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Frederic may have escaped the brutality and cruelty of war, but ultimately there is no way to escape pain, and solitude, and the difficult aspects of life. There is only entrapment, wherever one turns.

Hemingway makes use of some very important symbolism in this novel. Even as early as the first paragraph, he sets up two major symbols — the plains and the mountains — which will be in conflict throughout the story. Hemingway represents the plains as dangerous, miserable, dry, and barren. The mountains, on the other hand, represent safety, happiness, and good health. The military action that Frederic Henry witnesses takes place on the plains, and his escape, through the cleansing, baptismal ritual of jumping into the river, reaches its end in the secluded mountain chalet with Catherine. But when Frederic must take Catherine out of the mountains and back down to the city below to the hospital where she is to give birth, disaster strikes again. Rain is another important symbol throughout the novel. Often the rain suggests impending doom; there is a storm the night that Frederic learns he must leave Italy at once to avoid being arrested, Catherine dreams that she is dead in the rain, and indeed at the conclusion of the novel, it is raining when Frederic returns to his hotel.

Book III provides a climactic turning point: Frederic's desertion of his post in the army and his decision to return to Catherine. In Book IV it looks as if Frederic and Catherine have successfully escaped the threats of the past, only to meet a tragic end to their love in the final book, which brings the drama to a close like the last act of a tragedy.

Frederic is left alone in a world in which nothing is permanent, all is subject to chance, and the best one can do, ultimately, is to face that world with acceptance.

Hemingway worked hard to write in such a way as to give his readers highly descriptive passages without distracting them with "big words," and he hoped that his writing would leave his readers with distinct visual impressions, without their being able to recall anything unusual or memorable about the language itself.

Ernest Hemingway is known for his distinctive writing style, an unusually bare, straightforward prose in which he characteristically uses plain words, few adjectives, simple sentences, and frequent repetition

ne that was fairly unconventional. Oscar respected Kate as a unique and curious woman and allowed her enormous freedom in her endeavors (39). Yet, Kate ha

being the wife of a Creole cotton broker and take care for their six children (Skaggs 3). Like Kate's father, Oscar also died a sudden death in 1883. The tremendous grief she felt for his loss seemed to stay with her through most of her life and was a great influence on her writing (Seyersted 46).

insatiable reader, she needed to provide for her large family, and she was encouraged by her family doctor to pursue her passion of writing as a relief from her loss

Her writing resembled the local color movement's characteristics in that she focused on characters from her part of the country and portrayed them through the social and physical settings in which they lived

It ended her career as a writer permanently

That voice gave an important view of the female role in society and contributed to the beginning of the later feminist movements.

"unless one’s inner person is integral with one’s outer roles and relationships, a fully satisfying life cannot be achieved

despondent

Frederic walks away alone in the rain, chastened by his experiences and feeling alone in the universe.

Hemingway suggests that the only true values people can cling to are in individual human relationships, not in abstract ideas of patriotism or service

His own wound, however, teaches him to value life and prepares him to enter into a love relationship with Catherine.

By the end of the novel, with love and hope seemingly dead, he has come to an understanding that one must be engaged in life, despite the vicissitudes of an indifferent universe.

a natural admiration of every individual who fights the good fight in a world of reality overshadowed by violence and death."

the crisp reporting of action observed in sharp focus, dialogue that is colloquial in register and laconic in tone

supported by deeper narrative structures

The emotional responses between speakers are implied, not described, as speech follows speech.

It is about the relationship of the man and the woman as revealed through the action and dialogue.

rficially, this is the story of an aborted fishing trip; quintessentially it is the story of a collapsing relationship whose outcome is unresolved

Hemingway wrote of his narrative strategy that "if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as if the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

the reader more easily perceives the submerged structures that support the visible parts of his later fiction,

Hemingway's narrative technique was taking. The story is presented obliquely, its effect created as much by what is omitted as by what is overtly stated.