“GIÃ TỪ VŨ khí” CỦa tác giả ernest hemingway khóa luận cử nhân ngành khoa học quân sự Chuyên ngành: Tiếng Anh
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Vocab Questions
| a) Symbolism
In this novel, Hemingway successfully uses symbolism to give various scenes a deeper and more comprehensive symbolic meaning. Therefore, the use of symbolism makes the novel more lively and interesting. This not only tells about the author's psychological activities and the fate of the characters, but also reveals the success of Hemingway's writing style. - “Arms” in the title depicting war and a lover The very title of the novel is itself symbolical. The title bears two-fold symbolic meanings. The hero in the novel bids farewell not only to the war but also to the arms of the woman he loves. Not only does he bid farewell to war as he finds it so disgusting but he also bids farewell to the arms of his beloved woman since she has succumbed to her cruel fate. + War In the very beginning of the novel, Hemmingway focuses reader’s attention towards the brutalities and ugliness of war and people’s indifferent attitude towards it. He states that “Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees” (3) and that “with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army”(4). It focuses on the indifferent attitude of people towards death in war, be it with guns, bombs or by disease. Now, our protagonist, Henry Friedrich, an American citizen working in Italian Army as a commander of a group of ambulance drivers during World War I. He seemed to have joined Italian army neither because of some nationalistic zeal nor for monitory reasons but only to serve suffering people. He never felt a sense of belonging there, we felt him say that “I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me”(39) and later we find him say, “I wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones, and the calm ones and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.”(248) These lines reflect that neither had he related himself with the Italian war nor he has any plans to continue war, he had already decided to renounce it. Brutalities of war desensitize humans, one such episode can be seen in the novel when dying man’s blood stream down on his face and referring to the drops of blood he said, “The drops fell very slowly, as they fell from an icicle after the sun has gone.”(66) The depiction of the war certainly shows the resentment and rejection towards it. Many other characters besides Henry also detest war. The Priest says, “I hate the war”(75) and Rinaldi says that “This war is killing me, I am very depressed by it.”(177). The famous Caporetto Retreat in the novel presents a detailed and vivid account of the chaotic situation of the war when civilians also get involved. Soon after this Henry makes his final choice of bidding “A Farewell to Arms” when confronts the possibility of getting shot as a deserter or traitor by some self righteous Italian soldiers; he jumps into the river and thus makes a deliberate choice of farewell to war, to arms. + A lover Hemmingway portrayed Henry as a man in search of order and values. In book I we find him going from one brothel to another yet feel discontent. Neither friendship nor army provides him any discipline or solace that he tends to seek. When he first met Catherine Barkley, an English nurse working with Italian army; he merely wanted to exploit her body and did not intend to love her. As he says, “God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her”(100) but reluctantly he fell so deep in love with her; the extent of his emotional involvement to Barkley can be made out from his reply to Count Greffi’s question, “What do you value most?” Henry replies, “Someone I love”(279) and also when he says that “I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards”(32). But later as the novel proceeds we find him say that “I loved her very much and she loved me” (115) and “Besides all the big times we had many small ways of making love” (121). Her love brought solace, contentment and order in his life. His escape from the harsh realities of the life was in the arms of his beloved. When Henry lies wounded and priest ask him about love for God. His reply seems to be unsatisfactory for the Priest and he defines love as “When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve” (77). This definition of love later aptly suits for Barkley when in the later course of the novel we find intense care in his love, this can be made out by his desire of marrying her as soon as he learns about her pregnancy and also that while escaping death, his prime concern was her security and her safety so that she could give birth in all comfort. And if a comparison be made between his love and that of Rinaldi, who has amoral indulgence with prostitutes, his love takes more pure form. Towards the end of the novel when he becomes aware that she would die, he prays for the first time that “I’ll do anything for you, if you won’t let her die” (353). He made a deliberate farewell to war but farewell to the arms of his beloved was being forced upon him when Barkley dies in