重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
I. Introduction to Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father was the owner of a prosperous real estate business. The father was a man of high ideals, very strict and c ensored the books he allowed his children to read. His mother considered herself pure and proper. She was a dreamer who was upset at anything which disturbed her perception of the world as beautiful. She taught her children to always act with decorum. She adored the singing of the birds and the smell of flowers. Her children were expected to behave properly and to please her always. When he was a small boy, the mother treated him as if he were a female baby doll and she dressed him accordingly.
He began to pull away from his mother and never forgave her for his humiliation. The town of Oak Park was very old fashioned and quite religious. He loved to fish, canoe and explore the woods. When he couldn't get outside, he escaped to his room and read books . He loved to tell stories to his classmates, often insisting that a friend listen to one of his stories. In spite of his mother's desire, he played on the football team at Oak Park High School.
As a student, Ernest was a perfectionist about his grammar and studi ed English with a fervor.
He loved the sea, mountains and the stars and hated anyone who he saw as a phony. During World
War I, he rejected from service because of a bad left eye and became an ambulance driver in Italy for the Red Cross. Very much like the hero of A Farewell to Arms , Ernest is shot in his knee and recuperates in a hospital, tended by a caring nurse named Agnes. Like Frederick Henry in the book, he fell in love with the nurse and was given a medal for his heroism. Ernest returned home after the war and was rejected by the nurse with whom he fell in love.
He wrote articles for The Toronto Star . In Chicago he met and then married Hadley
Richardson . She believed that he should spend all his time writing, and bought him a typewriter for his birthday. They decided that the best place for a writer to live was Paris, where he could devote himself to his writing. They could not live on income from his stories. So he again wrote for The Toronto Sta r. He took his wife to Italy to show her where he had been during the war. He was devastated. Everything had changed and was destroyed. Hadley became pregnant and was sick all the time. She and Ernest decided to move to Canada. By then, he had written three stories and ten poems. Hadley gave birth to a boy.
Even though he had his family, Ernest was unhappy and decided to return to Paris. It was in
Paris that Ernest got word that a publisher wanted to print his book, In Our Time , but with some changes. The publisher felt that the sex was too blatant , but Ernest refused to change one word.
Around 1925, Ernest started writing a novel about a young man in World War I, but had to stop after a few pages, and proceeded to write another novel, instead. This novel based on his
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件 experiences while living in Spain was The Sun Also Rises . In 1927, Ernest found himself unhappy with his wife and son. They decided to divorce and he married Pauline, a woman he had been involved with while he was married to Hadley. A year later, Ernest was able to complete his war novel A Farewell to Arms .
At age 31 he wrote Death in the Afternoon , about bullfighting in his beloved Spain. Ernest was a restless man; he traveled all over the United States, Europe, Cuba and Africa.
At age 37 Ernest met the woman who would be his third wife; Marth a , a writer like himself.
He went to Spain to become an "antiwar correspondent", and found that war was like a club where everyone was playing the same game, and he was never lonely. Martha went to Spain as a war correspondent and they lived together. He knew that he was hurting Pauline, but could not stop himself from getting involved with women. In 1940 he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and dedicated it to Martha, whom he married at the end of that year. It was at this time that Ernest, always a drinker, started drinking most of his days away . He would host wild, fancy parties and did not write at all during the next three years.
At war's end, Ernest went to England and met an American foreign correspondent named
Mary Welsh. He divorced Martha and married Mary in Havana, in 1946.
Ernest wrote The Old Man and the Sea in only two months. He was on top of the world. The book was printed by Life Magazine and thousands of copies were sold in the United States. This novel and A Farewell to Arms were both made into movies.
In 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature . Toward the end, Ernest started to travel again,
He became obsessed with sin. He never got over feeling like a bad person. In the last year of his life, he lived inside of his dreams. He was suicidal and had electric shock treatments for his depression and strange behavior . On a Sunday morning, July 2, 1961, Ernest Miller Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun.
II. Main plot of A Farewell to Arms
H ENRY is a young American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I.
At the beginning of the novel, the war is winding down with the onset of winter, and Henry arranges to tour Italy. The following spring, upon his return to the front, Henry meets Catherine , an English nurse’s aide at the nearby British hospital His friend Rinaldi quickly fades from the picture as Catherine and Henry becomes involved in an elaborate game of seduction. Grieving the recent death of her fiancé, Catherine longs for love so deeply that she will settle for th e illusion of it. Her passion, even though pretended, wakens a desire for emotional interaction in Henry, whom the war has left coolly detached and numb.
