'A Farewell to Arms': Favorites

[Scheherazade]

Who is your favorite character in A Farewell to Arms and why? What is your favorite quote/passage?



Book Club Procedures

[Virgil]

Count Greffi

Ninety-four years old. Drinks liquor all night, flirts with the girls, plays billiards, has survived war battles, has the stories to reminisce, and the scars to show. Now if I could do all that at forty-four. And he's very good natured, and enjoys the finer things in life. I love this guy!

I'll have to think of my favorite passage. I think there are a lot of good ones.

[emily655321]

I vote for the priest, but Miss Gage is a very close second. I think if we got to know her better, she'd be my favorite. As it is, though, the priest is pretty awesome. He's quiet and forgiving and patient, the sort of things I try to do but never seem to succeed. He's very unassuming. Well, Christ-like. I've always liked that sort of character.

Still haven't quite finished the book, though, so I'll hold off on a favorite passage til I do.

EDIT: Well, perhaps I'll find more, but at this moment these two are my favorites (really can't choose between them):

[on the subject of defeat breeding anti-war sentiment]

"Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten."

"They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is."

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.

I think the last simile is very powerful; of war casualties being like a slaughterhouse, only more wasteful. Subversive stuff.

[adilyoussef]

I don't know why but my favorite character is Henry. I feel like him in a way.

[Virgil]

I vote for the priest, but Miss Gage is a very close second. I think if we got to know her better, she'd be my favorite. As it is, though, the priest is pretty awesome. He's quiet and forgiving and patient, the sort of things I try to do but never seem to succeed. He's very unassuming. Well, Christ-like. I've always liked that sort of character.

Still haven't quite finished the book, though, so I'll hold off on a favorite passage til I do.

That surprises me, Emily. I wouldn't have guessed you would pick the priest. Some of those barbs you've fired at me recently on other threads didn't seem so Christ-like. . (Only kidding; there was nothing wrong with the way you disagreed with me.) Actually I liked the priest too. But then I liked Rinaldi also. But the Count is just too cool.

[emily655321]

Okay, I've finished, and I have found my favorite passage of the book.

"What are you thinking, darling?"
"About whiskey."
"What about whiskey?"
"About how nice it is."
Catherine made a face. "All right," she said. [See, Hemingway knows how to spell it. ]

This stuck out at me as the most genuine moment of the book, and especially aberrant for an exchange between Cat and Henry. It's such a perfect example of the casual intimacy of domestic life, and it feels very, very real and comfortable. Catherine's face and the way she says "All right" are so clear to me, that it makes me laugh every time (and I re-read those lines at least a dozen times, because I am in love with them). Who knew she had a sense of humor??

I wish Hemingway had given us more moments like this.

[The Unnamable]

Catherine is my favourite character. She’s more realistic and grown up than Henry. I’ve met perhaps only a handful of women like her.

My favourite passage:


‘"It is very dangerous." The nurse went into the room and shut the door. I sat outside in the hall. Everything was gone inside of me. I did not think. I could not think. I knew she was going to die and I prayed that she would not. Don't let her die. Oh, God, please don't let her die. I'll do anything for you if you won't let her die. Please, please, please, dear God, don't let her die. Dear God, don't let her die. Please, please, please don't let her die. God please make her not die. I'll do anything you say if you don't let her die. You took the baby but don't let her die. That was all right but don't let her die. Please, please, dear God, don't let her die.’

When I first read this, I thought it wasn’t very good. Then I thought about it a bit more and realised that it’s very good indeed. I particularly like “You took the baby but don't let her die. That was all right but don't let her die.” The bargains we make with ourselves and God when desperate, eh? There is no attempt to write poetically or movingly but simply to capture what it feels like to be in Henry’s situation.

[papayahed]

Catherine is my favourite character. She’s more realistic and grown up than Henry. I’ve met perhaps only a handful of women like her.

Can I ask what led you to this conclusion?

I haven't finished the book yet, (I've just met Count Greffi). But so far my favorite may be Miss Gage.

[Virgil]

At noon we were stuck in a muddy road about, as nearly as we could figure, ten kilometres from Udine. The rain had stopped during the forenoon and three times we had heard planes coming, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left and heard them bombing on the main highroad. We had worked through a network of secondary roads and had taken many roads that were blind, but had always, by backing up and finding another road, gotten closer to Udine. Now, Aymo's car, in backing so that we might get out of a blind road, had gotten into the soft earth at the side and the wheels, spinning, had dug deeper and deeper until the car rested on its differential. The thing to do now was to dig out in front of the wheel, put in brush so that the chains could grip, and then push until the car was on the road. We were all down on the road around the car. The two sergeants looked at the car and examined the wheels. Then they started off down the road without a word. I went after them.

I don't know if this is my favorite passage, but there are lots of passages such as this that are absolutely perfection in description. Especially the passages concerning the retreat. This is the type of writing that Hemingway is great at.

[The Unnamable]

Can I ask what led you to this conclusion?

I haven't finished the book yet, (I've just met Count Greffi). But so far my favorite may be Miss Gage.

I think you'll understand more by the time you finish the book - I don't want to give anything away.

[emily655321]

I think you'll understand more by the time you finish the book - I don't want to give anything away.

I don't know, Unnamable. I'm finished, and I still don't get it. Do you mean because of the D-word? Does the nullification of a character automatically make them likeable?

[Scheherazade]

I am not sure if I have a favorite character in this book but there are many passages I like:

All thinking men are atheists

It is only in defeat that we become Christian."

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had any time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

[Virgil]

The ending I believe is problamatic to some critics. It certainly drips with maudlin sentiment. This is probably the third or fourth time I've read this novel, and each time I feel stronger about this. I know she dies, and I know Hemingway's prose tries to restrain emotion through style. He should let the events speak for themselves rather than throw in these philosophic cliches.

They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

Who's "they"? You know Hemingway went paranoid personnaly later in life, and I'm not saying there's a relationship here but it certainly rings of paranoia. And frankly Catherine's death doesn't seem to grow from the plot. It's almost as if he has to figure out a way for her to die, and an accident won't do (because that would be worst). I know that dying in childbirth is linked to the theme of love, but compare it to Romeo & Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra, where the events lead to deaths through love, or even Joseph Conrad's novel Victory, where Lena dies as an act of love. Sorry, Hemingway, this is too sudden and too authorially imposed for an ending. But I still like the novel.

[papayahed]

I have a different opinion of the ending. It does get a little maudlin, but I think the last sentance of the book changes all that, I can't remember exactly waht it was something like : I turned off the lights, left the hospital and went to my hotel room. It left me thinking "That's it?"

I'm sticking with my original character, Miss Gage is my favorite, Henry a close second. Maybe because Miss Gage was the only chick with moxey.

[papayahed]

I think you'll understand more by the time you finish the book - I don't want to give anything away.

I finished the book, the impression I get of catherine is completely different then yours, I see her as very child-like.