childbirth. - Rain as a symbol of death Starting in the very first chapter of “A Farewell to Arms”, rain clearly symbolizes death: “In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain,” Henry tells us. “The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn.” The rain symbolism is not entirely a literary conceit, either, as rain actually precedes an outbreak of fatal illness, the cholera that kills seven thousand that fall. Later, during their Milan idyll, Catherine makes the symbolism of the rain explicit for Henry - and for the reader: “I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see myself dead in it” she says to him. “And sometimes I see you dead in it.” During Henry and Catherine's trip from the armorer's to the hotel near the train station on his last night with her, the fog that has covered the city from the start of the chapter turns to rain. It continues to rain as they bid one another farewell; in fact, Catherine's last act in this part of the novel is to signal to Henry that he should step in out of the rain. Back at the front, “the trees were all bare and the roads were muddy.” It rains almost continuously during the chapter when the tide of battle turns and the Italians begin their retreat from Caporetto - and from the Germans who have joined the fighting. The rain turns to snow one evening, holding out hope that the offensive will cease, but the snow quickly melts and the rain resumes. During a discussion among the drivers about the wine they are drinking with dinner, the driver named Aymo says, “Tomorrow maybe we drink rainwater”. Hemingway by this time has developed the rain symbolism to such a degree that the reader experiences a genuine sense of foreboding - and indeed, the following day will bring death to Henry's disintegrating unit. It is raining while the fugitive Henry rides the train to Stresa, raining when he arrives, and raining while Henry and Catherine spend the night together in his hotel room. The open-boat trip across Lake Maggiore takes place in the rain, with an umbrella used as a sail. (Ominously, the umbrella breaks.) And in Chapter XL, as Henry and Catherine are bidding farewell to their wintertime mountain retreat for the city in which Catherine's baby is to be born, Henry tells us that “In the night it started raining.” Finally, when Henry leaves the hospital for lunch during Catherine's protracted, agonizing delivery, “The day was cloudy but the sun was trying to come through” - a literal ray of hope. During the operation, however, he looks out the window and sees that it is raining. Just after the nurse has told him that the baby is dead, Henry looks outside again and “could see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the window.” At the novel's end, Henry leaves the hospital and walks back to his hotel in the rain. In fact, the final word in “A Farewell to Arms” is “rain,” evidence of weather's important place in the story overall. Hemingway does not quite trust us to detect the rain/snow pattern of symbolism and understand its meaning; therefore he underlines the significance of precipitation in his book by having Catherine tell Henry that she sees them dead in the rain. And so the weather symbolism in “A Farewell to Arms” is perhaps unnecessarily obvious. Yet Hemingway's use of this literary device is hardly rote symbolism for its own sake. Rain and snow both drive his plot and maintain our interest, as we hold our breaths every time it rains in the novel, praying that Catherine will not perish during that scene. (We know that Henry will survive the rain, because he is the story's narrator). Thus, while writing a brutally realistic saga of life during wartime, Ernest Hemingway also crafted a novel as literary as the great-war stories that preceded “A Farewell to Arms”. Arguably it is as powerful as any story ever told. - Snow as a symbol of hope In “A Farewell to Arms”, Ernest Hemingway attempts to tell the unvarnished truth about war - to present an honest, rather than a heroic, account of combat, retreat, and the ways in which soldiers fill their time when they are not fighting. Yet Hemingway's realistic approach to his subject does not rule out the use of many time-honored literary devices. For instance, weather is to this day a fundamental component of the war experience. Hemingway depicts weather realistically in “A Farewell to Arms”, but he uses it for symbolic purposes as well. Rain, often equated with life and growth, stands for death in this novel, and snow symbolizes hope: an entirely original schema. In stories such as “To Build a Fire,” by Jack London, snow and ice quite logically represent danger and death. After all, one can freeze to death, fall through thin ice and drown, or perish beneath an avalanche. In Chapter II of “A Farewell Arms”, on the other hand, it is snow that ends the fighting described in the book's first chapter. Thus snow stands for safety rather than its opposite. (Note, though, that although snow covers the bare ground and even the Italian army's artillery in Chapter II, stumps of oak trees torn up by the summer's fighting continue to protrude - a reminder that winter is of course