hemingway’s depiction of world war i in a farewell...

Pakistan Journal of American Studies, Vol. 23, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring & Fall 2005 55

Hemingway’s Depiction of World War I

Hemingway’s Depiction of World War I in AFarewell to Arms*

A.W.Mansoor Abbasi

AbstractThe main focus of this study is to make a detailed analysis ofErnest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, with the followingobjectives: to establish how he condemns war and militarism asbrutal, cruel, needless, and fed by the false illusions of glory. Usinghis personal, first hand experiences in World War I Hemingwaydemonstrates how love, in contrast to war, is a positive andaffirmative force that has the ability to transcend hatred andviolence. This work also compares and contrasts A Farewell toArms with some of the other main literary writings in Englishabout World War I. Its goal is to provide some insight, in socio-political and historical terms, about World War I, and to analyzeits impact on Western society and culture in general.

A great deal of literature was written in the twentieth century by menof high intellect, lofty ideals and sound wisdom in order to show thatwar is a futile and destructive pursuit. In English and Americanliterature, both in poetry and prose, even if we restrict ourselves towritings about the two World Wars we can list names of great writerssuch as Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Siegfried Sassoon,Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Norman Mailer and many others whowrote about this theme. Even from the German side, Erich M.Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) ranks as a classic

* This research paper is based on the author’s M.Phil. (American Studies) thesissubmitted to the Area Study Center for Africa, North and South America, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, 2005.

56 Pakistan Journal of American Studies, Vol. 23, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring & Fall 2005

Abul Wafa Mansoor Ahmad Abbasi

anti-war novel. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929) isalso in this list of classics, a tale of World War I, and a love story ofconsiderable romantic charm. Indeed, this novel is a unique and specialwork, which enjoys popularity even today all over the world and ithas also been filmed a number of times.

The earliest roots of World War I (1914-1918), the modern world’sfirst major international conflagration, rest in a number of closelylinked factors. First, economic pressure and population growth inEurope combined with rapid industrialization created a situation whereintense competition existed for limited scarce resources. This led toan increased competition for overseas colonies, a competition, whichhad already begun in the 19th century, but now intensified. This inturn led to a very complex system of imperialistic alignments betweenEuropean powers. This new dispensation brought with it in the earlytwentieth century,

. . . a threat of more serious conflict, of an armedstruggle among the great powers growing out of theirclashing activities and claims. The tension alreadyexisting among the European nations was intensifiedby Jingoism, colonial rivalry and commercialcompetition; the result was the natural increase inarmaments which in turn increased fear and suspicion.The consequences of this spirit of jealousy were to beglobal, on a scale hitherto unimagined.(1)

Thus, the outbreak of a general European war in 1914 ultimatelyinvolved all the major nations of the globe. Britain sufferedapproximately 947,000 deaths and 2.12 million other casualties;Germany had 1.8 million dead soldiers and 4.2 million wounded;France lost some 1.38 million people and Italy about 460,000.(2)



There was also huge economic loss to all concerned. Britain’seconomic losses amounted to 7,800 million dollars; Germany’s 8,400million; France’s 5,400 and Italy’s 2,700. (3) Other countries all overthe world also suffered huge losses in terms of men and financialresources as this bloody war went on for four years until it ended onNovember 11, 1918. People all over the world were thoroughlyexhausted by this conflict and were relieved by its conclusion andthe universal feeling was that, “the first war had been the war to endwars ... a future war seemed unthinkable.”(4)

Both victors and vanquished had suffered material losses as alreadyindicated but the conflict also left behind a very dark legacy of fear,insecurity and bitterness. From the miseries of war the world in generaland the European countries in particular emerged into a desperateera of political turbulence, economic confusion, fear of future conflict,deep psychological wounds, all of which contributed to the generalcollapse of traditional, social and moral standards and values.(5) Notonly Europe, but the whole of Western civilisation underwent radicalchange.(6)

Europe’s cultural life was deeply affected by the War and its aftermath,heightening the collapse of traditional values and doubts in old notionsof faith and order. In intellectual terms, the initial of time of anxietyand pessimism of the years between 1914-1930s was captured bySpengler’s The Decline of the West (1918). The issue of moral integritywas raised among the intellectuals by Julien Benda’s La Trahisondes Clercs (1927), where he challenged many of the conventionalprinciples of faith in contrast to Communism.(7)

In the fine arts, traditional styles disintegrated because they no longerhad much relevance to the bitter experiences of the new generationwho wished to find new forms of expression to relate/depict their



world-view. Artistic experiments such as Symbolism, Cubism,Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Abstractionism nowemerged.(8) In the field of literature, great European and Americanwriters in different genres eloquently presented the post-wardevastation and disorientation. These include works such as T.S Eliot’sThe Waste Land (1922), Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Searchof an Author (1920), Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), D.HLawrence’s controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928),Brecht’s play Threepenny Opera (1929), Thomas Mann’s The MagicMountain (1924) as well as the writings of existentialists such asJean Paul Sartre and Franz Kafka. The Theatre of the Absurd alsobegan to emerge as a force in modern drama at this time. In the UnitedStates of America, the poetry of Ezra Pound and the fiction of F.Scott Fitzgerald need no introduction.

Ernest Hemingway represents the best of American talent andinspiration combined with European experience and ethos, and isvery much part of this list of post World War I writers. The artists andwriters of this era had been seriously traumatized by the experienceof the war and its aftermath and tried to give expression to their horrorin creative forms. They played an important role in highlighting manyof the themes of the period that expressed their fears and concerns.

Many of these themes of decline, loss of hope and faith, insecurity,meaningless existence, fear of the future, and so on — are recurringmotifs in the majority of the literary works of this period. Some ofthem can be seen reflected in Hemingway’s works in the post-WorldWar-I scenario. In A Farewell to Arms, however, since it is a novelabout a war in which the author participated, the focus remains moreon the actual experiences of the conflict itself.

Hemingway’s own life has become something of a “modern myth”(9)11



so that it is not easy to separate its facts from the fiction that surroundshis biography. He is one of those writers who are considered largerthan life, through their actions and writings developing a public imageor persona which is full of glamour and which continues to interestand move us even now. Indeed, even those people who have neverread his works are fascinated by his adventurous life and exploits.

