SLSL: "Rain" and "Arms"

[Tim Strzechowski]

For what it's worth ...


Regarding the rain image, which Papa strongly equates with the doom and gloom of Frederick and Catherine's relationship:

"A number of critics have shown that rain imagery plays a crucial role in conveying the sense of doom which is at the core of A Farewell to Arms (Cowley xvi). Passages in the novel contain phrases like "wet dead leaves" (Hemingway 163).2 and sequences such as "He looked very dead. It was raining." As Frederick falls in love with Catherine, the rain_death association becomes even more pronounced. Rather than the hope and thankfulness with which biblical authors greeted falling rains, Catherine is overcome with fear: "I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it" (126).3 Her fears prove justified, but before Catherine dies, Frederick has some harrowing experiences of his own."
http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/Vol.%206.2/6.2Schweitzer.htm


Also see 

"Water provides a way to escape in the novel A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway uses rivers and lakes repeatedly as an escape device. Fredric Henry, while being captured by the 'battle police' of the Italian army, sees two other officers killed. At that point, he decides to make a run for it and he jumps into the Tagliamento River. [ ... ]
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~jjhart/onyx/text/hemingway-ftoa.html



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