A Farewell to Arms

A farewell to arms is one of the finest novel by Ernest Hemingway. It was published in 1929 and it is relied on Hemingway's experience in WWI. It contains numerous references to people and places that connects and gives us the idea of the reality of war.

A Farewell to Arms

By : Arena Abid, Umama Noor and Dhwani Mehta.

Fear and Hopelessness

Themes

• In the farewell to arms, the most important thing we see is the fear. It is all about war so there was fear every moment. Henry faced fear when he was injured and lost hope and said that the Italians would never win this war. Catherine had a fear of losing someone. She had a fear from rain, because it reminded her of death. Every single person in this novel had fear of something and were hopeless.
• In the Raisin in the sun, the characters had fear and were hopeless when they knew that there dreams were not going to be fulfilled. They had fear on losing relationships, money and their possessions.
• In both the novels, all the characters are going through hard times. All of them are in some kind of fear and are hopeless about something they couldn't get.

Reality vs Fantasy

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and Raisin in the sun by Lorraine Hansberry gives us the idea of reality. It connects in such a way that tells that every single person is fighting their own war, either it's physical, mental or emotional. Both books have similar themes of love, relationship, hopelessness, frustration and unachievable dreams.

Love & Loss :

• In the Farewell to arms, Catherine who had lost her love before in war was afraid to lose it again when she fell in love with Henry. During War, love was dangerous but precious at the same time. Their relationship was always surrounded by loss but it was very special for them.
• In Raisin in the sun, we see the importance of family love. We see the family working together. The relationship of Ruth and Walter shows us that not everyone is perfect, we can mistakes and get frustrated at times but in the end, we are always there for each other.
• From both the novels we can see that how important is love. No one is perfect in this world, neither Catherine and Henry or Ruth and Walter. Everyone makes mistakes and love is not easy, sometimes one has to go through a lot to receive what they want. Many sacrifices have to be made in the name of love. In Raisin in the sun, we see Mama's love for her children and grand children and her loyalty towards her husband. In the farewell to arms, Catherine after losing so much had the capability to love Henry with all her heart.
• In both books, the most important idea that is being shown is that, no matter how tough life can get or no matter how many times you've been thrown into worse situations, you never give up on each other. You just have to keep trying and go through all the struggles together.

• Throughout A farewell to arms, we see the harsh truths of reality. Many characters in the novel create fantasies to escape themselves from the horror of war. Everyone has dreams and fantasies they create and hope to achieve them someday. Henry and Catherine had a dream to live together. They even escaped to live their fantasy life in the mountains of Switzerland until their return caused a tragic incident.
• Dreams and Fantasies possess a great importance in Raisin in the sun. We see that how Mama and Ruth had a dream to live in a huge house, Walter started created fantasies about his big business and his office room, Benetha had a dream to become a doctor and change the world. Everyone dreams not knowing that when reality hits you, like when Walter lost his money, he lost all his hopes, dreams and future.
• From both novels, we see that how harsh truths of reality distract fantasies that characters create to escape themselves from the world. All the characters in both the novels have dreams which they want to fulfill one day, just like the idea similar to the American Dream. In Raisin in the sun, the characters dreams were based on materialism and how they wanted to become rich, where as in The Farewell to arms, the characters wanted to escape from the war and wanted to live life in peace. Somehow. both of these novels reach to a point where not everything they dreamed of has been fulfilled, and their hopes based on the 'american dream' has now dissipated.