A Farewell to Arms

An appreciation…

 

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

 I’ve often read that quote from Hemingway used in the context of encouraging words, as in, “Buck up, Sparky, if it didn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.” It makes for a good one-liner, but it is totally out of the context Hemingway intended. The line appears in Chapter 34 as Fredrick Henry lies awake in the night next to Catherine Barkley, amazed at what has happened between them. Here is a more complete recounting of his thoughts:

 

…But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. 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.

I read A Farewell to Arms when I was in my 20s, and I blew right past that passage, anxious to get on with the action. I picked up the book recently and was stopped cold when I read Chapter 34. Hemingway doesn’t often “tell” you what his protagonist is feeling, which makes this passage rare. And it is a profound foreshadowing of how the book ends. I’ve read that the author struggled with the ending, writing more than thirty versions before he was satisfied. But the four sentences highlighted above could very well have served as the end of the novel.

Hemingway was a great discovery for me as a young man, beginning with his short stories, then extending to The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. I always thought A Farewell to Arms ranked at the bottom of that list. I was wrong. I’m glad I found it again at the ripe old age of 82.

_____