Ironic Narrative in A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway Essay

Within the pages of A adieu to weapons system, modernist flow of the 1920s, Hemingway often blurs the lines between the ro domainticistic register pattern and the humorousal one(a). Critics conclude all over the specifics of each case Do his admireres change and grow? Do they slug? Do they fail? Are they initiated into just ab push with greater consciousness of the world close to them? Are Hemingways heroes ro servicemantic conquistadors or be they juicelessal failures? How does an understanding of these heroes initiations enhance Hemingways meaning in the overbold? These argon the sorts of pursualions that moldiness(prenominal) be considered in any effort to determine the requisite of an ironic reading of this important Hemingway work.Paradigms beg and IronyAlthough tragedy and comedy make typified legion(predicate) relocationments and periods of literary hi fresh, for the purposes of this essay, it is necessary to revolve about upon the mental images of coquet and badinage. These write up patterns are non as familiar to many readers. Readers whitethorn associate coquet with a finical genre of literature, whether gothic or harlequin, or recognize salient ironic dilate within plots, characters, and/or dialogues, tho many fail to realize the archetypal patterns that rest rainfall the literary paradigms of romance and chaff and their kind to one a nonher.Foulke and Smith lay the ground for this exploration of romantic hero versus ironic anti-hero and romantic quest versus anti-quest, yet this turn of nonethelessts keister be explored even to a greater extent(prenominal) fully if one examines the elements of the heros locomote as (de) constructed by Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this work, Campbell draws from the traditions of Freud and Jung to illustrate how the deeds of myth bring home the bacon into modern measures (Campbell 4).Be sweat themes of initiation and the tie in heros quest are fundam ental to the human fit, tying into world(a) perceptions of birth, growth, and oddment, the quest theme itself is always a shape-shifting yet marvelously consistent story that fits into the psychologi surroundy prescribed checkpoints of a narrative pattern much(prenominal) as romance or irony (Campbell 3).In the land of romance, young heroes, generally in self-discipline of al most(prenominal) power that transcends the ordinary, are called to adventure, initiated into some sort of knowledge or greater understanding of the universe (in other words, he or she receives the booty or treasure, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual), and returns transformed, armed with some sort of greater understanding about the world approximately him or her signifi give the gatet enough to mend the plight of humankind or at least improve the lot of corporation (Foulke and Smith 5).On the contrary, the ironic voyage is rooted in, well(p), irony. perhaps the ironic hero, plagued by a less than ordinary potency, nutrition in a world of funny farm and disorder, ventures upon an aimless journey, and either fails to attain the treasure, or perhaps even more signifi groundworktly, ashes unchanged by his or her quest (Foulke and Smith 5). The narrative modes of romance and irony, then, can best be explored by roughness one over against the other. Each pattern illustrates or represents a polarized human experience romance represents the imagined, idealized world of constancy and order, maculation the ironic mode represents the world of cross human desires (Foulke and Smith 8). Because of the universal proposition implication of such patterns, such paradigms are mesomorphic mechanisms for the exploration of the human condition.Ironic news report in A valedictory to ArmsFrom the ascendent of the reinvigorated, readers immediately sense the ambiguity and uncertainty of heros map in an unpredict equal world. The moderate opens with an ironic tone depicti ng a wilting earth in a drench autumn leaves all fell from the chestnut tree trees and the branches were bare, even the vineyards are described as thin and bare-branched (Hemingway 4). And, even more poetically, Hemingway trickily sets up an ironic tone for the raw by cleverly, though morbidly, emphasizing that with the overwinter came permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera though, in the end entirely vii thousand died of it in the army (Hemingway 4). With this opening, a wilting depiction of nature, Hemingway sets his readers up for an ironic interpretation of his novel.It is within the consideration of such a pervasive unsettling setting, as natural of the ironic mode, that readers encounter Hemingways ironic hero Frederic enthalpy. Frederic is initially set into a handed-down heros berth he is a soldier. And, not only is Frederic a soldier, still he is an American volunteer for the Italian army. Within the context of the traditional romanticized soldier her o, it could be suggested that such effect as volunteering for someone elses encounter is valiant, sturdy, and even representative of that epic archetypal hero depicted in narrative romance. However, Hemingway is certain to emphasize Frederics naivet, if not foolishness, from the very offset printing of this anti-heros journey.Although Frederic technically ranks as an officer, he describes his work to Catherine as not in truth with the army, nevertheless only the ambulance (Hemingway 18). As an ambulance driver on the Italian cause, Frederics love is encapsulated in his belief that it is impossible for him to be killed at the front after all, the state of warfare did not bring forth anything to do with him (Hemingway 37). Frederics innocence is also depicted and reinforced by his obliviousness to the war he is able to travel comfortably in escort if in the first car and instruct the clear, fast and shallow river and the mysterious looming mountains (Hemingway 44-5).Fre derics ability to appreciate the picturesque Italian front illustrates his inability to realize the substance of both the deep pools of the river blue identical the sky and the macrocosm of vitality and death shuttled within his ambulance (Hemingway 47). This naivet is similarly reflected premature in the novel by the fact that Frederic all the way and staunchly believes in the traditional virtues of soldiering skillful soldiers are brave and have good discipline (Hemingway 48). When these naive character traits are coupled with the dominant impression presented by the fading, rainy fall, and cholera-struck winter, the stage is set too soon on in A valediction to Arms for another Hemingway triumph of irony.However, from the spring of the book, readers are aware that Frederic is becoming more and more cognizant of the fact that It evidently make no difference whether he was in that respect to look after things or not (Hemingway 16). When Frederic returns to the