It is probable that domestic circumstances were responsible for theearly development of Ernest Hemingway’s outdoor, nature-orienteddiscipline or code. While his childhood was quite pleasant and happy,his parents were temperamentally incompatible. His father Dr.Hemingway was quiet, reserved, outdoors loving, and subject to fitsof depression, genetically inherited. Ernest’s mother was cultured,sophisticated, fond of high society and somewhat overbearing inmanner. Often, to escape her harsh criticism, Dr. Hemingway wouldseek escape in the nearby forests and countryside, usuallyaccompanied by young Ernest. Thus from this early period, the childcould note the disharmony and differences between his parents, andbecause he was close to his father, come to dislike his mother’sattitude. To some extent, especially in his youth, his negativeimpression of his mother was to color his relationships with otherwomen, and also resulted in his inability to remain happily marriedfor long to any of his wives.

Otherwise physically robust but with some weakness in eyesight, theyoung Ernest Hemingway was good at sports but not particularlybrilliant in academics. He was good in English, fond of reading allmanners of stories and in writing, but was generally indifferent toother subjects. On graduating from high school his father wantedhim to proceed to college for higher education but Ernest had otherideas. He wanted to learn to write, or go off to join the forces, asWorld War I was already underway and American soldiers were



participating as allies of Britain and France. When his parents didnot grant him permission to do so, he left home and joined the staffof the Kansas City Star as an apprentice reporter, in 1917. At theStar, he had to write about everything that went on in the city i.e.,reports on crime and police beats, on hospitals, the train station etc.In this process he had to report on stolen goods, accidents, deaths,the arrival of famous people through the Union Station and so on.This was good basic training in observation, simple and directreporting and in recording statements and conversations. These skillswould later become the basis for his own and unique style.

By late 1917, Ernest Hemingway was eager to go to Europe toparticipate in the conflagration of World War I, especially whenfighting had reached a climax. He was irritated by the monotony ofhis existence as a reporter and wanted to face the real hazards of war.He was already attempting to write short stories and planning to makeliterary writing his full time career. At this point, Hemingway stillhad a very rosy picture of war and soldiers. He tried a number oftimes, to enroll as a volunteer soldier but was rejected repeatedly dueto his defective left eye. Finally, he applied for a position as a RedCross ambulance driver when they asked for volunteers, and we learnthat “Ernest was among the first to step forward.”(10) He was thusaccepted in the US Army and by June 1918, assumed his duties onthe Austrian Front in Italy. This was the beginning of ErnestHemingway’s introduction to the reality of war, in what is commonlyknown as the ‘war to end all wars.’ He was now exposed to its brutalityand meaningless suffering in a sudden and shocking manner.

In July 1918, a shrapnel shell hit Hemingway during bombardmentby the Austrian artillery, injuring his knee and foot. In this injuredstate he displayed unusual bravery and endurance in rescuing an Italiandriver and carrying him to safety. Hemingway was decorated with



military honors. “Ernest was the first American to be wounded inItaly during the First World War and all the newspapers in the Chicagoarea gave prominence to his story.”(11) The story about Hemingwayhad made him more famous than any story penned by him during theFirst World War.

Meanwhile, Hemingway had been shifted from the field hospital to aproper civil hospital in Milan. Hemingway was now being acclaimedas a war hero at a time when he was mentally reevaluating the notionsof war and recoiling from it in disgust. Something else, which occurredin Milan added to his rejection of war, i.e., he met and fell in lovewith Agnes Von Kurowsky, a volunteer nurse in a military hospital.Agnes herself had suffered the loss of her fiancé in the war, and wasbitter about it.

What was a pleasant interlude for Agnes was a deeper involvementfor young Ernest, who felt deeply for her and proposed marriage butAgnes refused the offer very politely. In a couple of months,Hemingway also got over this romantic involvement and the incidentwas closed at one level. However, in his fertile and creativeimagination the incident evolved and combined with other factorsand fused with his war experiences to form the basis of a wonderfultale of war and love, which was to eventually become the great novel,A Farewell to Arms (1929).

A brief discussion of some of Hemingway’s major works relevant toour context of World War I and its aftermath and the way he treatsthese subjects, would be useful. Thus, Fiesta, A Farewell to Armsand some of his earlier stories, written uptil or before 1938, are brieflytreated here. Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) published in 1926, is thefirst major work to be considered. It was Hemingway’s first importantnovel. It certainly has significant undertones to be noted. When it



was first published, the book received great acclaim and wasenthusiastically bought by readers in Europe and America.

The main protagonist of Fiesta was Jake Barnes – an expatriateAmerican working as a journalist in Paris in the 1920s, who receiveda wound in the First World War which made him impotent. Now, heis caught up in a frantic, wild social life, in an effort to drown hissorrow and depression resulting both from this accident and from theterrible memories of the war. A number of his acquaintances are shownincluding a naïve and somewhat foolish young American, Robert Cohnwho did not fight in Europe during the war but is trying to ‘pretend’and ‘feel’ like those who did. Also, we have the heroine, Lady BrettAshley, a beautiful woman who has been in love with Jake for sometime but his condition has permanently frustrated their relationship.

Other characters in Fiesta also suffer from various personal problemsand are similarly are trying to lose themselves via excess andextravagance. When Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, Brett Ashley andsome others travel to Spain to attend the bull fighting festival inPamplona, all the hidden tensions, frustrations, anger and instabilitybursts out into emotional chaos. In the end, when Brett Ashley hashad unhappy affairs with both the fake Robert Cohn and charismaticbullfighter, Pedro Romero, she meets Jake again in Madrid and theyboth realize the similarity of their condition, how they have been‘destroyed’ by the war in physical and emotional terms. Each isembittered by the thought of the happiness that has been denied thembut tries to bear this tragedy patiently.

The novel Fiesta has obvious autobiographical undertones. LikeHemingway, Jake Barnes fought in Italy and was wounded there,although Hemingway recovered from his less serious wound. BrettAshley is in some ways like Agnes Von Kurowsky, whom Hemingway



met in Milan during his hospital stay, loved briefly but could notmarry.

Fiesta is cynical and bitter in tone. The escapism and desperation ofthe people of Hemingway’s generation, those who fought in the war,or were in one way or the other affected by it, and even those whowanted to fantasize about it (like Robert Cohn) is very moving. Ithighlights the emotional, if not physical, scars and wounds of theentire Western civilization plunging into a collective madness, anorgy of sex, violence, alcoholic nightmares and moral collapse. WhatHemingway is essentially suggesting is the lack of direction andmeaning to life during that period; where faith and belief and oldernotions of love, courtesy and gentility had lost credibility to a largeextent and pre-war values, standards and traditions no longer applied.

