Comparing For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to...

Hemingway and the Struggle of Masculinity in WarMen in A Farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell TollsThe name of Ernest Hemingway has long been associated with the idea of a strong, stubborn man who is very socially inept. In both A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, we are introduced to an extremely cold, unfeeling character and we see how they evolve from one type of man into another. Frederic Henry and Robert Jordan are both Americans serving overseas in some conflict, Henry being in World War I and Jordan in the Spanish Civil War between the fascists and communists, and they originally see these conflicts as a way for them to prove their manhood. They soon realize that war is not meant for all people and that it should not†¦show more content†¦They are faced with tough choices and are forced to reevaluate their beliefs. In Arms, Henry is wounded during the Italian retreat and is sent back to a hospital for recovery. There, he sees his helplessness as a sign of his weakness and feels that he should not have been hurt. After recovery, he returns to the front but becomes trapped with few other men from his battle group. After the men refused to help him in their struggle to make it back, Henry shoots them at point blank range in an effort to encourage the men to work harder. After this, Henry himself is almost executed after being mistaken for an Austrian. His near-death experience during his escape caused him to reassess his beliefs because he is beginning to see that men are not meant to try and slaughter each other. He flees the army and gives in to his desires to see Catherine, a sign that he is going back on his belief that a man should never show any emotion. Henry travels to Switzerland with Catherine and tries to live out a normal life there, but now he is a confused man struggling with internal demons about his actions: The war seemed as far away as the football games of some one elses college. But I knew from the papers that they were still fighting in the mountains. . . . (Arms 277). Henry still remembers the men that he left behind at the lines and still wishes to beShow MoreRelatedLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 Pagesbeen significantly revised. If you would like to suggest changes to the text, the author would appreciate your writing to him at dowden@csus.edu. iv Praise Comments on the earlier 1993 edition, published by Wadsworth Publishing Company, which is owned by Cengage Learning: There is a great deal of coherence. The chapters build on one another. The organization is sound and the author does a superior job of presenting the structure of arguments. David M. Adams, California State Polytechnic