A Farewell to Arms: Book 1

Quote 1

"You don't have to pretend to love me" (31)

Catherine is talking to Frederick after he has been away for three days. He didn't write to her while he was gone. When she asks him if he said he loved her before he left, he lied and said "yes". Catherine says that Frederick doesn't have to pretend to love her because she knows he's playing a game with her. Frederick denies this by saying that he truly loves her but Catherine just dismisses him. I chose this quote because Catherine actually knows what Frederick is doing to her. He sleeps with woman on his trips and goes to the prostitution houses. Because this story is told from a first person narration, we know what Frederick is thinking. Within the text, he says "I lied... I had not said it before...I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards" (30). Frederick doesn't actually love Catherine, and like he said, he's just playing a game. Because this story is a memory of Frederick, we see that in the beginning, he is just playing with Catherine. There may be a development or change in their relationship further in the story. 

Quote 2

"They are not organized to stop things and when they get organized their leaders sell them out" (71).

Hemingway implies that society functions like an inescapable war. We can see the complications of war through Frederick's conversations with multiple people in the war zone. Because the priest tells Frederick that the war won't stop for a long time, Frederick gets even more tired from the war. All of his conversations with people about war is about how bad it is and how much he wants the war to end. War is portrayed as something chaotic, hurtful, and harmful. Hemingway makes the connection between war and society when he states that, "There are people who would make war. In this country there are many like that" (71). Society in general, make this chaotic and messy war that inflects upon itself. The priest says that this war is inescapable because the soldiers are not ordered to stop and the leaders have total control over them. If the leaders, the people who "make war", do not want to end it, then the war will carry on.