Characteristics of the hero frederic henry in chapter IV of ‘a farewell to arms’ by earnest hemingway

TOPIC
Characteristics of the hero Frederic Henry in Chapter
IV of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ by Earnest Hemingway
Group 6


Members of Group 6
45.Phạm Thị Loan
46.Phạm Thị Phương Loan
47.Trần Ngọc Chi Mai
48.Vũ Chi Mai
49.Vũ Thị Mến
50.Lương Tuyết Minh
51.Phạm Ngọc Minh –Leader

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OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION
I. Introduction of the author and the novel
1. The author - Earnest Hemingway
2. The novel - A Farewall to Arms
II. Characteristics of the hero Frederic Henry
1. General characteristics of Frederic Henry in the novel
2. Characteristics of Frederic Henry in the Chapter IV
2.1. Frederic Henry – A responsible person in work
2.2. Frederic Henry – an optimistic man
2.3. Henry’s attitude towards the war
2.4. Henry’s attitude towards Miss Barkley
III. The value of content and art in the Chapter IV to set off the characteristic of hero

Frederic Henry
CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION
Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important writers of the 20th
Century. His brief writing style in his novels "A Farewell to Arms," "The Sun Also Rises," and
"The Old Man and the Sea" changed literature forever. Hemingway left behind an impressive
body of work and an iconic style that still influences writers today. His personality and constant
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pursuit of adventure loomed almost as large as his creative talent. The publication of A Farewell
to Arms cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first bestseller, and is described as "the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I." The
story is about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against
the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of
populations.

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I. Introduction of the author and the novel
1. The author - Earnest Hemingway
• The Life of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois (just outside of Chicago) on
July 21, 1899. His father, Clarence, was a medical doctor and his mother, Grace, was a voice and
piano teacher. As a young boy, his father taught him how to hunt and fish the untouched
wilderness of Northern Michigan. Right away in Horton's Bay, the young boy learned a delicate
appreciation for the beauty and intricacy of nature, as he could often be found along the many
streams of the area. Although his writing carried him to many large cities like Paris, Chicago,
and Toronto, the undying peace and serenity Ernest found in Mother Nature continued

throughout his life and is certainly evident in his many works.
Hemingway graduated the Oak Park public school system in 1917 and followed his
interest in writing to the Kansas City Star, where he served as a young reporter. In just his short
time at the paper, he learned some aspects of style that would follow him as an accomplished
writer for all his days, as the Star emphasized short sentences, short paragraphs, active verbs,
authenticity, compression, and clarity. Hemingway later said: "Those were the best rules I ever
learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them."
At this same time, World War I was raging over the grounds of Europe, and Woodrow
Wilson was now unable to stop the United States from entering. Our young masculine man
wanted very badly to enlist in the army and serve in WWI, but his poor eyesight prevented him
from doing so. Instead, he became an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy. Only one
month after his arrival, Hemingway was badly wounded in both legs by an Austrian mortar shell
and immediately afterwards by machine-gun fire while carrying a wounded Italian soldier to
safety. This injury disputably gave him the title of “the first American casualty of the war.”
Hemingway was coined a hero for his actions on the battlefront and was awarded the Italian
Silver Medal for Valor. The surgery to repair the 200 shards of shrapnel in his leg was successful
and while he was in the hospital, the nineteen-year old fell in love with a nurse named Agnes von
Kurowsky. He wrote her almost daily, but was eventually crushed when she told him that she
was simply too old for him.
Finally returning home from Milan, Hemingway eventually took a job with the Toronto
Star Weekly and married his first of four wives, Hadley Richardson, in September 1921. The
happy (at the time) couple then moved to Paris, where the books of literature were being
rewritten by expatriate writers like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. First
introduced by Sherwood Anderson (an author also studied in this course,) he became acquainted
with many of these fine artisans of the era. His reporting in this time was extensive, as he
covered subjects like the Geneva Conference, bullfighting, and fishing, all of which interested
him greatly later in life.Then, with a recommendation from Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford let
Hemingway edit the Transatlantic Review.In this time, some of Hemingway's earliest stories
were published, including "Indian Camp" and "Cross Country Snow."