Henry learns happily that Catherine has been transferred to Milan and begins his recuperation under her care. During the following months, his relationship with Catherine intensifies. No longer simply a game in which they exchange empty promises and playful kisses, their love becomes powerful and real. As the lines between scripted and genuine emotions beg in to blur,
Henry and Catherine become tangled in their love for each other.
Once Henry’s damaged leg has healed, the army grants him three weeks convalescence leave,
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件 after which he is scheduled to return to the front. He tries to plan a trip with Catherin e, who reveals to him that she is pregnant. As they part, Catherine and Henry pledge their mutual devotion.
Henry travels to the front, where Italian forces are losing ground and manpower daily. Soon after Henry’s arrival, a bombardment begins. When word comes that German troops are breaking through the Italian lines, the Allied forces prepare to retreat. Henry leads his team of ambulance drivers into the great column of evacuating troops. The men pick up two engineering sergeants and two frightened young girls on their way. Henry and his drivers then decide to leave the column and take secondary roads, which they assume will be faster. When one of their vehicles bogs down in the mud, Henry orders the two engineers to help in the effort to free the vehicle. When they refuse, he shoots one of them. The drivers continue in the other trucks until they get stuck again. They send off the young girls and continue on foot toward Udine. As they march, one of the drivers is shot dead by the easily frightened rear guar d of the Italian army. Another driver marches off to surrender himself, while Henry and the remaining driver seek refuge at a farmhouse. When they rejoin the retreat the following day, chaos has broken out: soldiers, angered by the Italian defeat, pull commanding officers from the melee and execute them on sight. The battle police seize Henry, who, at a crucial moment, breaks away and dives into the river. After swimming a safe distance downstream, Henry boards a train bound for Milan. He hides beneath a ta rp that covers stockpiled artillery, thinking that his obligations to the war effort are over and dreaming of his return to
Catherine.
Henry reunites with Catherine in the town of Stresa. From there, the two escape to safety in
Switzerland, rowing all night in a tiny borrowed boat. They settle happily in a lovely alpine town called Montreux and agree to put the war behind them forever. Although Henry is sometimes plagued by guilt for abandoning the men on the front, the two succeed in living a beautiful, peaceful life. When spring arrives, the couple moves to Lausanne so that they can be closer to the hospital. Early one morning, Catherine goes into labor. The delivery is exceptionally painful and complicated. Catherine delivers a stillborn baby boy and, lat er that night, dies of a hemorrhage.
Henry stays at her side until she is gone. He attempts to say goodbye but cannot. He walks back to his hotel in the rain.
III. Selected Reading
19
"It's raining hard."
"And you'll always love me, won't you?"
"Yes."
"And the rain won't make any difference?"
"No."
"That's good. Because I'm afraid of the rain."
"Why?" I was sleepy. Outside the rain was falling steadily.
"I don't know, darling. I've always been afraid of the rain."
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
"I like it."
"I like to walk in it. But it's very hard on loving."
"I'll love you always."
"I'll love you in the rain and in the snow and in the hail and -- what else is there?"
"I don't know. I guess I'm sleepy."
"Go to sleep, darling, and I'll love you no matter how it is."
"You're not really afraid of the rain, are you?"
"Not when I'm with you."
"Why are you afraid of it?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me."
"Don't make me."
"Tell me."
"No."
"Tell me."
"All right. I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it."
"No."
"And sometimes I see you dead in it."
"That's more likely."
"No, it's not, darling. Because I can keep you safe. I know I can. But nobody can help themselves."
"Please stop it. I don't want you to get Scotch and crazy tonight. We won't be together much longer."
"No, but I am Scotch and crazy. But I'll stop it. It's all nonsense."
"Yes it's all nonsense."
"It's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I'm not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't." She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.
30
They were executing officers of the rank of major and above who were separated from their troops. They were also dealing summarily with German agitators in Italian uniform. They wore steel helmets. Only two of us had steel helmets. Some of the carabinieri had them. The other carabinieri wore the wide hat. Airplanes we called them. We stood in the rain and were taken out one at a time to be questioned and shot.
So far they had shot every one they had questioned. They were questioning a full colonel of a line regiment. Three more officers had just been put in with us.
"Where was his regiment?"
