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humbugs 's review for:
A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
It feels a little illegal to rate a Hemingway this low, but I really had such conflicting feelings while reading this book.
The themes - Well the main theme is 'war' obviously. Other than that, it's all a bit abstract and hard to pin down. Maybe 'love and loss', 'fantasy vs reality', and even 'religion'? But there aren't many instances in which these themes occur. Most felt sprinkled in as little supporting points to the big black overarching theme of 'war'. Perhaps that was the point though, to show the bleakness of war through the experience of our main character.
The prose - Anyone who has read anything Hemingway before this would be able to identify A Farewell to Arms as a Hemingway just by reading the first few pages. The prose in this book was quintessentially him. While I do think that his terse writing style with choppy rhythms and unique (read: often lack thereof of) punctuation suits short stories better, the way he built countryside scenery and the Italian front from the ground-up was impressive. However, some of it was slightly repetitive and the dialogue often confused me. I had to read the lines over and over again to visualise what on earth the characters were getting up to. To be fair, I never wondered who was speaking, as Hemingway made each character's voice so distinct.
The characters - Yea um I pretty much hated Catherine and as the book wore on I was more and more annoyed with the main character. I can't even remember his name. Does Hemingway hate women or something? Because Catherine oft felt more like a caricature than an actual person. At the start I was willing to forgive her psychological struggles because she lost her fiancee. But then she kept saying things along the lines of 'I will do anything and everything you tell me to, Darling. That way you will never feel the desire to love another woman.' It was at this point I realised that this book was very much NOT a romance, but it did not stop me from feeling irrational irritation with both of them. The side characters were better though, the priest was a chill dude and Rinaldi was funny.
The overall craft - During my reading of A Farewell to Arms, I was thoroughly bored. Was war and killing and death not meant to be interesting? After reading the famed and revised ending, I could have shrugged and put the book away. While I can somewhat appreciate the famed 'walking in the rain' ending, I didn't care for the characters enough to be touched. The whole thing seemed a bit underwhelming for the most famed work of Hemingway. But then I realised the genius of it all. Hemingway uses the repetitiveness of his prose to show not only the bleakness, but the boringness of war. He doesn't need to introduce any anti-war themes because the monotony of the book itself makes the reader root for the war to end. It is so simple, yet so effective. Scenes like the characters getting injured / killed take place while they are eating lunch instead of by the raging battlefield. War it trivialised in such an understated, artful and almost ironic way.
While the ideas behind the book as a whole is probably 5 stars, the reading experience was very much not.
3.5 stars!
The themes - Well the main theme is 'war' obviously. Other than that, it's all a bit abstract and hard to pin down. Maybe 'love and loss', 'fantasy vs reality', and even 'religion'? But there aren't many instances in which these themes occur. Most felt sprinkled in as little supporting points to the big black overarching theme of 'war'. Perhaps that was the point though, to show the bleakness of war through the experience of our main character.
The prose - Anyone who has read anything Hemingway before this would be able to identify A Farewell to Arms as a Hemingway just by reading the first few pages. The prose in this book was quintessentially him. While I do think that his terse writing style with choppy rhythms and unique (read: often lack thereof of) punctuation suits short stories better, the way he built countryside scenery and the Italian front from the ground-up was impressive. However, some of it was slightly repetitive and the dialogue often confused me. I had to read the lines over and over again to visualise what on earth the characters were getting up to. To be fair, I never wondered who was speaking, as Hemingway made each character's voice so distinct.
The characters - Yea um I pretty much hated Catherine and as the book wore on I was more and more annoyed with the main character. I can't even remember his name. Does Hemingway hate women or something? Because Catherine oft felt more like a caricature than an actual person. At the start I was willing to forgive her psychological struggles because she lost her fiancee. But then she kept saying things along the lines of 'I will do anything and everything you tell me to, Darling. That way you will never feel the desire to love another woman.' It was at this point I realised that this book was very much NOT a romance, but it did not stop me from feeling irrational irritation with both of them. The side characters were better though, the priest was a chill dude and Rinaldi was funny.
The overall craft - During my reading of A Farewell to Arms, I was thoroughly bored. Was war and killing and death not meant to be interesting? After reading the famed and revised ending, I could have shrugged and put the book away. While I can somewhat appreciate the famed 'walking in the rain' ending, I didn't care for the characters enough to be touched. The whole thing seemed a bit underwhelming for the most famed work of Hemingway. But then I realised the genius of it all. Hemingway uses the repetitiveness of his prose to show not only the bleakness, but the boringness of war. He doesn't need to introduce any anti-war themes because the monotony of the book itself makes the reader root for the war to end. It is so simple, yet so effective. Scenes like the characters getting injured / killed take place while they are eating lunch instead of by the raging battlefield. War it trivialised in such an understated, artful and almost ironic way.
While the ideas behind the book as a whole is probably 5 stars, the reading experience was very much not.
3.5 stars!