not permanent but merely a reprieve from combat, a cease-fire). Shortly thereafter, Frederic Henry describes the priest's home region of Abruzzi as a “place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear and cold and dry and the snow was dry and powder” and the context leaves no doubt that this characterization is a positive one. Late in the novel, the argument between the Swiss policemen over winter sports not only provides much-needed comic relief; it also marks the beginning of Henry and Catherine Barkley's second idyll. (The first takes place in summertime, in Milan.) Immediately afterwards, Henry and Catherine find themselves in the Swiss Alps, with snow all around. Thus they have temporarily achieved a life of both purity (the mountains symbolize purity in this novel, versus the corruption of the lowlands) and safety. These chapters positively radiate contentment. - Catherine’s hair as a symbol of the couple’s isolation from the world Although it is not a recurring symbol, Catherine’s hair is an important one. In the early, easy days of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in bed, Catherine takes down her hair and lets it cascade around Henry’s head. The tumble of hair reminds Henry of being enclosed inside a tent or behind a waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of the couple’s isolation from the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to secure a blissful seclusion, believing themselves protected by something as delicate as hair. Later, however, when they are truly isolated from the ravages of war and living in peaceful Switzerland, they learn the harsh lesson that love, in the face of life’s cruel reality, is as fragile and ephemeral as hair. - Home and Away from Home as a symbol of spiritual belonging In “A Farewell to Arms”, the surface activity or the action is organised connotatively around two poles. The images are built in around two opposite concepts that of home and the other of a place away from home. Each of these concepts is the result of a kind of poetic intuition and are strongly charged with emotional values. The concept of home is brought out in relation to the mountains, with dry and cold weather, with peace and quiet, with love, dignity, health, happiness and the good life and with worship at least the consciousness of God. The concept of being away from home is brought out in association with low-lying plains, with rain and fog, with obscenity, indignity, disease, suffering, despair nervousness, war and death and with irreligion. - Mountains as a symbol of love, dignity, health, happiness and good life The mountain symbol is introduced in the very first chapter but it is not developed. It is developed from chapter two onwards when Henry is asked by the priest to visit his native place in Abruzzi. The priest then describes the place as one where it is cold and dry as opposed to the war front which is cold and wet. It is clear and the hunting is good. The people are also very warm and hospitable. However the captain interrupts the priest to ask everyone to go to the brothel. And Henry himself goes to whorehouses all over Italy but never goes to Abruzzi. This is during his furlough. Henry visits all the right places where he indulges in casual sex. He has been almost everywhere on the Italian pensile except Abruzzi. The image of the mountain gets a further emphasis from a contrast to the plain. Henry says he had wanted to go to Abruzzi but he could not realise his dream. He said that “I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery iron, where it was clear and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord and there was the rain continue intermittently throughout the retreat”. As Henry flees to Stresa and a reunion with Catherine, the rain falls steadily in the background. It is only after their reunion, the very next morning that the rain stops and the sun shines in through that window enabling Henry to catch glimpses of the “mountain” beyond. Eventually the love shall move towards these mountains. Since the war is going on and come to a stop for the winter, Henry is going on leave away from the war and the priest urges him to go to Abruzzi and the priest’s native place in the mountains of Abruzzi, in Capracottan. He tells Henry :“There is good hunting. You would like the people and though it is cold it is clear and dry. You could stay with my family. My father is a famous hunter”. The mountain are therefore associated with the concept of Home. The mountains are where everything is peaceful and uncorrupted and being dry free of disease as opposed to the wet plains where seven thousand men are killed by cholera. But Henry doesn’t go to Abruzzi during his leave. He rather goes to all the big cities in Italy, having a romp. He indulges in heavy drinking and casual sex night after night so much so that sometimes he doe not remember who he is with. That the mountain symbolises peace and a feeling of Home is clearly evident when Henry travelling towards the war front at Isonzo from Gorizia in his ambulance. He looks out from his window across the river and the river towards the mountains ranges