Skip to main content

Book Review: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

The First World War I is on. In the Alps Italy is busy stopping Austro-Hungarian Empire to merge with the German army. Italian army is aided by America, Britain, France and Russia. Among many soldiers, one is Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American, posted in Italy; his main job is to oversee a group of an Italian ambulance drivers.

 
Rinaldi is not only a surgeon but his friend and roommate as well. One evening he takes Frederic Henry to a hospital to introduce him to two British nurses: Catherine Barkley and Helen Ferguson. Henry and Catherine discuss war-related aspects, and she tells about her fiancé’s loss, which was killed in France the previous year. In a matter of a few meetings, they become lovers. Initially Frederic hesitates to involve in a serious relationship but it happens gradually.

During duty one night Henry and his fellow ambulance drivers hide across a river bank, from the opposite bank Austrian troops begin bombardment, as a result Henry wounds in the leg. He is immediately transported to an American hospital in Milan, where Catherine has already been transferred. They meet once again. While recuperating Henry and Catherine spend the summertime together, but before the summer is over he is send back to the front.

At the front Austrian army gains the support of the German army and they break into the front; as an upshot, Italian army retreats. Henry and his team pick up two Italian sergeants for help and begin moving slowly with the troop. When they left the trail and come off road, their vehicles stuck due to rain and mud. The two sergeants refuse to help them. This act angers Henry and he fires at them both. Henry and his team leaving the main convoy begin walking along the Tagliomento River. One of his colleagues dies in a misfire and the other runs to surrender to the Germans. Henry being alone and after discovering that the military police is killing the soldiers who retreated, jumps into the river and swims downstream. He walks the plain and boards the train in disguise and manages to reach Milan to find Catherine.

But she and her friend Helen are on vacation in the resort city Stresa. To search them, he travels to Stresa on a train. He finds them both but at the same time gets the hunch that he will be arrested soon for leaving the front in the middle of battle. Therefore, Henry and Catherine leave the town and escape to a neutral country Switzerland, in a boat. Catherine is pregnant. After spending a pleasant winter, they come down in a hotel in Lausanne. When she goes into labour, Henry takes her to a hospital where their son is stillborn and Catherine dies of hemorrhage.
Labels:
Location: New Delhi, India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
68 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
64 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more