt appeared on the exam. It's relevant to the text and has lots of text evidence and quotes. I even referred to metalanguage!
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