Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

One of the reasons why I became a pacifist years ago was the sudden realisation that most wars (I would probably say “all”, but I do not want to be absolute) are senseless. The brutality involved contrasts sharply with the glory they supposedly bring. Of course, there are conflicts that are necessary, either because of nations being invaded and having to defend themselves or border skirmishes that turn into full-on confrontations. One of them was the First World War, which became the backdrop for Ernest Hemingway’s wartime novel A Farewell to Arms.

I first read this book back in uni. I say “read” but what I actually mean is that the book content somehow went through me, including my brain and left no traces. Nothing to do with the writing, which I think it’s pretty good in my humble opinion. At the time I am describing there were still coffins arriving from Angola, the result of a decade-long “international adventure” that cost Cuba twenty thousand troops. I do not think that I was then in the frame of mind to understand Papa Hemingway’s universal message: war is chaotic and produces neither saints nor sinners.

Re-reading the book now I realise that in the intervening 20-odd years I have become more staunchly anti-war. Coming across again the lives of Frederic Henry, the American “tenente” and main character, and his Italian confreres, I cannot ignore the sense of detachment one must adopt in the theatre of war. What this approach does to one’s humanity is, paradoxically, to take it away. The only way the Italians can kill the Austrians is by seeing them not only as the enemy and invader but as non-humans first and foremost. Same with the Italian battle police when they arrest their own officers during the army’s retreat: they kill them.

A Farewell to Arms can be said to be not just a novel about the crumbling of columns of soldiers but also about the crumbling of an ideology: wars are necessary and are winnable. The human wreckage left behind betrays this idea and turns it on its head. The fragile minds, the inability to display any kind of rational thinking and the moral collapse amongst troops are testament to war’s barbaric nature.

Hemingway’s language when describing his characters’ actions is casual, almost ordinary. There is a sort of quotidianness that lulls the reader, almost making us comfortable and misleading us to think that perhaps war is not that bad. Yes, there is a little bit of suffering and killing but it is all for a good cause. Until reality kicks in to great effect. Frederic Henry kills an engineer who tries to desert him and his men as they leave their jeep behind, stuck in the mud. The murder is in cold blood, but even calling it murder feels wrong and Papa wants us to know that, for this is war, what did you expect? It is not called murder but execution. His description of the death of Aymo, one of the Italian drivers, takes him fewer than ten lines.

And yet, there are beautiful moments in the novel that remind the reader that maybe, just maybe, there is hope somewhere at the end of the tunnel. Henry falls in love with a British nurse. Although love is the wrong word here. Both Frederic and Catherine, the nurse, are fleeing personal demons: she, a dead fiancé, he the spectre of a war he feels ambivalent about. Together, they build a relationship based on pain and escapism rather than love. I must admit that I found the dialogue between them repetitive and monotonous; however, it is one of the ingenious ways in which Hemingway shows us the futility of war. At any given moment one of these two characters can be wiped off the face of the earth forever and then what? Nothing, because that is war really, the battle for nothingness.

The novel might have reinforced my pacifism but I doubt it made Hemingway feel the same as he was writing it. Machismo is everywhere: there is plenty of braggadocio, especially of the womanising variety, Italian men are shown as virile and hot-blooded and the American lieutenant as calculating and decisive. A Farewell to Arms might be more nuanced than other Hemingway novels but in its no-holds-barred depiction of war it somehow celebrates old-fashioned masculinity.

Whereas Books 1; 2 and 3 create the background for Hemingway’s plot-setting and character-exploration, the last two parts bring powerful reflections on war and its controversial role in peace-brokering. Who knows? Perhaps Papa Hemingway was also a pacifist after all.

© 2016

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