Out of some 49-50 short stories written by Hemingway until 1938,there are eight that deal directly or indirectly with World War I. These,published together in the collection, Ernest Hemingway: The ShortStories (1938), include: “A Very Short Story,” “Soldier’s Home,” “InAnother Country,” “Che ti dice la Patria?” “A Simple Enquiry,” “NowI Lay Me,” “A Way You’ll Never Be,” and “A Natural History of theDead.”

“A Very Short Story” is indeed quite short, only about two pages inlength. It seems to be more like a semi-autobiographical note than astory, based on Hemingway’s own brief romance in the Milan hospitalduring World War I. Hemingway changes the venue from Milan toPadua, both in Italy, and he does not give the name of the maincharacter, the wounded soldier who represents Hemingway himself.Agnes becomes the nurse, Luz. This story simply narrates how thesoldier and nurse fell in love and wanted to get married. However,after some time the narrator returned to the United States and got a



letter from Luz saying that she could not marry him, as she wasromantically involved with an Italian army officer and realized thather brief affair with the narrator had only been “a boy and girl love,”not a mature one. This story is very close to Hemingway’s realexperience and he also received a similar letter from Agnes VonKurowsky and it is a simple, sad statement about a temporary war-time romance that does not last long. As this story was written earlier,around 1922-23, we can assume that the idea was adapted anddeveloped into the more complicated and fuller account of the FredericHenry – Catherine Barkley affair in A Farewell to Arms.

Another Hemingway short story, “Soldier’s Home,” does not dealwith war directly but with the impact of war on soldiers returning tocivilian life. The main protagonist/character, Krebs, is a soldier whohas returned to his home in Kansas, after fighting in World War I.Other soldiers have also returned and after the early welcome of thesoldiers by the public, they are now trying to settle down to a ‘normal’life, with work and domestic responsibilities. Krebs has a very hardtime because he has been through many hardships and shocks, andseems to be caught up in his own psychological problems. This makeshim inactive and passive. He just sits at home and plays with hislittle sister and is not ready to go out to work. He becomes increasinglyintroverted and is no longer on speaking terms with his father whowants him to take up a job and family responsibilities. His motherloves him but cannot understand him or his problems and she askshim to pray, to which he replies that he cannot pray or believe in anygod. He also tells her, finally, that he does not love anyone any longerand has lost the capacity to love. He leaves home in the end, to takea reporter’s job in Kansas City (something Hemingway also did) andthus breaks his family ties forever. This is a very strong story, on animportant theme, that of the difficulties of soldiers in trying to achievenormalcy after their war experiences, when they no longer feel or



believe in anything.

“In Another Country” is one of Hemingway’s most famous stories,describing a brief episode in a military hospital in Italy, during WorldWar I. There are a number of wounded soldiers recuperating in thehospital. Two of them become friends and often talk to each other, anameless narrator (representing to a large extent Hemingway) and anItalian major whose hand is badly crippled. One evening they aretalking, and the major is very sad. He asks the narrator what he willdo after the war and the narrator answers that he will return to America,try to get a job and get married. At this the major becomes very angryand tells the narrator not to get married, as that would be a big mistake.The narrator cannot understand the major’s emotional outburst. Later,the narrator finds out that the major loved a woman and wanted tomarry her but was reluctant to do so while he was still serving in thearmy. He later married the woman he loved as he thought that nowthey could at last have a normal domestic life, but shockingly, hiswife developed pneumonia and died suddenly that very day. The storyreflects another dimension of hopelessness – that of the misery ofFate, or in Hemingway’s view, the “biological trap” in which allhumans are caught. No one can escape death. This story captures anepisode that Hemingway changed later and placed in A Farewell toArms in the form of Catherine’s death at the end of the novel, leavingFrederic Henry to bear the loss quietly.

“Che ti dice la Patria” is an Italian phrase which can be interpreted as“What does the country say/give to you?” It is a story set in the periodafter World War I, when two American tourists (the narrator and hisfriend, Guy) are traveling in Italy. There is a lot of poverty, miseryand sadness after the war. Restaurants are very expensive and manypeople have turned to illegal activities just to survive, such as thewomen who are running a brothel. The fascist party under Mussolini



is on the rise and the tourists feel that it has created a very oppressiveatmosphere in Italy. The story is a simple political comment on theperiod between the two World Wars.

“A Simple Enquiry” represents a very disturbing side of war; thestory is a short one, depicting a scene of World War I in Italy, at somemilitary camp. An Italian major tells his adjutant to send his youngorderly, Pinin, to his room. When Pinin comes, the major makes hima homosexual proposition but the orderly is frightened by this shockingadvance. The matter comes to nothing but both Pinin and the majorknow that the matter has not really ended. The major can abuse hisauthority to compel Pinin to accede to his demands, without therebeing any way out for the poor orderly. Hemingway here points tothe existence of perversion and abuse of military authority, quitecommon in such a brutal situation. There is no evidence of any kindto show if Hemingway himself faced any homosexual experienceduring World War I. However, from his conversations with friendsabout his war experiences we can understand that such activities werequite common among the soldiers, far away from the company ofwomen most of the time, and under continuous psychological stress.(12)

In “Now I Lay Me,” we have the narrator and another soldier, calledJohn resting on the floor of a house on the Austrian front. They areresting before a battle and talk about all the girls they have knownand loved and what they will do after the war is over and they returnhome. It shows how, during even the times of war, the thoughts ofmen are focused on girls and home and the simple joys of normal,civilian life. Similarly, in “A Way You’ll Never Be,” we meet anAmerican officer, Nick Adams (who appears in other stories too asrepresenting Hemingway), discussing various matters with someItalian officers during an offensive in the war. Many descriptions are



given of dead and wounded soldiers, and of the obscenity of theirlives in the trenches and on the march. We also get a general pictureof the inefficiency and mismanagement of the forces and the resultanthardships for troops.

