Symbols in Farewell to Arms

The novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, which was published in the late 1920¿sin Great Britain, represents a perfect example of Hemingway¿s unique style.On the one hand you can read A Farewell to Arms as a tragic lovestory, in which FredricHenry, a young American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, who both volunteer for theItalian Army in World War I, fall in love with each other.The lovestory ends in a tragic scene because Catherine Barkley dies after she has born theirdead child.On the other hand you can read this novel as a thrilling war drama that takes place in Italy andSwitzerland and lets the reader take part in the life of the young Lieutenant Henry, who tellsus about the war and what he experiences there.The plot of the novel shows perfectly the unique style of Hemingway:He succeeds in combining the two contradictory items love and war, which actually do not fittogether.The problem with my task, which is to discuss the symbols in A Farewell to Arms is that youcan find a wide range of symbols in Hemingway¿s work.But it is almost entirely up to the reader which one of them he considers as important orrelevant to discuss.Because of this it has to be decided which symbols are the most important ones withouttangling up by irrelevant ones.As a matter of fact completeness is not the sense of my work, I will rather try to point myview on those symbols of whom I think are important such as the rain, the water, themountains and the plains.