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From 1925 to 1929 Hemingway wrote some of the most prominent landmarks of the 20th
century, including In Our Time (1925) which contained “The Big Two-Hearted River,” The Sun
Also Rises, (1926) and then Men Without Women (1927) which collected “The Killers,” and “In
Another Country.” A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929 as the most genuine (and first)
account of World War I and established him as one of the monumental writers of his time. From
there on, Hemingway traveled to such places as Key West for fishing, Africa for hunting, and
Spain for bullfighting. Drawing from his unique personal experiences, he continued his flurry of
inspiration by writing such works as For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, and The
Green Hills of Africa.
Late in his life, Hemingway struggled with deteriorating health, four different marriages,
and a deep depression which eventually caused him to commit suicide in his home in Katchum,
Idaho on July 2, 1961 at the age of 61.
• Hemingway’s Writing Style
Ernest Hemingway’s writing is among the most recognizable and influential prose of the
twentieth century. Many critics believe his style was influenced by his days as a cub reporter for
the Kansas City Star, where he had to rely on short sentences and energetic English.
Hemingway’s technique is uncomplicated, with plain grammar and easily accessible language.
His hallmark is a clean style that eschews adjectives and uses short, rhythmic sentences that
concentrate on action rather than reflection. Though his writing is often thought of as “simple,”
this generalization could not be further from the truth. He was an obsessive reviser. His work is
the result of a careful process of selecting only those elements essential to the story and pruning
everything else away. He kept his prose direct and unadorned, employing a technique he termed
the “iceberg principle.” In Death in the Afternoon he wrote, “If a writer of prose knows enough
about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is
writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had
stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above
water.” Hemingway is also considered a master of dialogue. The conversations between his

characters demonstrate not only communication but also its limits. The way Hemingway’s
characters speak is sometimes more important than what they say, because what they choose to
say (or leave unsaid) illuminates sources of inner conflict. Sometimes characters say only what
they think another character will want to hear. In short, Hemingway captures the complexity of
human interaction through subtlety and implication as well as direct discourse. The writers of
Hemingway’s generation are often termed “Modernists.” Disillusioned by the large number of
casualties in World War I, they turned away from the nineteenth-century, Victorian notions of
morality and propriety and toward a more existential worldview. Many of the era’s most talented
writers congregated in Paris. Ezra Pound, considered one of the most significant poets of the
Modernist movement, promoted Hemingway’s early work, as did F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote
to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, on Hemingway’s behalf. The powerful impact of Hemingway’s
writing on other authors continues to this day. Writers as diverse as Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck
Palahniuk, Elmore Leonard, and Hunter S. Thompson have credited him with contributing to
their styles. Direct, personal writing full of rich imagery was Hemingway’s goal. Nearly fifty
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years after his death, his distinctive prose is still recognizable by its economy and controlled
understatement.
2. The novel - A Farewall to Arms
“A Farewell to Arms” is a novel by Ernest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of
World War I. The book, published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic
Henry, serving as a Lieutenant ("Tenente") in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title
is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele.
“A Farewell to Arms” is an anti-war novel in which Hemingway wanted to make the
reader see war as a merciless massacre of men and woman and the senseless destruction of the
values created. The novel falls onto five parts, each describes a different phase in Frederic
Henry’ adventures - the main character of the novel.It is also a typical love story. A Romeo and
his Juliet placed against the odds. In this novel, Romeo is Frederick Henry and Juliet is Catherine
Barkley. Their love affair must survive the obstacles of World War I. Henry falls in love with

Catherine Barkley, a volunteer nurse from Great Britain. When he wounded she nurses him at
the hopsital. His convalescence is
over, he returns to the front and finds himself in an
disorganized retreat. He deserts during the mass retreat, rejoining the girl he loves, and they
escape to Switzerland in a small boat over the lake of Maggiore. Their idyll comes to an end
when she dies in child-birth.
The plot is revealed in the famous concise Hemingway style where many detailed
descriptions of characters are omitted leaving room for full description of events. The reader is
expected to follow the events carefully and imagine the details for himself. Each personages that
disclose the characters in full so that they can be seen eventually in retrospect. “A Farewell to
Arms” is often referred to by literary critics as “a masterpiece of imaginative omissions”.
The story is told in the first person, by Frederic Henry, the hero of the novel. The love
between Catherine and Frederick must outlast long separations, life-threatening war-time
situations, and the uncertainty of each others’ whereabouts or condition. This novel is a beautiful
love story of two people who need each other in a period of upheaval. Frederick Henry is an
American who serves as a lieutenant in the Italian army to a group of ambulance drivers.
Hemingway portrays Frederick as a lost man searching for order and value in his life. Frederick
disagrees with the war he is fighting. It is too chaotic and immoral for him to rationalize its
cause. He fights anyway, because the army puts some form of discipline in his life. At the start of
the novel, Frederick drinks and travels from one house of prostitution to another and yet he is
discontent because his life is very unsettled. He befriends a priest because he admires the fact
that the priest lives his life by a set of values that give him an orderly lifestyle. Further into the
novel, Frederick becomes involved with Catherine Barkley. He slowly falls in love with her and,
in his love for her, he finds commitment. Their relationship brings some order and value to his
life. Compared to this new form of order in his life, Frederick sees the losing Italian army as total
chaos and disorder where he had previously seen discipline and control. He can no longer remain
a part of something that is so disorderly and so, he deserts the Italian army.

