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.

After describing every nation fighting in World War I as “cooked,” a British major in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms tells Frederic Henry “Good-by” cheerfully and wishes him “Every sort of luck!” Henry reflects on the contradictions in the major: “There was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness.”¹ The major's world view epitomizes the theme and the style of this novel and even provides a good perspective on all Hemingway's fiction. The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls offer the greatest...