“A Natural History of the Dead” is also an observation made by thenarrator of the story, on all the death and misery of soldiers and theanimals such as horses and mules used by the army during war. Attimes they are compared in such terms that we cannot differentiatebetween them anymore and it seem as if Hemingway does thisdeliberately to show that war is not a romantic or glorious businessbut a very sordid affair. This last story closes with the depiction of adirty field – hospital and the shouts of a wounded soldier, as thedoctors try to amputate his limbs. It is a shocking scene.

Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel A Farewell to Arms is central to thispaper. While the earlier Fiesta took up the post-World War I condition,in a very bleak, almost existentialist light, A Farewell to Arms takesup the actual experience of war – the First World War, specifically –based on Hemingway’s own experience in this world conflagrationand offers a somewhat less bleak prospect.

Lt. Frederic Henry, the hero, is an American working as a volunteerambulance driver (like Hemingway) on the Austrian front, in Italy.He is, like most soldiers, was lost in a life of violence, automaticreactions, and wild living to temporarily forget the dangers of hissituation. When he is wounded and taken to hospital in Milan (againlike Hemingway) he meets the English nurse Catherine Barkley (acharacter largely based on Agnes Von Kurowsky) and they graduallyfall in love. This, of course, is imaginative and not autobiographical.Catherine’s love begins to change Frederic Henry and full awarenesscomes to him when he returns again to the front and realizes the



false, cruel and meaningless nature of war in comparison with thepositive qualities of love. At this point he decides to make his ‘separatepeace’ and bids ‘farewell’ to the arms of war to seek the arms of hisbeloved Catherine. He deserts the army, joins Catherine, and theyboth escape into a life of brief happiness in Switzerland (a politicallyneutral country) where she becomes pregnant with his child. This isthe end of that loving interlude, Catherine dies while having a cesareanoperation and their child is also born dead. Frederic is left alone, nowbidding ‘farewell’ to Catherine’s arms, too. While, of course, theending of this novel is especially tragic and it seems that fate conspiresagainst human happiness - that people are biologically ‘trapped’ -there is also a positive side to this tragedy: Frederic Henry has learntthe value of love and the worthlessness of war.

Hemingway was an eye-witness of the world wars and,therefore, with his artistic skills, he depicts [the]morbidity and ferocity [of war] in an unrivaled andunsurpassed manner. He says, “What really happenedin action, what the actual things were which producedemotion that you experienced” [signifying that]personal experience is very essential for producingan effective work of art. (13)

This statement holds quite well for Hemingway’s art. Hemingway’sown statements, and those of some of his colleagues and close friends,reinforce the above view with reference to the origins of the novel AFarewell to Arms (henceforth referred to as AFTA). For instance, thewriter A.E. Hotchner quotes this statement by Hemingway when askedabout how he came to write this novel:

All the other writers who were sort of in my mob [inParis] there, had already written books about the war,



and like the last girl on the block who hasn’t married,I felt my time to write a war book had come . . . sowhen I finally got around to doing my war novel, Ifound that the only country left [not used as locale]was Italy . . . none of them knew anything about thewar there. (14)

So, we see that (i) Hemingway had an idea of writing a war novelbased on his war experiences; (ii) that many other contemporarywriters also wrote about their experiences, on various fronts of thewar, with varying success; (iii) that Hemingway was the only one ofthese authors to have knowledge and experience of the Italian front;and (iv) he subsequently based his novel, AFTA, in this locale orsetting. Thus, it would be pertinent to say that AFTA is not simply arecord of personal experiences but more than that: it is an imaginativedepiction of the war, on a particular front, as experienced byHemingway and others, and turned by Hemingway’s art into a creativeexpression, or symbol, of war in general.

Hemingway has also been “castigated by some critics” (15) for hisgreat concern with violence and depiction of violent action in hisnovels and other works e.g., of bullfighting, big game hunting, fishing,fighting etc. – since many of these critics thought he was onlyportraying an immature, common place attitude without touching ondeeper levels of truth about the human condition. However, Matthewdefends him on the grounds that, “it is not a criticism that can possiblybe directed against A Farewell to Arms. Fishing, drinking and watchingbullfights might by considered too superficial to be the stuff of tragedy,but love and death are not parochial themes.”(16)

War was a very important subject to Hemingway because it comprised“a fictive apotheosis regarding both subject matter and narrative



structuring,”(17) Hemingway stressed in a letter to the fellowAmerican novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Like me to write you a little essay on the Importanceof Subject? Well, the reason you were so sore youmissed the war is because war is best subject of all. Itgroups the maximum of material and speeds up theaction and brings out all sorts of stuff that normallyyou have to wait a life-time to get it.(18)

AFTA is thus a story of wartime society, where “hopelessness,disillusionment, pollution, diseases, sexual perversion, moraldegradation, pessimism, purposelessness, spiritual barrenness andwild bouts of drinking prevail as legitimate offspring of war.”(19) Itis Hemingway’s testament and expression of the ‘reality’ or ‘realities’of war in general and World War I in particular, and one of the finestnovels every written in this genre, at any time. For instance, the novelopens with that description of hopelessness and desolation, which isnow considered a classic, memorable passage of modern literature:

. . . in the bed of the river, there were pebbles andboulders, dry and white in the sun . . . troops went bythe house and down the road and the dust they raisedpowdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of thetrees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year.. . . (AFTA, 1)(This and all subsequent references quoted parenthetically inthe text are from the Triad – Grafton edition of A Farewell to

Arms, pub. London, 1985).

We are reminded of the draught and sterility of modern civilizationby this passage in the manner as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. However,



Eliot’s poem, the promise of rain does not come with any salvationeither, for the ‘renewal’ of the earth and of the inhabitants inHemingway’s cruel world, at war in AFTA, there seems to be no hopeor salvation with simple formulae like “da, da, da” as Eliot believes;indeed, the rain brings further disaster and misery and suffering. “Atthe start of the winter came the rain and with the rain came the cholera. . . and seven thousand died of this in the army.” (AFTA, 8)

Catherine Barkley is also afraid of the rain, and she says “some timeI see me dead in it” (AFTA, 93), which is symbolic - even prophetic -of the way she will die in the end; thus “the Rain becomes a conscioussymbol of disaster” (20) in AFTA. It keeps falling dismally throughoutthe Caporetto retreat, it falls when Catharine is in labor in the hospitalin Switzerland and is having a baby, it is falling when she dies and isstill falling when Frederic Henry walks away alone in it, having biddenfarewell to his love.