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Frederick’s desertion from the Italian army is the turning point of the novel. This is the
significance of the title, A Farewell to Arms. When Frederick puts aside his involvement in the
war, he realizes that Catherine is the order and value in his life and that he does not need
anything else to give meaning to his life. At the conclusion of this novel, Frederick realizes that
he cannot base his life on another person or thing because, ultimately, they will leave or
disappoint him. He realizes that the order and values necessary to face the world must come from
within himself. Catherine Barkley is an English volunteer nurse who serves in Italy. She is
considered very experienced when it comes to love and loss since she has already been
confronted with the death of a loved one when her fiance was killed earlier in the war. The
reader is not as well acquainted with Catherine’s inner thoughts and feelings as we are with those
of Frederick. The story is told through Frederick’s eyes and the reader only meets Catherine
through the dialogue between her and Frederick or through his personal interpretations of her
actions. Catherine already possesses the knowledge that her own life cannot be dependent on
another. She learned this lesson through the death of her fiance. Her love for Frederick is what
her life revolves around, yet she knows not to rely on him to be the order in her life. Had she
been dependent on Frederick for the order in her life, she would not have been able to allow him
to participate in the war for fear of losing her own stability with his death. The theme that
Hemingway emphasizes throughout the novel is the search for order in a chaotic world.
Hemingway conveys this through Frederick’s own personal search during the chaos of World
War I.
Chapter IV is one of the first chapters of the novel. It describes a Henry’s morning in an
army camp near the battle line and the first meeting of Frederic Henry with Catherine Barkley, to
whom he is introduced by an Italian, Rinaldi. The chapter IV starts by Henry’s reaction to enemy
fire with manly understatement, calling it a "nuisance”, and ends by a short coversation between
Henry and Catherine.
A certain mood felt in the novel which later to become Hemingway’s chief lyric motif: that is a
moral advantage in defeat. Man may be trampled by war, man may die, but the pround spirit of
man can not be conquered. Hemingway’s heroes do not panic in the face of disaster. “A farewell
t o Arms” is still read and admired by many generations to come.

II. Characteristics of the hero Frederic Henry
1. General characteristics of Frederic Henry in the novel

A Farewell to Arms, a novel of love and war, written by Ernest Hemingway, tells us a
gripping story of a passionate lover named Frederic Henry, the protagonist of the novel who
never tires of love making. Hemingway’s portrayal of Lieutenant Frederic Henry is one of the
author’s triumphs in the sphere of characterization.
Henry is a man without religion, morality, politics, culture or history. He cherishes private,
isolated life and attempts at shirking social responsibilities. He is receptive, a keen observer but
curiously passive.
We come to know that Henry is a rootless person who has a stepfather somewhere in
America but he has quarrelled so much with his family as hardly to have any communication
with them. He is an American who came to Italy to study architecture and he speaks fluent
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Italian. He has volunteered to serve in the Italian Ambulance Corps for reasons which are
nowhere made clear to us. He is a non-combatant and is more of a spectator than a participant in
the war.
The loyalty that he feels for Rinaldi and the priest and the group of ambulance drivers is
very important. He has also had sexual experiences with many women but none of them affected
him in any meaningful way. The priest says that Henry does not love God and he does not love
women either. At first, he merely flirts with Catherine thinking her an easy prey to his lust and he
plays a game with her.
At one point, Henry falls in love with Catherine and he wonders at this development. From
now on Catherine becomes the centre of the world for him. He has made ‘a separate peace’ and
would now like to be reunited with Catherine. He now builds a small-enclosed world for himself
and Catherine. Count Greffi tells him that his love is a religious feeling and we feel it too. As for
becoming a husband, he has offered several times to get formally married to Catherine but