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
I looked at the carabinieri. They were looking at the newcomers. The others were looking at the colonel. I ducked down, pushed between two men, and ran for the river, my head down. I tripped at the edge and went in with a splash. The water was very cold and I stayed under as long as I could. I could feel the current swirl me and I stayed under until I thought I could never come up. The minute I came up I took a breath and went down again. It was easy to stay under with so much clothing and my boots. When
I came up the second time I saw a piece of timber ahead of me and reached it and held on with one hand. I kept my head behind it and did not even look over it. I did not want to see the bank. There were shots when I ran and shots when I came up the first time. I heard them when I was almost above water. There were no shots now. The piece of timber swung in the current and I held it with one hand. I looked at the bank. It seemed to be going by very fast. There was much wood in the stream. The water was very cold.
We passed the brush of an island above the water. I held onto the timber with both hands and let it take me along. The shore was out of sight now.
34
"Don't you want the paper? You always wanted the paper in the hospital?"
"No," I said. "I don't want the paper now."
"Was it so bad you don't want even to read about it?"
"I don't want to read about it."
"I wish I had been with you so I would know about it too."
"I'll tell you about it if I ever get it straight in my head."
"But won't they arrest you if they catch you out of uniform?"
"They'll probably shoot me."
"Then we'll not stay here. We'll get out of the country."
"I'd thought something of that."
"We'll get out. Darling, you shouldn't take silly chances. Tell me how did you come from Mestre to Milan?"
"I came on the train. I was in uniform then."
"Weren't you in danger then?"
"Not much. I had an old order of movement. I fixed the dates on it in Mestre."
"Darling, you're liable to be arrested here any time. I won't have it. It's silly to do something like that. Where would we be if they took you off?"
"Let's not think about it. I'm tired of thinking about it."
"What would you do if they came to arrest you?"
"Shoot them."
"You see how silly you are, I won't let you go out of the hotel until we leave here."
"Where are we going to go?"
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
"Please don't be that way, darling. We'll go wherever you say. But please find some place to go right away."
"Switzerland is down the lake, we can go there."
"That will be lovely."
It was clouding over outside and the lake was darkening.
"I wish we did not always have to live like criminals," I said.
"Darling, don't be that way. You haven't lived lik e a criminal very long. And we never live like criminals. We're going to have a fine time."
"I feel like a criminal. I've deserted from the army."
"Darling, please be sensible. It's not deserting from the army. It's only the Italian army."
37
They arrested us after breakfast. We took a little walk through the village then went down to the quay to get our bags. A soldier was standing guard over the boat.
"Is this your boat?"
"Yes."
"Where do you come from?"
"Up the lake."
"Then I have to ask you to come with me."
"How about the bags?"
"You can carry the bags."
I carried the bags and Catherine walked beside me and the soldier walked along behind us to the old custom house. In the custom house a lieutenant, very thin and military, questioned us.
"What nationality are you?"
"American and British."
"Let me see your passports."
I gave him mine and Catherine got hers out of her handbag.
He examined them for a long time.
"Why do you enter Switzerland this way in a boat?"
"I am a sportsman," I said. "Rowing is my gr eat sport. I always row when I get a chance."
"Why do you come here?"
"For the winter sport. We are tourists and we want to do the winter sport."
"This is no place for winter sport."
"We know it. We want to go where they have the winter sport."
"What have you been doing in Italy?"
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
"I have been studying architecture. My cousin has been studying art."
"Why do you leave there?"
"We want to do the winter sport. With the war going on you cannot study architecture."
"You will please stay where you are," the lieut enant said. He went back into the building with our passports.
41 THE END Hospital
"You must go out," the nurse said. "Madame Henry must not talk."
"I'll be outside."
"Go and get something to eat."
"No. I'll be outside." I kissed Catherine. She was very gray and weak and tired.
"May I speak to you?" I said to the nurse. She came out in the hall with me. I walked a little way down the hall.
"What's the matter with the baby?" I asked.
"Didn't you know?"
"No."
"He wasn't alive."
"He was dead?"
"They couldn't start him breathing. The cord was caught around his neck or something."
"So he's dead."
"Yes. It's such a shame. He was such a fine big boy. I thought you knew."
"No," I said. "You better go back in with Madame."
…………………………………..
The nurse opened the door and motioned with her finger for me to come. I followed her into the room. Catherine did not look up when I came in. I went over to the side of the bed. The doctor was standing by the bed on the opposite side. Catherine looked at me and smiled. I bent do wn over the bed and started to cry.
"Poor darling," Catherine said very softly. She looked gray.
"You're all right, Cat," I said. "You're going to be all right."
"I'm going to die," she said; then waited and said, "I hate it."
I took her hand.
"Don't touch me," she said. I let go of her hand. She smiled. "Poor darling. You touch me all you want."