In the early part of the novel when Frederic Henry returns back to thefront after his leave, Rinaldi reminds him of the morbid reality ofwar and some of its side-effects apart from the casualties of the battle,“since you are gone, we have nothing but frostbites, chilblains,jaundice, gonorrhea, self inflicted wounds, pneumonia and hard andsoft chancres.” (AFTA, 13) This description a far cry from the popularimage of war and soldiers, generated by military propaganda, wherea lot of fake glory and heroism is shown. A similar incident that AFTAdepicts is that of the man suffering from a painful hernia, yet anothermeans of unveiling the brutality and meaningless adventure of war,completely disregarding any human concern. Frederic Henry asksthe man, “Why don’t you go to hospital?” to which he replieshelplessly, “they won’t let me” (AFTA, 29). Small problems do notmatter to the military authorities and there is no respite for ordinarypeople with their complaints and suffering. All that they need is men:



to fight, despite their aliments, and to become cannon fodder.

Hemingway depicts a horrifying, realistic picture of the shelling-sceneand its impact on the minds of ordinary soldiers who had to face it:

Through the other noise, I heard a cough, then thechuch chuch then there was a flash, as a blast-furnacedoor is swung open and a roar that started white andwent red and on and on in a rushing wind. I tried tobreathe but my breath would not come and felt myselfrush bodily out in the wind. I went swiftly, all of myself and I knew I was dead and it had been a mistaketo think you just die. (AFTA, 44)

Only a person who has actually experienced the sensations of terrorand near-death in a war can write like this, with such accurate realism.The pathos reaches another height, in the continuations of this themewhen Passini is hit badly and, on the verge of death, moans in agony,“Oh! mama mia, mama mia, oh Jesus shoot me, Christ shoot memama mia. Oh purest Mary, shoot me. Stop it. Stop it, stop it. OhJesus lovely Mary stop it. Oh, oh, oh” (AFTA, 44). There is no gloryin dying like this and the readers feels utter disgust and pity.

Hemingway exposes the savagery of war very effectively. Ourrepulsion for war increases when we read vivid descriptions such as:“I felt something dripping regularly, then it pattered into a stream . . .the man on the stretcher over me has a hemorrhage” (AFTA, 49). Inthe same way, we have accounts of the losses of life, spoken verycasually by officers in the club, “the Italian had lost one hundred andfifteen thousand men on the Bainsizza Plateau and San Gabriele . . .they had lost forty thousand on the Carso besides” (AFTA, 98). Arethese men puppets? Toys in a game? One cannot register such losses



in one’s mind. These instances convince us of the “author’s scrupulousobservation of the facts of war.” (21) Bennett comments, “I seriouslyquestion whether this description has been equaled . . . no flush andno fever in this novel but the sane calmness of a spectator whocombines deep sympathy with breath and impartiality of vision.” (22)

Finally, we have the dramatic handling of the Caporetto retreat, wheneven the soldiers are fed up and rebellious, calling the conflict a“Rotten war,” “a bloody war” and that “there is nothing worse thanwar.” The details here all emphasize the mean sordid and antiheroicaspects of war and, “. . . such discussion of the moral implications ofit as the readers hear from the characters all confirm the inherentlyevil impression of the institution.”(23) When the Allied retreat starts,it brings increased suffering and humiliation, especially for thedeserters. A comprehensive passage follows, revealing the truth ofthe retreat. When a man is shot by the military police, Passini says,

Now they have a guard outside his house with bayonetand nobody can come to see his mother, father andsister and his father loses his civil rights and cannoteven vote. They are without law to protect them.Anybody can take their property. (AFTA, 40)

This is echoed in another similar statement, “ . . . they come afteryou. They take your sisters” (AFTA, 40). Thus, the powerless desertersare treated very badly indeed. Henry and his fellow deserters suffervery greatly in their own flight and face many obstacles. They loseAymo and Bonello gives up their company. When Henry sees theshooting of the lieutenant colonel, his disgust reaches a climax –“the questioners had all the efficiency, coldness and command ofthemselves of Italians who are firing and are not being fired on.”(AFTA, 61) When the execution command is given for the lieutenant



colonel, the commanding officer of the military police makes a typical,trite reproach, “it is you and such as you that have let the barbarianson to the sacred soil of the fatherland” (AFTA, 161), all of whichsounds truly empty and verbose.

The military police single out officers from the retreating columnsand accuse them of deserting their men; some are shot and sometaken away. Henry can no longer face the thought of being away fromCatherine who is constantly in his thoughts as a solace and retreat, asa haven of peace in this general chaos. When he is stopped at acheckpost Henry is scared that he will be mistaken for a spy. Heescapes by jumping into the Tagliamento River and floating awayunder the cover of a log of wood. After a tiring and hazardous journey,he reaches Milan, to find that Catherine and her friend Miss Fergusonhave gone to Stresa. He follows her there and is reunited, and theyboth plan to escape from Italy and the war into neutral Switzerland.

Henry’s plunge proves to be a milestone. This “Plunge into the floodedTagliamento has . . . the significance of a rite. By this ‘baptism’Frederic is reborn into another world.” (24) At this point, havingbidden ‘farewell’ to arms (of war) he goes in search of Catherine’ssoothing arms, to whom he must bid his second ‘farewell’ in duecourse. Carlos Baker has this to say about the farewell theme withreference to Cowley:

Malcolm Cowley saw the title as symbolic ofHemingway’s [own] farewell to a period, an attitudeand perhaps to a method also. His earlier books hadvirtually excluded ideas in favour of emotions. Nowthere were signs of a new complexity of thoughtdemanding expression in subtler and richer prose. (25)



On joining Catherine at Stresa, Henry has “made a separate peace”(AFTA, 173) and “tried to forget that war” (AFTA, 173). Thisinterweaving of two contrasting themes, love and war, is certainly afine achievement of Hemingway’s, handled very finely too. However,some critics felt that this weakened the story and reduced itscoherence:

The weakness of the love, if it has one, springs fromthe author being in two minds about his purpose inwriting it. He seems to be undecided whether he iswriting a description of war as his hero saw it, or thelove story of his hero. The heroine is a nurse, or a sortof nurse, a heroic character. The love story is quite asfine as the war story, but a divided aim is bound tohave some deleterious influence. In A Farewell toArms, either the military background should have beenless, or there should have been more of sexual passion,or the two should have been more cunninglyintermingled . . . Alternate layers of war and love arescarcely satisfactory. (26)