Catherine kept putting off the marriage.
The death of Catherine is the psychic wound which Henry has suffered and which he will
always bear in mind. He learns about war, love and finally death. Catherine’s death is the final
stage in his initiation.
To conclude, in Frederic Henry we see a development from a Hemingway hero to a Code
hero. A sexually promiscuous, hard drinking ‘creature’, he ultimately transcends the cult of
hedonism in his true love for Catherine. Catherine’s death leaves him a heroic figure in his stoic
endurance of his experience.
2. Characteristics of Frederic Henry in the Chapter IV
2.1. Frederic Henry – A responsible person in work
In chapter IV, Frederic Henry proves to be a responsible person in work.
His responsibility is revealed through his attention to the operation of the machines. At the
beginning of the chapter IV, when Henry wakes up, he goes around to check machines:
“I addressed, went downstairs, had some coffee in the kitchen and went out to the kitchen
and went out to the garage”
“The machines were working on one out in the yard. Three others were up in the
mountains at dressing stations”
Henry asks one of the mechanics whether the machine have trouble or not?
For example:
“How’s everything?”
“What’s the matter with this machine?”
“What’s the matter now?”
The mechanic stops working and says that It still okay. All machines are used except one
“Not so bad. This machine is no good but others march”
“It’s no good. One thing after another”
“New rings”
And then, He leaves them working and checks everything very carefully:
“They were moderately clean, a few freshly washed, others dusty. I looked at the tyres
carefully, looking for cuts and stone bruises”
“Has there been any trouble getting parts?”. Henry asked the sergeant mechanic.

“No, Signor Tenente”
“Where is the gasoline park now?”
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“At the same place”
“Good”
And he goes back to the house when he knows “Everything seemed in good condition”
2.2. Frederic Henry – an optimistic man
Henry lives in the cutthroat front:
“The battery in the next garden woke me in the morning”
“The battery fired twice and the air came each time like a blow and shook the window and
made the front of my pajamas flap”
However, he still feels the beauty of the scenery surrounding him. The nature is beautiful
like a romantic picture:
“The gravel paths were moist and the glass was wet with dew”
He gets out of the bed when seeing the sun coming through the window. After that, He
goes to the window and looks out this scene. Though it is cold and wet, actually it is fresh and
vital. It completely differentiates from cutthroat front and makes him more comfortable and
peaceful.
He still feels happy and optimistic even it is an annoying and dangerous circumstance: “It
was a nuisance to have them there but it was a comfort that they were no bigger”
Besides, he also assumed that “This is the picturesque front” when Miss Barkly imagine
about a silly idea that the boy who is going to marry her will come to the hospital where she is
with wounds: “With a sabre cut, I suppose, and a bandage around his head. Or shot through the
shoulder.”
2.3. Henry’s attitude towards the war
Henry did not lose his believe in the war.
He confirmed:
“They won’t crack here.” “They did very well last summer.”

Herry did not lose his believe in the war, did not share Miss Barkley’s opinion of the war.
When Miss Barkley asked: “Do you suppose it will always go on?”, Henry said that :
“What’s to stop it”
All of these illustrations in this chapter prove that Henry is still optimistic and believes in
the war.
2.4. Henry’s attitude towards Miss Barkley
- The first impression of Henry to Barkley:
In chapter IV, Catherine Barkley appears beautiful in Henry’s eyes when she in the garden
with another nurse. “Miss Barkley was quite tall. She wore what seemed to me to be a nurse’s
uniform, was blond and had a tawny skin and gray eyes. I thought she was very beautiful. She
was carrying a thin rattan stick like a toy ridding-crop bound in leather”. Especially, Henry is
strongly impressed by her hair, “ We sat down on a bench and I looked at her – ‘ you have
beautiful hair’, I said”
In this chapter, Barkley is not only a beautiful woman but also a faithful sweetheart
towards her fiancé. The thin rattan stick in her hand is the souvenir of her fiancé. He died in the
battle of the Somme. It reminds her of good memory about love affair with her fiancé. She is
willing to do anything for him, even cut her hair. “I was going to cut it all off when he died.” “I
want to do something for him. You see I didn’t care about other thing and he could have had it

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all. He could have anything he wanted if I would have known. I would have married him or
anything. I know all about it now. But then he wanted to go the war and I didn’t know”.
In short, Barkley leaves Henry a deeply impression on the first meeting by the beauty and
the faith toward her fiancé.
- Henry is a sympathetic person to Miss Barkley:
This characteristic is revealed through the conversation between Henry and Barley in the
first meeting . He proves to understand the sad story of Barkley’s love affair. He listens to
Barkley attentively and sympathetically when she talks about her fiancé, “ It belonged to a boy

who was killed last year’, said Barkley – ‘I’m awfully sorry’, Henry said – ‘he was a very nice
boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed in the Somme’, Barkley said – ‘It was a
ghastly show’, Henry replied… ‘ I didn’t say anything’. In the context of chaotic war, it was very
precious when a person spends time and emotion listening to another person’s life story. In this
situaton it is more precious because although Henry and Catherine Barkley meet each other for
the first time, he already sympathizes with Barkley.

