Themes of Love, Separation and Desolation in Novels - Research Paper Example

?Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms can be rightly claimed as a parallel to Romeo and Juliet’s story of love and sacrifice Introduction A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway was published in 1929. The book is a first person account of the author’s personal experience in the war front during the First World War. The plot of the novel revolves around the protagonist Fredric Henry, a young American soldier serving in Italy during World War I, who gets injured and is recovering in a Milan hospital. In the hospital he meets Catherine Barkley and falls in love with her. The relationship between Henry and Catherine blossoms and results in Catherine becoming pregnant. Post treatment, Henry has to return to the waterfront leaving behind Catherine and consequently is taken as captives. However, he manages to flee and returns to Catherine. Both of them escape to Switzerland where fate desolates them and both Catherine and the new born baby dies leaving Henry devastated. The theme of love, separation and desolation in the novel can be rightly claimed as a parallel to William Shakespeare’s immortal tale of love and sacrifice Romeo & Juliet. The major theme of this book was to present love as a major theme against war and all kinds of wrongdoing in the world. From the beginning to the end of this novel, every incident was associated with rain. And other images of water. The rain always associated with destruction, sorrow and death, As this story was all about the death of a lover and destruction caused by the war therefore the backdrop of rain was appropriate to demonstrate the scenario. But in this story the rain was not only the symbol of destruction, it was also used as a symbol of life when Henry were able to escape from the authority twice through a river and lake. There was a clear indication that all the character of this novel was trying to dissociate themselves from the horror of war by means of involving in different games. For Henry, the biggest diversion was his love Catherine. He first treated his love as a game, but slowly started to realize the attraction and connection that he was having with her and how she able to change his life. This love story in the backdrop of the horror of WWI was a resemblance to the immortal love story of Romeo and Juliet. The story portrays that love is always more important than war, and life and war can only bring hopelessness and tragedy. A Farewell to Arms: A story of sacrifice A Farewell to Arms finds its place among the best tragic creations of Ernest Hemingway. Baker in his book says that Hemingway himself “referred to the story of Lieutenant Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley as his Romeo & Juliet” (Bloom, 69). The striking similarity between Henry and Catherine and their Shakespearean counterparts, Romeo and Juliet is how the love relationship between them, which started as flirtation affair, graduated to mature relationship where they held their own even when the odds were stacked against them. The background of the love story between Catherine and Henry is the Austria-Italy war amidst the grueling World War I while the Shakespearean lovers had to hold out the Montague-Capulet family feud. Drawing other similarities between the two immortal creations of love and sacrifice, Baker says “Neither in Romeo & Juliet nor in A Farewell to Arms is the catastrophe a direct and logical result of the immoral social situation” (Baker 99). Baker concludes that Catherine’s death “is an unfortunate biological accident” and “the death of Shakespeare’s lovers is also precipitated by an accident – the detention of the message bearing friar” (Baker, 99). Baker also observes that “Catherine’s death,….shows a kind of artistic inevitability. Except by a large indirection, the war does not kill Catherine any more than the Veronese feud kills Juliet”. (Bloom, 39). Hemmingway does not portray every graphical detail of the war. The only strong depiction of war comes in when the book illustrates the bombardment and injury of Henry immediately after the scene where the soldiers eat macaroni perhaps as a means to shut out the harshness of the war around them on which they had little control. Both A Farewell to Arms and Romeo & Juliet deal with the idea “Death of Love”. The First World War brings Frederic and Catherine together and it creates their dread and hope for comfort and consolation. The war also instills in them the sense of togetherness and their will to find solace and safety. The war though a catalyst in bringing them together is not directly responsible for the consequence of their love and its distasteful ending. The tragic consequence of the relationship between Henry and Catherine is mainly stirred by love itself. The love between Henry and Catherine results of Catherine’s pregnancy and later her death as well as that of the newborn. (Cain, 376-392). The analysis of Romeo & Juliet and the contemporary Shakespearean age reveal that love and death had a close association even during that time. According to Mackenzie, “Cupid and Death are best friends and even bedfellows, who confuse their quivers after a night of debauchery. They go off to fire arrows at their respective victims but end up killing young people and romantically energizing old folk”(Mackenzie, 22). A similar issue is reflected in Romeo & Juliet. The play’s thesis involves the conspiracy between sex and death epitomized by Rosaline’s refusal to join the death-dealing games of sexual love but speculation about the possibility of sex through death. Such a situation finally evolves into a dialogue on sex as death. The evolution takes place due to Friar’s plan to give a drug to Juliet allowing her to guise as dead and escape with Romeo. Mackenzie says that in the play the lovers were transported to a world of bliss through death and Juliet expects to find the fruits of love ater death. Something similar is portrayed in Catherine’s story and her death was perhaps to die with her love and move ont to the world of bliss where nothing could disturb her emotions. Both the play and the novel enfold a story where love is marked by death. The phrase suggests that “the love of Romeo and Juliet, arising in the context of two feuding houses, signals death”. (Mackenzie, 22-42 ). Therefore a war or conflict does not bring joy and happiness and rather result in loss and tragedy only. As long as there is life one is likely to be plagued by emotional turmoil, physical pain and surrounding conflicts. In such situation only death seem to be the option for most lovers. Catherine’s death from bleeding during child birth depicts as long as there is life physical pain and loss will persist. The