A Farwell to Arms :: Essays Papers

A Farwell to Arms For hundreds of years, writers have used religion as a fundamental issue and point of discussion in their novels. Joseph Conrad expressed his views in Heart of Darkness, George Orwell did the same in 1984 and in other writings, and even Ernest Hemingway used his writing to develop his own ideas concerning the church. This is fully evident in his novel A Farewell to Arms. Even in a book in which the large majority of the characters profess their atheism, the ideas of the church materialize repeatedly as both characters and as topics of conversations. Religion is presented through reflections of the protagonist "Lieutenant Henry", and through a series of encounters involving Henry and a character simply identified as "the priest". Hemingway uses the treatment of the priest by the soldiers and by Henry himself to illustrate ways of approaching religion in a situation in which God has no place, and employs these encounters between the priest and other characters as a means of express ing religious views of his own. Most evident to the reader is the distinct difference between the priest's relationship with Henry and that which he has with the other soldiers. Hemingway repeatedly emphasizes this in all sections of the book, even after Henry is injured, when he is completely isolated from the other soldiers. The first instance the reader sees of this is only six pages into the novel. Hemingway writes, "That night in the mess after the spaghetti course †¦ the captain commenced picking on the priest" (6-7). The manner in which Hemingway frames this line is suggesting that not only do the soldiers start picking on the priest, but picking on him was the predinner entertainment. Almost the same scenario is portrayed only a few pages later: "The meal was finished, and the argument went on. We two stopped talking and the captain shouted, Priest not happy. Priest not happy without girls.'" (14) The soldiers' ridicule of the priest is again highlighted when Henry, bed-stricken with his injury, asks the priest "How is the mess?" (69). The priest replies "I am still a great joke" (69). The reader sees an obvious pattern in the relationship between the priest and the others. More important, though, than the fact that the other soldiers ridicule the priest, is for what he is ridiculed.