"You'll be all right, Cat. I know you'll be all right."
"I meant to write you a letter to have if anything happened, but I didn't do it."
"Do you want me to get a priest or any one to come and see you?"
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
"Just you," she said. Then a little later, "I'm not afraid. I just hate it."
"You must not talk so much," the doctor said.
"All right," Catherine said.
"Do you want me to do anything, Cat? Can I get you anything?"
Catherine smiled, "No." Then a little later, "You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?"
"Never."
"I want you to have girls, though."
"I don't want them."
"You are talking too much," the doctor said. "Mr. Henry must go out. He can come back again later. You are not going to die. You must not be silly."
"All right," Catherine said. "I'll come and stay with you nights," she said. It was very hard for her to talk.
"Please go out of the room," the doctor said. "You cannot talk." Catherine winked at me, her face gray. "I'll be right outside," I said.
"Don't worry, darling," Catherine said. "I'm not a bit afraid. It's just a dirty trick."
"You dear, brave sweet."
I waited outside in the hall. I waited a long time. The nurse came to the door and came over to me. "I'm afraid Mrs. Henry is very ill," she said. "I'm afraid for her."
"Is she dead?"
"No, but she is unconscious."
It seems she had one hemorrhage after another. They couldn't stop it. I went into the room and stayed with Catherine until she died. She was unconscious all the time, and it did not take her very long to die.
Outside the room, in the hall, I spoke to the doctor, "Is there anything I can do to -night?"
"No. There is nothing to do. Can I take you to your hotel?"
"No, thank you. I am going to stay here a while."
"I know there is nothing to say. I cannot tell you --"
"No," I said. "There's nothing to say."
"Good-night," he said. "I cannot take you to your hotel?"
"No, thank you."
"It was the only thing to do," he said. "The operation proved--"
"I do not want to talk about it," I said.
"I would like to take you to your hotel."
"No, thank you."
He went down the hall. I went to the door of the room.
"You can't come in now," one of the nurses said.
"Yes I can," I said.
"You can't come in yet."
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
"You get out," I said. "The other one too."
But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
IV. Watch part of the movie A Farewell to Arms
V. Discussion
The novel concerns itself primarily with the development of Hemingway's philosophy of life, which will be explained here. The story focuses on Henry's discovery of this philosophy, and all of the main characters of the novel serve largely as foils to Henry -they are caught in different stages of their developing the philosophy.
Hemingway, and indeed many of his existential peers, believed that the universe is unordered one. There is no God to watch over man, to dictate codes of morality, or to ensure justice. Instead, the universe is indifferent (sometimes even hostile) to man's plight. In the book, this indifference is best exemplified by the war-an ultimately futile struggle of man against man. There are no winners in a war, and there is no reasoning behind the lives which are taken.
The true Hemingway Code Hero (exemplified here by Catherine, and later also by Henry) must first accept this fact of the universe. This ca lls for many things, the first of which being a disbelief in God-to Hemingway, such faith was a cheap way of falsely instilling order upon existence (this is where the priest falls short). Because there is no God, there are no universal moral codes, no abstract values such as "justice" or "glory," and certainly no need for moral conventions. The code hero rejects these, but imposes order upon his life through personal values-integrity, dignity, courage, etc. This is what Catherine knows from the beginning a nd
Henry learns in the course of the war. In essence, the hero learns that he, himself, is a crucial source of meaning. Finally, such a person must accept the finality of death, knowing himself to be caught in a meaningless existence.
Disillusionment, however, is not part of being a hero. Rinaldi falls short of this status because once he realizes the truth about the universe, he becomes disillusioned. The true hero can hold this meaninglessness in his mind while simultaneously creating meaning and order t hrough the struggle which is life. He does this first by seeking a worthy adversary to struggle against (in
Farewell to Arms this is the war which Henry attempts to free himself from). He endures the pains of life without complaint, knowing them to be a pa rt of life. He does not cheat, but adheres to his personal values (as seen in the horse races). In the end, there is no victory which awaits the hero-winning the struggle is impossible. Consequently, it is irrelevant: what matters is his heroism.
Henry's fights the meaningless of life through his love affair with Catherine, among many other things. The universe, of course, challenges that love many times and wins in the end, but Henry's struggle is a heroic one.
To a lesser extent, Farewell to Arms is also an anti-war novel, as the vivid descriptions of its brutality and futility attest to.
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重庆交通大学外国语学院精品课程《英美经典小说及其影视欣赏》电子课件
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