way Henry leaves the army and goes back to Catherine is a clear indication that he is taking control of his own destiny and also resembles that he is with the power of controlling anything that may happen to his life. The way he took his own decision to live life in his own way was the clear resemblance of that with the Romeo and Juliet. The positive work of all the characters in this story provided the power behind their work and also demonstrate how it can work in tandem with true romanticism. As we have noticed in the great epic of Romeo and Juliet, both of them choose their own destiny and keeps love over everything else. Here also both the central characters tried to keep harsh realities like war at a disance from their lives and wanted to be closely associated with each other throughout the life with love. But like Romeo and Juliet’s tradegy, the story of Hemmingway’s novel ends with the sad separation, their love gives Henry the strength to bid farewell to arms and the war in order to find a life for themselves. Yet hurdles continued to create obstacles for their love. In fact Henry undergoes anxiety when he is not able to see his love. It resembled with the love and affection of Romeo and Juliet. According to Glasser, the magnitude of missing someone was only being understood when someone is far away and that was the a feeling that Henry was going through when he was unable to meet Catherine. In this story the foreshadowing was resembling for a tragic shadow over their relationship. The inability of St. Anthony to protect Henry was also symbolic in a way because it clearly resembles that the religion or support of the holy person could not be enough to protect someone who is involved in any kind of wrongdoing like war. Both Romeo and Juliet and A Farewell to Arms associated with young lovers who face several problems due to society. (Glasser, 453-469), While in the case of Romeo and Juliet it was social differences, in this story of Henry and Catherine, it was the incident of World War I, the conflicts and differences and the conflict between Henry’s duty as a soldier and a lover also played the hindering role. In both of the stories, there was no happy ending but still, both these stories are well known due to their simplicity, they portray that life and war or feud of any kind can cause destruction of love and result only in tragedy. In Shakespeare’s play, the problem was a Montague Capulet blood feud was the problem and in the story of Hemingway it was the world War. He also mentioned that both of the stories vibrates with a sickening sense of doom that tends to increase at the ending part and both end with a heartbreaking tragedy. Differences between Romeo & Juliet: Analysis According to Merrill, A Farewell of Arms was the best novel of Hemingway’s but, it cannot be treated as a tragedy as like Shakespeare’s greatest novel Romeo and Juliet. In support of his point, he had mentioned that the lover’s of Hemingway’s book does not make any mistake as per the judgement associated with their lives. The separation of the hero and heroine was just a catastrophe which was an accident. But in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, both killed each other as they were unable to fight against the society’s norms. Although both the books were associated with a story of love and separation due to social circumstances, Shakespeare’s one is more of a tragic love story than that of the Hemingways’s novel (Merrill 571-579). According to Wexler, the work cannot be compared with that of the Romeo and Juliet. In her review, she mentioned Hemingway’s writing was a kind of Feminist defense which was clearly visible in his writing of A Farewell of Arms. According to his analysis the character of Barkley presented by Hemingway was that of faith or fantasy, which was there to oppose the male values. According to his review, the character of Barkley was a devine lollipop. But in Romeo and Juliet both the character got equal importance, So according to her, only on the basis of same background perspective of Love and sad ending it cannot be compared similer to Romeo and Juliet (Wexler 111-123). Conclusion: After analysis of different authors and critics’ views one can conclude that the novel by Ernest Hemingway was very much similar to that of the great writing of William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet. Each story is about a young couple who love each other deeply, but were unable to live happily forever due to conflict. Apart from the similarities in the ending there was also similarities in the way both the stories develop and the way they end. Like the classic play of Shakespeare, the story about Frederik Henry and Catherine Barkley’s love story also has a sorrowful ending as the social conflict , if we consider the World War I as a social conflict that came between their love. Like Shakespeare, Hemingway also in his writing tried to find out an order a peaceful place for love in the disturbed chaotic world. In the Shakespeare story it was social differences that were standing in between the love of Romeo and Juliet and here it was the World War I. Trying to figure out the differences in both the stories, one can say that Romeo and Juliet both killed themselves, but in Farewell to Arms one one lover dies, but the ultimate fact was the death in both of the stories was associated with social disturbances. Apart from this minor difference, indisputably describe the story of Hemingway as a modern day’s Romeo and Juliet as both of these story carried out message of love and romance and how love could result in sacrifice. These two stories also point out the fact the social disturbance may create barriers between two lovers but that cannot underestimate or stop them from loving each other. So in this respect it may be concluded that Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is a modern time echo of Romeo and Juliet. References Baker, Carlos. Hemingway, the Writer as Artist, Princeton University Press. 1972, Print. Bloom, Harold. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Infobase Publishers: New York, 2009, Print. Cain, William, The Death of Love in A Farewell to Arms. Sewanee Review, 2013 121(3), p376-392, Print Glasser, William A , A Farewell To Arms, The Sewanee Review, (1966) 74 .2, pp. 453-469. Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell of Arms, New York: Charles Scribne’s Sons, 1929, Print. Mackenzie, Clayton G. Love, sex and death in Romeo and Juliet. English Studies. (2007) 88 .1 pp22-42, Print Merrill, Robert, Tragic Form in A Farewell to Arms, American Literature, (1974), 45.4, pp. 571-579. Wexler, Joyce, E.R.A of Hemingway: A feminist Defense of” A Farewell to Arms”, The Georgia Review,(1981) 35.1, pp.111-123.Print Read More