A Farewell to Arms

Few authors loved the hard, sad ending as much as Ernest Hemingway did, and he certainly was at his hardest and saddest in this book. Ambulance driver Frederic Henry falls in love with nurse Catherine Barkley amidst the collapse of the Italian army at Caporetto during World War I. Heeding love over duty, he deserts, avoids execution by the slimmest of margins, and escapes with Catherine to Switzerland. After an idyllic several months Catherine goes into labor with their baby and Hemingway delivers his soul-flooring ending. At once a study of one man’s very personal tragedy against the anonymity of tragedy of a world war, a muscular and masculine love story, and a sort of prequel to The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms depicts war at its most existentially absurd. It also offers the chance to experience one of the most famous last lines in all of literature. In an oft-quoted interview with The Paris Review he claims to have written that ending some 30 times before getting it right, but get it right he did.