A book that can make people know the result by looking at the title has the same meaning as poetry, but avoids the melancholy of poetry. Opening Hemingway's "Farewell, Weapon", the plain and simple style of writing will make people have a process of adaptation, and when you enter the state, there is an immersive feeling of war, which brings your emotions into resistance and disgust.
Hemingway used a concise style to describe the protagonist Henry's participation in the war, love, and escape in the capable language of "telegram style", and finally highlighted the horror of war with the tragedy of losing love, which is Hemingway's unique way of opposing war.
"Farewell, Weapon"
| The cruelty of war, love is a way of escaping
In "Farewell, Weapon", war and love always go hand in hand, as if the retreat of war is love, but when in love, you can't get rid of the nightmare of war, which is in line with the current situation of a lost society. And the sweetness of love relative to the cruelty of war, is always desirable, perhaps only in the love atmosphere can make people feel a moment of truth, let people feel beautiful and expect, so looking for love has become a way for the protagonist of the story to escape the war.
Henry, who had fought in the war on his own and was appointed lieutenant in the ambulance convoy, was passionate, for as a mere college student, Henry could not have realized the substance and deceptiveness of the war at the outset, so he participated in the war with a reverential, blood-boiling mood. But with the real death brought about by the war, destroying people's will and morale, Henry's ambitions and ideals were immediately destroyed and fell into endless confusion. Therefore, the article narrates the town as a "comfort nest" behind the enemy through a large description of the environment, and reading it will also deepen the interest in imagining the story that will happen in the town next.
The two brothels in the town, one for the officers and one for the soldiers, reflect the narrowness brought about by the war, and in such a group of women, the love that comes can only be the catharsis of all the suppressed emotions, the hopeless struggle to get rid of the haze of the war, and the emptiness after indulgence. And all this, as if the war has long been defined, in this atmosphere of people, may be one second still talking to you, the next second become a corpse, what qualifications to talk about love?
For this kind of casual union, the protagonist Henry is dismissive. From Henry's words and deeds in the text, we can see that no matter where he is, he is a meticulous and more exquisite person, so the appearance of the British nurse Catherine should be specially set for Henry. This unfailing love inspires Henry's desire for life and frees him from his depressed convictions. The reader also seems to be able to imagine that love in war is full of excitement, full of danger, and even face death at all times.
Hemingway in his youth
With the intensification of the emotions of the article, the love with the achievements of war can be more illustrated that war makes people lonely, war makes people indifferent, and war makes people more eager for spiritual dependence and pillars. Henry and Catherine eventually fell in love and were the most positive attacks on the war.
This is Hemingway's reflection on the evils of war from a spiritual point of view, which uses the passionate ideals and ambitions of young people to induce them to step into the battlefield, some of them died in battle, and even if the rest survived, their spirits and wills were almost destroyed. Fear and depression make them eager to escape, so love comes just right.
| The ruthlessness of war, love is the direction of escape
Hemingway's love, not vigorous, not lingering, Henry and Catherine's love is only presented in the dialogue between the two, no matter how bland the words, but show the warmth of love, let people read more and more sad feelings, this is a cruel war to make love lose its own splendor, have to struggle in restraint.
Injured Hemingway
When Henry returned to the front line after his wounds, successive defeats made the atmosphere unprecedentedly depressing, fearful and desolate, and the cruel and evil side of the war was also revealed.
"The blood was bleeding non-stop. In the darkness, I couldn't see where the blood was coming from on the canvas above my head. I tried to move my body to the side so that blood wouldn't flow on me. Some of the blood was already flowing into my shirt, and I felt warm and sticky. My body was cold, my legs hurt so much, I was so sad that I wanted to vomit. After a while, the bleeding on the stretcher above eased and began to fall drop by drop, and I heard and felt the canvas on the top moving, and it turned out that the man was more comfortable and settled down. ”
I think this is Hemingway's most advanced description of death in war, the more advanced the more frightening, in such a situation, no one can maintain a calm mood, do nothing, do nothing, from the moment Henry jumped into the cold river to survive, he felt that he should draw a substantive line with war, and then pushed love to the extreme.
War compared to love, it has no brilliance, it is like a bowl of bitter medicinal soup, it is difficult to swallow, and the sweetness of love can just cover up this bitterness, perhaps moved, Hemingway in this tragedy sprinkled too much sugar, so that the tragic end is really unexpected.
| Escaping in the form of love, and eventually becoming a tragedy, is Hemingway's most thorough resistance to war
Before the end of the novel, Hemingway devotes a lot of space to describing Henry and Catherine's sweet time in Switzerland, which is the only bright color in the whole novel, and the reader will rightly think that this is a happy ending when reading this, but the more beautiful things are, the more painful it will be after the loss, and the more tragic the color is stronger.
Love in war could not survive, and Catherine, with her love for Henry and the nostalgia for their short love life, hurriedly left the world without temperature and reason. Inadvertently, you will feel that Catherine's death has nothing to do with the war, but the war is inseparable. This is to say that people in war cannot control their own destiny, have no place to live, lose relatives, have broken families, and although love is beautiful, love in war is ultimately an illusion that cannot be expected.
Hemingway in old age
Catherine's death, so that the protagonist Henry experienced the most helpless moment of his life, lost the sense of love in the war, what is the difference between that and the walking dead? Therefore, he firmly believes that "the world kills the kindest people, the gentlest people, the bravest people", this war that destroys love and destroys humanity, from the process of committing to doubt to disgust to indifference and numbness, is the process of the protagonist's pessimism and despair about his own life, which fundamentally negates the sense of justice that war gives to mankind.
People in war always comfort themselves with "the war is coming to an end", and in reality they have to accept the protracted and intensified war, so for the essence of war, it can give everyone's life just like Catherine's final sad and desperate interpretation: life is just a despicable deception.
The novel stops abruptly after the protagonist Henry bids farewell to the corpses of his wife and children, as if his heart has been poked hard by a sharp weapon, making people feel so dull that they can't breathe.
And it is often this silence, which is so calm to the extreme, that is the most abhorrent resistance to war.
Throughout the novel, the protagonist Henry uses love as a way of escape when he doubts war; and loves as a direction of escape when he hates war. Love has become his life-saving straw, but how sweet love is, how evil war is, and even this only escape has become a tragedy. Hemingway, with his genius, used love as the most powerful weapon to call for peace against war.