SOURCE: “World Pessimism and Personal Cheeriness in A Farewell to Arms,” in The Flesh and the World: Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Vanderbilt University Press, 1971, pp. 109-26.
In the following essay, Watkins asserts that, in both theme and style, A Farewell to Arms sets up a conflict between abstract notions of patriotism and honor and the concrete world of individual choice.