Robert Penn Warren, however, rejects this criticism with the argumentthat:

A Farewell to Arms is a love story. It is a compellingstory at the merely personal level but it is much morecompelling and significant when we see the figuresof the lovers silhouetted against the flame streakeddarkness of war, of a collapsing world, of ‘nada’. Forthere is a story behind the love story. That story is thequest for meaning and certitude in a world that seemsto offer nothing of the sort. (27)



In stylistic terms, we could say that Hemingway ‘foregrounds’ thelovers against the background of war and this creates a stark contrast,which is deliberate and effective on the writer’s part. Moreover, onecan atone Henry from any guilt because Hemingway here chooses anentirely different morality for his hero and heroine, first, because lifeis everything, and afterwards there is only Nada, nothingness; so thewill to struggle to fight, to endure and to survive in the face of allodds, is important. Also, war has changed everything, in all spheresof life. Pre-war standards and norms no longer apply.

Throughout the novel Henry’s love for Catherine Barkley developsand evolves in a regular process, along with his contempt and hatredfor war. His attitude towards Catherine in this beginning of AFTAwas exploitative, “. . . since he is bed ridden, she must come to him,a practice which symbolizes his role then and later as an acceptor,not a giver, of services.” (28) Henry himself confesses that, “Godknows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted tofall in love with anyone. But God knows I had.” (AFTA, 70) Catherine,by contrast, was, from the onset, completely sincere in her love. Shewas willing to negate her very identity for him – “I want what youwant. There is not any me any more. Just what you want” (AFTA,79); and again, “I’ll love you in the rain, and snow and in the hail andwhat else is there?” (AFTA, 93). As Suhail says, “The manner in whichthe intensity of their passions is brought out is wonderfullyunambiguous and sharp.”(29)

In Switzerland, at last, both Henry and Catherine feel they can beunreservedly happy together, able to forget the war and await thebirth of their child in peace. Their peace is now about to be shattered.Henry rushes Catherine to the hospital when the time of birth comesbut complications develop. After twelve hours labor, she is still unableto give birth. The doctor reluctantly decides on a caesarian operation.



Henry realizes the intensity of their love during this time of stressand thus, also “learns the true definition of the sentiment of love.”(30)It is almost identical to the definition earlier given to Henry by thepriest, “when you love, you wish to do things for, you wish to sacrificefor, you wish to die for.” (AFTA, 57) Though Henry does not reallybelieve in God, he now starts to pray automatically for Catherine’slife. (AFTA, 234).

By this time the baby come out, it is stillborn. Catherine ishemorrhaging very badly. Henry’s prayer is futile and desperatelychildish in Hemingway’s world, for “No messiah comes to saveher.”(31) We are, ultimately, all “biologically trapped” and no matterwhat, whether in war or peace must die. That is the inevitable end.Henry is left alone, by her side, and “it was like saying goodbye to astatue.” (AFTA, 236) In this lament, so restrained and understated,there lies great sorrow, which “opens like an abyss.” (32)

The novel AFTA is essentially set against the background of WorldWar I. The depiction of the war covers most of it and it impinges intoevery life and in most of the thoughts and activities of the characters.The accounts of the war as depicted by Hemingway are very realisticbeing largely based on Hemingway’s own experiences and/or on thoseof other people close to him during the First World War in Italy. Eventhe ‘parallel’ action of the Fredric Henry-Catherine Barkley love affairis related to the need to escape the clutches of war, and all its misery,suffering and destruction, in order to make a separate peace, and tofind a meaningful existence in the general chaos generated by thewar.

At the same time AFTA is also a love story, Hemingway’sromanticizing of a small experience of his own, which now becomes,under the skill of his pen, a universal tale of tragic love under



extremely hard conditions and danger. This aspect of the story, thatof love amidst the scenes of war, is no less important and is wellfore-grounded. It does not seem a ‘weakness’ at all, as Bennettclaimed, but a strength of this classic work lifting it beyond just awar-narrative, to the level of an epic of human emotions, hopes andstruggles; it can be said to be comparable in its own way to Tolstoy’sgreat epic, War and Peace (1865-69). This love story also serves aspecial purpose, that of highlighting or accentuating the importanceof love as a force, an “antidote” to the brutality and violence of war;even though the reality of death cannot be escaped but love can turnsomeone as wild and reckless as Lt. Frederic Henry into a caringlover, an individual who becomes disgusted with war, makes hisseparate peace and enjoys a brief moment of happiness in the arms ofhis beloved.

AFTA is, therefore, a finer work compared to Hemingway’s earlierwritings, in terms of maturity of thought as well as stylistic, technicaldevelopment and is probably a better representation of the largerconcerns of war and love, vis-à-vis his other, later great novel, ForWhom the Bell Tolls (1940). In AFTA, the much larger, more seriousconflict of World War I cannot be escaped at any cost. War is alwayspresent, in the novel even when the lovers have escaped toSwitzerland, its echoes are there. Indeed, the violence of the warcomplements or heightens the brief, happy love of Frederic Henryand Catherine Barkley before tragedy engulfs them. There is a sort ofirony in the fact that the lovers are able to escape the (supposedly)larger threat, the more obvious one, to be only stricken down by asmall, sudden one. However, that is not entirely unexpected. InHemingway’s literary world, death is always around the corner,waiting to attack and ‘break’ or ‘kill.’

AFTA, is Hemingway‘s special war novel and it is also more than



that, a story of love amidst the agonies and suffering of war. In aletter to A.E Hotchner Hemingway himself referred to AFTA as “. . .myRomeo and Juliet.” What did Hemingway imply? Essentially that hewas taking Shakespeare as a standard in producing his owncomparative story of love amidst strife. (33) Indeed, in terms of boththe modern tragedy of love in an ironical atmosphere and in the settingof the story in Italy we can draw many comparisons betweenHemingway’s and Shakespeare’s tales. However, AFTA has somethingmore to say in the context of modern conflict than Romeo and Juliet.