front aft er his leave time, he realizes that all is as he had leave it except that now it was spring (Hemingway 10) the front had remained static, and neither side had advanced or taken new territory. As representative of the ironic hero, Frederic begins to think that perhaps the livelong thing runs better without him anyway (Hemingway 16). From Frederics perspective, not even the wound in the hospital are real wounded rather, true casualties could only result from the action when the war picks butt up again (Hemingway 12).Frederics dissatisfaction with the world around him represents his call to adventure. As a foreigner in someone elses war, Frederic Henry is beginning to sense the calculated nature of war as well as his insignificance in this cataclysmic event. For regardless of the supposed honor of military service, Frederic is beginning to wonder the arrogance of his post he considers his position as an ambulance driver to be not really the army, the Italian salute, a gesture n ot made for export, begins to make him uncomfortable, and even the brace helmets soldiers are required to wear count too bloody theatrical (Hemingway 18, 23, 28-9). And, even smell at the front is beginning to grow dull The priest was good but dull. The officers were not good but dull. The King was good but dull. however the wine, bad, was not dull (Hemingway 38-9). Frederic is beginning to question his role, and his significance, within the context of the war, and within the context of his deterrent exampleity.All around Frederic Henry, soldiers much more connected than he is to the war, such as Italian peasants, workers, and citizens, recognize the horror of the war for what it is senseless competitiveness for abstract principles that results in the death of innocent soldiers often blindly fighting for these goals. This veracity is exemplified in Frederics encounter with a soldier ugly from a herniation at the front. The soldier, of course, wants out, but tells Frederic, t he ambulance driver, that officers do not find his condition worthy of excusing him from duty. Henry advises the man with the hernia to fall d ingest by the passageway and get a bump on his head so that he can legitimize taking the soldier to the hospital (Hemingway 35).However, irony permeates this situation. Henry and his compadres encounter the man with the rupture once again, only this time his head is bleeding as deuce men lift him They had come back for him after all (Hemingway 36). This anecdote illustrates the essentially ironic nature of war violence, injury, motivation, temporary motives and priorities, the inherent irony in fighting for someone elses cause. Soldiers in war must struggle to choose to fight for arguably noble causes of an abstract nation, ideologic principle, or political goal, look out for one another on the front, or simply prioritize their own survival.Frederic must grapple with why he is risking his tone in this war at all. Is on that point more to fighting in a war than simply existing in a particular place at a particular time? Frederic himself suggests that he guilelessly stumbled into the war he was in Italyand spoke Italian (Hemingway 22). How moral is it to participate in collective violence without a passionate code of ethics that supports the cause? These are the types of concerns plaguing Hemingways ironic hero as he is beckoned towards the threshold of adventure. lastAfter analyzing the impotent nature of the major character of A Farwell to Arms, it becomes clear that the novel do indeed illustrate the work-shy struggle of a lost generation. Perhaps the most central question that must be explored in the consideration of whether or not this work are examples of the paradigm of narrative irony hinges upon the endings of the works. Does Frederic transform over the course of his literal and symbolic journey? It is clear that he does not.Frederic has learned that life is only meaningful if one lives it check to his o r her own values, but he has also learned the lessons of the great irony that the world breaks everyoneIt kills the good, and the very gentle, and the very brave impartially and The only thing that one can be sure of in this world is that one will be destroyed (Hemingway 249 Phelan 54). Hemingways A Farewell to Arms ends in utter irony. When Frederic in the long run says goodbye to his beloved Catherine, he remarks that it is equal saying good-by to a statue.The novel ends as Frederic walks back to the hotel in the rain (Hemingway 332). Left in a post-World fight I experience, Frederic is lost, bereft, homeless, and a drift (Donaldson 15) Frederic Henry has learned the ironic lessons of life, and attempted to cause and live by a moral code dictated by his own creation, only to be defeated by the ultimate truth of population, that is, that stripped of the traditional props of God, country, and tradition, the modern hero must face the harsh and irremediable realities of existence (Gurko 65).Hemingways skillful use of narrative irony in this text represents the most appropriate use of the modernist writers palette, for within the anti-hero of Frederic Henry readers find universal symbols for the plight of modern man. Because Hemingway stresses this fundamental futility of the human struggle within the confines of life and death, any interpretations that stress the romantic triumphs of this early Hemingway novel, that is, that this hero attain knowledge that can transform his world within his move from innocence to experience, is countered by the undeniable reality portrayed in this novel and that the book end in overwhelming irony (Smith 33).The ironic mode dominates as Frederic, fearful to add meaning to his life through love and experience, emerge as mere humans clutching at a pale yellow (Smith 34). As Philip Young so eloquently argues in Hemingway A Reconsideration, the fundamental reality of both the ironic mode, as well as Hemingways novel, is that In the end, man is trapped (93).Works CitedCampbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton Princeton University, 1968.Donaldson, Scott. Introduction. spic-and-span Essays on A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Cambridge Cambridge University, 1990. 1-25.Foulke, Robert and Paul Smith. An Anatomy of Literature. crude York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.Gurko, Leo. Ernest Hemingway and the Pursuit of Heroism. New York doubting Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968.Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York Scribner, 1995Phelan, James. Distance, Voice, and impermanent Perspective in Frederic Henrys Narration Successes, Problems, and Paradox. New Essays on A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Cambridge Cambridge University, 1990. 53-74.Smith, Paul. The Trying-out of A Farewell to Arms. New Essays on A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Cambridge Cambridge University, 1990. 27-54.