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The novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is an engrossing tale that shows the reality of love in war. The novel follows the love between Frederic Henry, a lieutenant in World War I, and the English Nurse Catherine Barkley. While Henry is serving in the Italian ambulance service, he becomes wounded and is relocated to the hospital where Catherine tends to him. As Catherine cares for him they swiftly fall in love and Catherine becomes pregnant but soon after Henry must return to his post. Because of the agita, the war is causing many characters, including Henry choose alcohol as a form of escapism to temporarily escape from his reality and find a short-lived meaning to his life. Escapism is a person’s way of finding a diversion from their life to momentarily escape from the reality they are living. Throughout A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry uses drinking to escape the emotional trauma the war was causing, his complicated love life, and the physical pain he was experiencing.
World War I was a major turning point in Henry’s life. The war left him feeling lost, empty, and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To fill this emptiness and cope with the trauma he is facing he turns to drinking. At one-point Henry says to Catherine “‘Wine is a grand thing,’ I said. ‘It makes you forget all the bad.’” (Hemingway 135). This shows us that one of the reasons Henry drinks is to temporarily forget all the pain and trauma the war has brought him. Although Henry believed drinking can numb all the emotional pain, he is facing we later see that this is not true. While looming the end of the novel Henry learns of the passing of Catherine and his child. Although Henry can try to drink away the pain, he cannot numb the feelings of grief he feels for his dead lover and child.
One of the toughest things a couple can go through is the death of a child. This is the sad reality that Henry and Catherine had to face moments after welcoming their child into the world. After receiving the news of their child passing Henry leaves the hospital to go get his supper. While he is there, we see multiple references to him drinking copious amounts of alcohol such as “I drank several glasses of beer” (Hemingway 281). After his super, he returns to the hospital where Henry is delivered more bad news. He learns of Catherine’s hemorrhage and is immediately filled with emptiness with him saying “Everything was gone inside me” (Hemingway 282). Despite all the alcohol he consumed it is not enough to numb the pain of the dreadful news. Henry was never taught how to properly deal with grief and emotional distress, so he chose alcohol as his coping mechanism.
Henry not only chose alcohol as his coping mechanism in times of emotional anguish but also physical. The first time we see Henry’s relationship with alcohol is while Henry is in the hospital recovering from his leg injury. Henry is found paying a staff member to sneak him in alcohol to help mitigate the pain. Although the alcohol helps alleviate the short-term pain, he eventually ends up drinking himself into an even more painful condition of jaundice. He is eventually wrongly accused by Miss Vaugh Campen of doing this on purpose with him saying “‘She says I’ve drunk myself into jaundice so as not to go back to the front.’” (Hemingway 126). This shows us that although alcohol can help temporarily diminish the pain, he is feeling it eventually causes more problems for him such as giving himself a liver condition or being sent back to the front early.
Although Fredric Henry believes that alcohol can help him escape all his problems, he ultimately learns this is not true. He could not drink away the pain of losing the love of his life Catherine or his only and first child. Henry used alcohol to escape his emotional trauma, complicated and unconventional relationships, and the physical pain he was faced with.
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