Hemingway's Pragmatism: Truth, Utility, and Concrete Particulars in A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

Critics have often noted Hemingway's aversion to theory and abstraction and his penchant for the practical and the concrete, but Hemingway scholarship has yet to invoke the pragmatism of William James as an explanatory framework for these issues of meaning and truth, of abstract universals and concrete particulars. Because it privileges the latter over the former, Jamesian pragmatism is particularly useful for an understanding of A Farewell to Arms , helping to explain why Frederic's oblique first-person narration focuses primarily on physical sensations. Pragmatism's emphasis on utility also helps us to understand the lying and role-playing that complicate the romance between Frederic and Catherine Barkley. Finally, while pragmatism illuminates A Farewell to Arms in particular, it is an important interpretive framework for Hemingway's fiction in general.