An Analysis of Whether Henry in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is a Hero or Not

Abstract

Hemingway, one of the greatest American novelists in the 20th Century, is known for the depiction of tough guys. But in his A Farewell to Arms (1929), he portrays the main character, Frederic Henry as a deserter. Henry dreams of being a hero, but he doesn’t become one. In this essay, we will analyze the question that whether Henry is a hero or not from three perspectives. First, as a commander, he is not a traditional American hero, as he has failed in his mission and lost the lives of his soldier due to his arbitrary command. Second, he refuses to think and does not use his conscience to make moral decisions, so he cannot be called a philosophical hero. Last, his inability to confront the trauma of war, his avoidance of the past and reality, and his apparent calmness to preserve his dignity as a man, make him not a Hemingwayan code hero.