III. The value of content and art in the Chapter IV to set off the

characteristic of hero Frederic Henry
The work has potentially a positive sense about people in war. It‘s optimism praising
revolutionary heroism permeating with the spirit of freedom and humanism. The motive for
Henry’s participation in the war is the patriotic action fighting for the welfare of his country. He
is depicted here as one of many who are made to believe when the war breaks out that their
participation in the war is patriotism and that their sacrifice is not in vain. Through the novel,
comradeship as the only fine bright that war has brought in Hemingway’s novel. It seems to have
formed a deep tone of humanity left among the formidable destruction of battlefield scenes. In
this chapter, Henry out between the solidiers as a big brother. He is responsible and loving to
comrade. He cares about the broken machine, checks everything very carefully and goes back to
the house only when he knows “ everything seemed in good condition”. In addition, he is the one
while people go to sleep , having still voluntarily a wakeful night to prepare meal for friends.
Henry perhaps embodies the author. Hemingway past served as US troop in Italy as Henry.
Hemingway’s personal story to tell the story of the era and a generation of that era so the writer
focuses deeper into private life of the main character- Henry. Besides, internationalism and
human love exist steadily in Hemingway’s work. It’s the sentiment of the Italian soldiers and the
US ones each other on the movement. We can see this is the original, values of literary workshumanity never dies in the nature of the human soul.
In view of Hemingway, passionate love in war is real. It is seen as a cure to help people
escape from war to find happiness, to get to the place to rebuild their lives. Henry – Catherine’s
love story in the context of war cage is the love story of Romeo and Juliet in modern times.
Later, after deciding to leave the battlefield, Henry thinks of her as a finality that love is the

fulcrum but that wish does not come true. It shatters like a beautiful soap bubble, delicate and
full of illusion. With the author, romantic love may interfere well and survive in a deadly war.
Still there is room for silent love taking place and ending to condemn the brutality and extent of
war destruction
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The main character struggles for understanding through effective communication. In this
chapter, Hemingway uses the iceberg writing style artfully by short declarative sentences. In
fondness for Catherine , Henry reveals a vulnerability usually hidden by his stoicism and
masculinity. The quality of the language that Henry uses to describe her hair and her presence “
you have beautiful hair” or “ she had a tawny skin and gray eyes. I thought she was beautiful”
testifies to the genuine depth of his feelings for her. The author wants to hide to the depth of
meaning without writing too much and then we can understand Henry’s feeling and emotion with
very short and effective sentences The author also uses carefully selected words. He repeats
usage of his characteristic punctualities when describing events, people and things. In addition,
he eases usage of adjective, adverbs and focuses on nouns and verbs. The story, typical of
Hemingway style, depicts the hero as a person with a dangerous job who goes about it without
fear and accepts defeat with bravery and brushes off death around him. His short sentences
magnificently relay the potent emotion of the characters through well- placed imagery.
Therefore, nowhere is Hemingway’s uncanny ability to portray character emotion and
development more omnipresent than in A farewell to Arms.

CONCLUSION
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Critics generally agree that A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s most accomplished
novel. It offers powerful descriptions of life during and immediately following World War I and
brilliantly maps the psychological complexities of its characters using a revolutionary, pareddown prose style. Furthermore, the novel, like much of Hemingway’s writing during what were

to be his golden years, helped to establish the author’s myth of himself as a master of many
trades: writing, soldiering, boxing, bullfighting, big-game hunting. The novel is a story of
initiation in which the growth of the protagonist, Frederic Henry, is recounted. Frederic Henry
experiences the disillusionment, the hopelessness and the disaster of the war as well as a
passionate love. It is typically that Hemingway did not provide much in the way of physical
descriptions of Henry, however, Frederic Henry, Hemingway's "Code Hero" was described
through his deeds and action in the whole novel. Furthermore, because Hemingway allows
Henry to narrate the book, Hemingway is able to suffuse the entire novel with the power and
pathos of an elegy: A Farewell to Arms, which Henry narrates after Catherine’s death, confirms
his love and his loss.

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