in the distance. From the war ravaged plain, the mountain look calm and beautiful and associated with the concept of unconquerability, the symbolism becomes clear. Hemingway writes, “I looked to the north at the two ranges of mountains, green and dark to the snow-line and then white and lovely in the sun”. Already the image of the mountain and the priest have been connected and the mountain associated with the Home of the priest, with dryness and clear weather and with polite and hospitable people and though all these established as a place of beauty and ideal peace, to be desired. The rain and its grim nature follows the lovers everywhere. It is as though every bad event in the novel takes place with the rain as a background. It is only during their mountain retreat that the rain is conspicuous by its absence. Hemingway’s use of the climate to mark and emphasis their struggles is wonderful. The rain sweeps over the lovers during the night long struggle to escape to Switzerland. Henry had been watching the continuous rain then as they are woken up with news of Henry’s possible arrest the rain is beating down on them. They walk out of the hotel saying they are going for a stroke and to watch the storm. And throughout the night as Henry rows across the lake, the rain doesn’t stop falling. However in the mountains, they are out of the low lying plains, out of danger and so out of the rain. They are out of the war and are now safely ensconced in the mountains, the rides are “iron hard with the frost” and the deep snow isolates them and gives them a feeling of domestic safety and tranquility. A sense of being invulnerable also envelopes them. Their idyll continues through the winter until the rains come in March. And with the coming of the rain the lovers come down from the mountains which is followed by Catherine’s death. - Plains as a symbol of indignity, suffering, disease, obscenity, war In opposition to the mountain image, the image of the plains and its associations with negative aspects of war and the world and life. In the plains all kinds of obscenities are evident, as the obscenity of the prostitutes and brothels, the cafes and the hard drinking and most importantly the war and death, destruction and despair. The mountain symbol also acquires a religious association when the priest comes to meet Henry at the field hospital after he was wounded. The priest informs Henry that a man may love God. “It is not a dirty joke”. Therefore we see a complex pattern developing of interconnection and association between the idea of Home and the concepts of High ground, clear, cold and dry weather and over and above these, love of the ideal variety as the priest defines it as also love of God. Into the centre of this image of Home is the symbol of the mountain. Catherine Barkley is brought in. Henry begins a love affair with her merely for pleasure and considers it merely a game like bridge to seduce her. However, he genuinely begins to care for her and love her with an intensity and passion that leaves no doubt as to how much he loves her. During their affair it is then established that Catherine is such a woman as can convert anywhere, where they happened to be together into a Home of their own, and therefore Catherine, the mountains and Home are easily brought into conjunction as parts of the same symbol. Catherine reaches the centre of the image later in the novel when after Henry’s desertion, they flee to Switzerland and set up Home in the mountain of Montreux. Catherine is easily associated with image of love, peace, happiness, contentment, more so as they lead an idyllic life in the mountain far removed from the world, the war and people. Within themselves, in the mountain they find paradise, thus consolidating the symbolism of the mountain in the highest degree. - Rivers as a symbol of rebirth Rivers in “A Farewell to Arms” represent rebirth. They symbolize a departure from a previous life and an entrance to a new one. Henry already fed up with the war, no longer believes in “war heroism”. While walking with his fellow soldiers, after the retreat, he is arrested and fears that he will be executed. “He jumps in the river with a splash”, allowing it to float him along. Thus he is able to save his life. As a result of this plunge, his “anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation”. When Henry emerged from the river, it was as if he was reborn. In short, symbolism was implemented in many different ways throughout the entire novel. Ernest Hemingway is able to link two things together in a manner allowing the novel to be easily understood by the reader. He manages to draw the readers in by using symbols to represent something more than just what it is, such as rain to represent death, weather to represent mood, etc. It is something really important and interesting to see that in “A Farewell to Arms” Hemingway makes a very intricate but meaningful combination of images and symbols in order to be able to express whatever he has to convey to his readers”. tải về 120.7 Kb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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