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The Realisms of War in Book 3 In his first novel, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway revealed the inhumanity of war in the most compelling and convincing manner, due to his personal experience of a military reporter during the Italian campaigns of the First World War. Told from the first person, that of American Frederic Henry, a Lieutenant in the ambulance corps, the narration describes the realisms of war in its numerous dimensions and demonstrates its disastrous impact on human beings and on the world they live in. Book 3 of the novel starts with a description of the landscape that serves as the setting for human actions throughout the book; it is as dismal and depressing as all the events taking place in its setting and enhances the feeling of futility of all and any efforts people are taking. Muddy roads impede transportation; people coming from the battlefield were wet to the skin and all were scared.1 Henry, who is back to his unit from the hospital, will have to endure the trying experience of retreat to come to a decision of deserting the troops to have the right to live a normal life. Book 3 reveals the very essence of war, which makes people give up their principles and behave in a way that runs contrary to all moral norms. Instead, war uncovers the worst in human nature, no matter whether people obey orders of their military command or are forced to violate them under the actual circumstances of unusual situations. Not many of them are capable of realizing the realities of war in general; those who are, however, oppose the official quasipatriotic propaganda. Henry confesses of being embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice2, he finds such words obscene. The priest talking to Henry brings up an important point of the futility of war and victories in it. He says it only results in peoples deaths, and the

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 198. Retrieved from http://archive.org/stream/farewelltoarms01hemi/farewelltoarms01hemi_djvu.txt

longer it lasts, the more casualties there are, with neither side eventually winning it. According to the priest, it is in defeat that we become Christians3, and people become gentler only when they are beaten. Henry has to retreat with Italian troops after the Austrians break through the lines of the troops, having won another battle, and in the course of this retreat, the enormity of barbarous and senseless killings, part and parcel of warfare, is revealed. The wounded cannot be all evacuated; cars take medical equipment and as many as they can [of the wounded] and leave the rest.4 Military command is inefficient; they fail to use the benefits of fine positions for defense along the low mountains5, nothing had been done about organizing them for defense6. A human life becomes worthless; military commanders will not go into detail to see if a soldier or an officer is actually to blame for what looks like a case of insubordination. Henry kills one of the two engineering sergeants, who wanted to leave the position realizing they soon would be cut off. One of them escaped, the other was shot to death. However, very soon, Henry finds himself in a similar situation, but this time he is the one suspected of deserting his regiment and is held accountable accordingly. The battle police interrogated some officers and executed them on the spot for the treachery that, according to the police, caused the Italian defeat. Having witnessed the immediate outrageous punishment of field officers, Henry jumped at the chance to escape by plunging into the river and getting out of the area. In this way, Hemingway demonstrates that basic human values and beliefs are completely distorted by war that makes all human actions and people violent, inhumane, and barbarous per se.

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Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 196. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 189. 4 Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 199. 5 Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 193. 6 Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms, p. 193.

Bibliography Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Retrieved 13 September: http://archive.org/stream/farewelltoarms01hemi/farewelltoarms01hemi_djvu.txt