Much of recent criticism on AFTA has dealt with addressing some ofthe deeper or more complex dimensions of the novel. Scott Donaldson,in his introduction to New Essays on A Farewell to Arms (1990) positsthat such was the impact of this work that “it was difficult to placethis new kind of writing . . . Farewell violated conventional standardsin various ways and roused objections . . . It used the vulgar languageof the troops. It depicted an illicit love affair in basically sympatheticterms [and] it presented a disturbingly vivid account of the ItalianArmy’s collapse in 1917.”(34)

In other words, in AFTA Hemingway challenges many of the existingnotions and conventions of his time, when some of the traditionalstandards of the pre-war era still prevailed, in taking up a taboo subjectopenly and forcefully. Today many of such shocking incidents mightnot seem shocking at all. In Hemingway’s own time they were majorleaps away from a conformist attitude in literature and marked a newstyle and voice for the public throughout Europe and America. Severalwriters of that period were also experimenting with new and shockingrealism and virtually changing western literature in the bargain. Asthe title of the novel itself implies, at one level it offers a statementabout war; and he has little respect for the false impressions and clichésabout patriotism and military glory, which proved to be an illusion in



face of harsh reality. In a significant scene Frederic Henry commentsthat,

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred,glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. Wehad heard them, sometimes standing in the rain . . . sothat only the shouted words came through, and hadread them, on proclamations . . . there were manywords that you could not stand to hear and finally onlythe names of places had dignity. Certain numbers werethe same way and certain dates and these with thenames of the places were all you could say and havethem mean anything. Abstract words such as glory,honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside theconcrete names of villages, numbers of roads, thenames of rivers, the numbers of regiments and thedates. (AFTA, 133)

This is one of the strongest condemnations of militarism in modernliterature. Ousby writes:

Hemingway turns in contempt from phonyabstractions and this movement always from militaryvirtues describes both the hero’s and books movementaway from the world of war to the world of romanticlove. Henry is finally sickened by the cruelty andmuddle of the fighting . . . his own wound remindshim of the death and he yearns for a more satisfyingand less lonely life. He finds that in his romance withCatharine. To begin with he is callous and casual butafter the war has sobered him, his attitude growsserious. Love, as he says, is the only way in which



man can overcome his loneliness. (35)

We can, like others before us, further compare AFTA to another classicnovel of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich MariaRemarque as both novels are accounted to be the best depiction ofthe experiences of soldiers in the First World War. Remarque, ofcourse, wrote his account from the German perspective. Hemingway,on the contrary, writes from the Allied perspective. Both these novelswere published in the same year, 1929. Both caught the publicimagination immediately and forcefully through their vivid andhorrifying accounts of war. However, in the case of All Quiet on theWestern Front the novel is set entirely in the trenches. There is hardlyany romantic interest, beyond some minor encounters between thesoldiers and some prostitutes, only highlighting further the frustrationand loneliness of men without the company of normal women orrelationships. The scenes of war and fighting, the condition of themilitary hospitals, the diseases and suffering, the obscenity andbrutality of the troops in life or death conditions are as powerfullydepicted as in AFTA. Perhaps the two major factors differentiatingbetween these novels are (a) Hemingway’s use of much lighter andeffective language and (b) more importantly, the love dimension. Itis in fact the Frederic Henry-Catherine Barkley relationship with allits implications that ultimately makes AFTA the more complex andricher work.

Two other works of English literature, which one would like to brieflymention here are Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927)and T.S.Eliot’s poem The Waste Land (1922). The reason is that boththese works deal with the effect of World War I and its aftermath invery distinctive ways. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf uses astream of consciousness style and focuses on the lives of the Ramsayfamily and those of some of their friends in order to indirectly show



how the Great War impacted ordinary lives. Within her analysis eventhe moods, seasons and landscapes undergo a drastic change afterthe war. An old world, an old society within its own standards, valuesand traditions and with a genteel, leisurely attitude towards life, isforever altered and destroyed. Places and times, which once hadmeaning and relevance, are abandoned. The entire world is changed,families are broken and left bereft, minds are affected and onlymemories of older times now remain like yellow leaves in autumn ordecaying photographs in an old album. Woolf, in her own way,expresses the post World War I condition of not only England but allof Europe, and we get the feeling that old yellow Europe is now deadand its civilization cannot be revived and made green. In The WasteLand, T.S. Eliot concentrates on the spiritual crisis emerging in postWorld War I Europe as a result of the breakdown and collapse of thetraditional values of Western civilization. For Eliot all the signs – thewild excess, decadence, disbelief, immorality – are symbolic of thesterility, and death of the old world and all that it represented. ForEliot the only solution to the condition of civilization lies in returninginto the shade of religious belief and practice.

Of course, To the Lighthouse and The Waste Land cannot be properlycompared to AFTA. However, AFTA in both its description of thehopelessness of soldiers in existential nightmares and in its doomedand momentary love affair points the way towards the kind of societyand people that are depicted by both Woolf and Eliot. In the case ofEliot’s The Waste Land, it would be very interesting to trace out thecommon influence that the poet and scholar Ezra Pound exerted onshaping some of the ideas of both T.S.Eliot and Ernest Hemingway.Indeed, according to Hotchner, Pound’s influence also extended toanother famous American writer James Joyce. Pound developedcertain very fixed ideas about the post-war condition which hesymbolically linked to the mythological readings into works such as



Fraser’s The Golden Bough, whereby certain images of sterilitybetween the classical Waste Land and the modern Waste Land couldbe effectively compared. (36) Hotchner further goes on to say, quotinga conversation with Ernest Hemingway, that:

This was a curious and exiting revelation, explainingin some way as he did, some of the processes whichreappear as symbols in A Farewell To Arms, ... whichhe had imbibed from his association with Pound ...some of which association were also refined in todifferent form, by Eliot and Joyce. (37)

Certainly Hemingway used some of symbols and images differentlyfrom either T.S. Eliot or James Joyce. For example, the image ofdraught combines with that of a perilous rain in contrast to Eliot’ssymbolism. In the case of Eliot the Waste Land is sterile and the rainof faith and belief can enliven it. In Hemingway’s view, the rain bringsno relief. Indeed, torrential rain is as bad if not worse than drought.Hemingway does not posses the faith that offered hope or solutionsto Eliot. His only hope and belief is in the human ability to endure, toshow “grace under pressure.”

