A Farewell to Arms Themes

A Farewell to Arms Themes

Love

Love is dangerous in A Farewell to Arms. In the middle of a war zone, anyone can die at any moment, breaking the hearts of the loved ones left behind. Yet the characters in the novel risk it all, t...

Warfare

Set mostly in Italy during World War I, A Farewell to Arms bemoans the horrors of war while giving a human face to those involved in it. The characters work ceaselessly to hold on to their hopes fo...

Men and Masculinity

A Farewell to Arms shows men fulfilling what are often consider traditional male roles, or even stereotypes – they drink hard, fight hard, play hard, and commit heroic acts of bravery. Howeve...

Women and Femininity

There aren’t very many women in A Farewell to Arms, but the ones we do meet are unforgettable characters. In many ways they fulfill traditional female gender roles, or even female stereotypes...

Courage

The characters in A Farewell to Arms push bravery to the limits as they try to do the right thing in a world breaking apart before their eyes under the pressures of war. They are even brave enough...

Language and Communication

The characters in A Farewell to Arms struggle for understanding through effective communication, and we struggle right along with them. The novel shows that in times of war this struggle is intensi...

Foreignness and the Other

A Farewell to Arms often neutralizes difference springing from differing political and geographic identities. At times, when one group of men is firing on another group of men, such differences sur...

Drugs and Alcohol

You could almost get drunk just reading this book. There’s booze on almost every page. But it’s not just for show. The novel has some surprising views on alcohol, which provoke us to ex...