A Farewell to Arms: 100% Complete

I raced through A Farewell to Arms in about 36 hours.  I really enjoyed it, even though it has a sad ending (I'm actually kind of glad I knew the ending before I started it because I was prepared!).  Be warned, however, this blog post contains some spoilers, so if you haven't read it and spoilers bother you, don't read ahead!

 

About halfway through the book, Catherine becomes pregnant.  Then she proceeds to drink alcohol throughout the rest of the pregnancy.  Now I realize they didn't know as much about fetal alcohol syndrome and I also realize that in some parts of the world the admonition of women not to drink when pregnant is not so strictly maintained as it is in the US, but it still made me cringe every time.  Case in point:

 

"'Don't we have a fine time?' Catherine asked. 'Look. Let's go some place and have beer instead of tea. It's very good for young Catherine [the baby].  It keeps her small.'

'Young Catherine,' I said. 'That loafer.'

'She's been very good,' Catherine said. 'She makes very little trouble. The doctor said beer is good for her and keeps her small.'"

 

The nurse in me was thinking, "It keeps her small, alright.  They call that low birth weight and it's NOT a good thing!"

 

The vocabulary word for the day is "puttee" which means "a long strip of cloth wound spirally around the leg from ankle to knee for protection and support" (definition from the New Oxford American Dictionary).

 

So now I have to decide what book I want to read next.  For today, you can vote for the book you think I should read next on poll on the right hand side of the page.  I'll let you know how the poll turns out in a couple of days!

A Farewell to Arms: 42% Complete

I'm really enjoying A Farewell to Arms so far.  Hemingway's writing is so raw and terse and real.  The fact that he was an ambulance driver himself during the first world war means that his descriptions of the front are realistic and detailed.  I'm racing through it and I expect to be done in the next day or two.  After Faust, it almost feels like reading children's literature.

 

I chose the quote for today because I think it is representative of Hemingway's writing; the way he chooses words and phrases that show how the characters feels.  In this piece, Lt. Henry is getting to know Catherine Barkley.

 

"I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder. 

 

'Oh, darling,' she said. 'You will be good to me, won't you?'

 

What the hell, I thought.  I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder.  She was crying."

 

The way he says he thought "What the hell" and the way he says, twice, that she was crying, brings to mind that combination of frustration and confusion that many men feel when women display unexpected emotions.

 

Because this is so much easier to read than Faust, I know most of the vocabulary words, but there are a few words borrowed from Italian that I had to look up.  So today's word is "carabiniere" which means "a member of the Italian paramilitary police."

 

I expect that I will be finished with this very soon, so now I just have to decide what I want to read next.  Suggestions?

A Farewell to Arms: Beginning

The next book I will be reading is A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.  This book was written in 1929 and was Hemingway's first best-seller.

 

It is a love story between Lt. Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I and a British nurse: Catherine Barkley. 

 

An interesting fact: in the first editions of the work, certain swear words (I'm too much of a lady to name them here!) were replaced with dashes.  This book has been adapted for stage, screen and radio, including a 1932 screen adaptation which was nominated for an Academy Award.

 

I have read one piece of Hemingway's before: The Old Man and the Sea.  I was in high school and any ironic symbolism was completely lost on me and I hated it.  I thought it was the stupidest story and for a long time I used that and Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as proof that most American literature was horrid.  However, having said that, I am much older (and I hope, wiser) now and with a little relevant life experience and appreciation for hidden messages in literature, I think I have a decent chance of enjoying this one.

 

I'm reading a hard-copy version of this, specifically the 2003 paperback version published by Scribner.  The copy is a little worn around the edges, but since I bought it for two dollars at a book sale, I don't really mind.  This merely allows me to feel more comfortable folding down page corners and leaving it splayed open on the coffee table while I get another cup of tea.  This copy has 332 pages, and because it's much easier to read than Faust, I'm anticipating that I'll get through it pretty quickly.

 

Happy reading!