All in all, if we take AFTA as a work of art, we can say that in itHemingway portrays what is probably the best and most realisticaccount of World War I in modern fiction and which has comparativeresonance with other works of fiction and poetry at that time. Further,he gave a special dimension to this timeless classic by showing theimportance of love as a human emotion that, to some extent, mightbe considered a temporary escape or ‘antidote’ to the brutality ofwar. This love enables Frederic Henry to become a stronger and betterperson even out of the tragedy of Catherine’s death, because he haslearnt the value of courage, selflessness and fortitude in the face of



the inevitable biological trap. Through Catherine’s example FredericHenry also grows and develops from a reckless young man, into amature ‘code hero.’ This evolution is at the very center of whatHemingway has tried to pass on to us in this novel.

In a sense, Hemingway’s depiction of war in AFTA as well as otherworks is emblematical. In this respect we can agree with Walsh that,“Only a handful of American novelists, perhaps John Dos Passos,James Jones, and Norman Mailer, can rival the scope of ErnestHemingway’s fictional study of war.”(38) It would not be wrong tosay that along with the above-mentioned American writersHemingway has taken war generally in symbolic mode. Among humanexperiences the practical experience of war has always been a veryvivid one, historically from the time of Homer’s Iliad down to presenttimes. Writers have chosen to write about war and to give harrowingaccounts of it. In the 20th century the experiences of World War I andWorld War II proven to be especially fertile in providing material forliterature and arts, highlighting the savage aspects of warlike conflict.

In this perspective, Hemingway’s emblematical or symbolic use ofthe various tragedies that war brings upon people is especiallynoteworthy. He does not just portray war as savage or brutal but assomething even more – in fact, an experience that alters people andsocieties in many complex ways. One might venture to say thatHemingway takes his depiction of war (especially in AFTA) beyondthe confines of literary narrative form, into the dimension of socialreality. While, of course, he is not a social critic in the conventionalsense, his war writings including AFTA do present a great deal ofthought provoking material about the reality of war shorn of its falseglamour and glory. The depiction of the lives of men in hard situationsis one of the basic tenets of Hemingway’s art and in AFTA he combinesthis with unique and sensitive handling of battle on the Italian front.



It would be pertinent to say that Hemingway underwent special kindsof personal experiences in Italy during World War I. These stimulicombined in Hemingway’s creative imagination to form the basis ofa wonderful story of love and war, to eventually become one of themost memorable novels ever written in that setting or at that time. Asa writer and as an artist, Hemingway remained intensely committedto maintaining creative integrity or honesty, so he portrayed the waras realistically as possible and he also similarly depicted an ‘honest’love under war conditions, without all the falsity and sentimentalhypocrisy that writers usually depict when writing about such a theme.Very simply, AFTA is Hemingway’s war novel as well as his Romeoand Juliet, that is, his unique interpretation of the universal themesof love and war.

End Notes

1. W.K. Ferguson and G. Bruun, A Survey of EuropeanCivilisation (Boston: Houghton. Mifflin Co., 1962), 768.

2. William L. Langer, An Encyclopedia of World History(London: George G. Harrap & Co., n.d), 951.

3. Jack Watson, 20th Century World Affairs (London: JohnMurray Pubs., 1974), 9.

4. Ibid, 1.

5. Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1996), 927.

6. Ibid, 953.



7. The Frankfurt School exerted a huge influence opened in theearly 1920s and closed by the Nazis in 1934. It sheltered acircle of intellectuals in the field of philosophy, psychologyand sociology. Figures such as Max Horkenheimer (1895-1973), Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Karl Mannheim(1893-1947) discussed the effects of modern science andtechnology and their relationship with human affairs, ibid,953-954.

8. The names of some of the major artists of this period includeMarc Chagall (1899-1985), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Paul Klee (1879-1940) andSalvador Dali (1904-1989).

9. A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (New York: Granada, 1966),15.

10. Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York:Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1969), 43.

11. Ibid, 48.

12. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 198.

13. Muhammad Suhail, “A Farewell to Arms: A Critique of War”Unpublished M.A. (English) dissertation (InternationalIslamic University, Islamabad, 1999), 24.


15. Suhail, “A Farewell to Arms,” 25.



16. T.S. Matthews, in J. Meyers (Ed.) Ernest Hemingway: TheCritical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982),122.


18. Carlos Baker (Ed.). Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters,1977-1961 (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1981), 176.


20. Malcolm Cowley (Ed.) Introduction to the PortableHemingway (New York: The Viking Press, 1945), 46.

21. Ibid, 128.

22. Bennett, in Meyers, 132.


24. Robert Penn Warren, “Ernest Hemingway,” in Bloom (Ed.)Modern Critical Views Ernest Hemingway (New York:Chelsea House Publishers, 1985), 59.

25. Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 204.

26. Bennett, in Meyers, 132.

27. Warren, in Bloom, 54.

28. Dedria Bryfonski (Ed.) Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol.13 (Michigan: Gale Research Company, 1980), 278.




30. Ibid, 31.

31. Ibid, 32.

32. Mann, in Meyers, 147.


34. Scott Donaldson (Ed.), New Essays on A Farewell to Arms(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 3.

35. Ibid, 239.


37. Ibid, 58.

38. Jeffrey Walsh, “Emblematical of War: Representation ofCombat in Hemingway’s Fiction,’’ in The American ClassicalRevisited: Recent Studies of American Literature, P.C. Kar,and D. Ramkrishna, eds. (Hyderabad: ASRC, 1985), 417.

Contributors

NANDINI SAHUis Assistant Professor English, IACR, Godavarish Nagar, Orissa, India.

MEHNAZ ZAINABis Lecturer Department of English, Federal Urdu University for Arts,Science & Technology, Islamabad.

ISHMEET CHAUDHRYis Lecturer in English, Gobind Singh College for Women, Chandigarh,India.

ABUL WAFA MANSOOR AHMAD ABBASIis Protocol Officer to Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

FARIDA YOUSAFis Associate Professor, Department of English, Bahauddin ZakariyaUniversity, Multan.

WASEEM ANWARis Professor, Department of English, Forman Christian University,Lahore.

NORMA. MEDINA DIAZis Visiting Lecturer, Department of Spanish, National University ofModern Languages, Islamabad.

SHAHIDA ASGHARis Head of Department, English Department, University of Wah.

SAADIA BEIGis Lecturer, Department of International Relation, KarakurumInternational University, Gilgit.

RUKHSANA QAMBERis Director, Area Study Centre for Africa, North & South America.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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