How is Conflict presented in A Farewell to Arms & Birdsong? – Alex McInally

“War is delightful to those who have had to experience to it”[1]

A Farewell to Arms, written by Earnest Hemingway and Birdsong, written by Sebastian Faulks, both present conflict in a number of ways. Just a few of these are physical, psychological, and a conflict of masculinity.

Physical conflict is presented in A Farewell to Arms in a few ways. The protagonist, Fredric Henry is a stoic character that portrays little to no emotion at the start of the novel. He skims over the physical devastation, saying that “only seven thousand died of it in the army,”[2] this understatement demonstrates how little value was places upon soldier’s lives at this time and that at this point seven thousand was nothing compared to the massacre that was the rest of the war. This links to John Mullan view that “the soldiers at the front have learnt not to be shocked, not even to be emotional, at any particular person’s death.”[3] People affected by war, such as Henry were so used to being surrounded by death that it seemed like nothing to them and could be so easily be forgotten.

Over 20 million soldiers were injured in World War One, and Henry, as an ambulance driver and one of the injured, would have witnessed this first hand. When he is in the ambulance after his knee is injured, Hemingway uses gruesome imagery when Henry “..felt something dripping. At first it dropped slowly and regularly, then it patterned into a stream.”[4] When it is realised that the man in the stretcher above haemorrhaging, panic is shown by neither Henry nor the driver. Henry simply moves out of the way of the dripping and after the man dies, he is removed from the ambulance. As the men do not appear to be panic stricken or show any emotional turmoil, the reader feels as if this is not an exceptional circumstance and that this sort of death is the norm. Sebastian Faulks himself regognied the struggle that soldiers faced and that said “it should be a matter for regret that the contribution of veterans was not recognised earlier.”[5] Similarly to Hemingway’s use of gruesome, descriptive language Faulks uses morbid imagery in Birdsong to show the physical devastation of the War. When the soldiers are under attack in the tunnel, Jack sees “part of Turner’s face and hair still attached to a piece of skull rolling to a halt.”[6] This quote is pertinent because the soldiers know the consequences of war, and therefore do not become attached to fellow soldiers, “though of the stench of his clothes, the lice along the seams, the men he was frightened to be friend in case their bodies came apart the next day in front of his eyes.”[7] This really does show the fast pace of war and that any moment a life can be taken.

Another conflict is the psychological devastation. Henry has psychological conflict with his love for Catherine Barkley. He says at the start of the novel that he “lied”[8] about loving her. Later on, he changes his views and says that he does, even if it is somewhat reluctantly “God knows I had not wanted to fall in love with her. I had not wanted to fall in love with anyone.”[9] After he has an affair with Catherine, he stops going living such a wild life and visiting prostitutes. He realises that his current life cannot fulfil his needs, and therefore relies of Catherine for this fulfilment. It could even be argued that he becomes slightly obsessed with her, which makes her death even more devastating to him. His devastation is shown by Hemingway in the use of pathetic fallacy, with the iconic scene of Henry stoically walking out into the “rain”[10]with Hemingway using pathetic fallacy, as he so often does. Henry has a constant inner conflict between love and war, which he eventually settles by deserting the war and moving to Switzerland with Catherine. When Stephen visits the prostitute his own psychological issues are shown, “he turned the knife so that the blade was in his palm, then ran the handle of it down between her breasts and over her thighs. He did not know what he was doing.”[11] The fact the Stephen is unaware of his actions clarify his psychological issues and is as if he’s gone into autopilot. Also, the girl does not seem alarmed by Stephen’s behaviour gives us the ideas that it must have been common amongst soldiers and that many men must have been affected by the war in the same way that Stephen and Weir were; by the end of the war 80,000 cases of shell shock, which is psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to war. Bessel A. van der Kolt describes sensation of his body uncoupling “rushing out of itself… I felt myself slide back”[12]by saying “many trauma survivors report that they are automatically removed from the scene; they look at it from a distance or disappear all together, leaving parts of their personality to suffer and store the overwhelming experience.”[13] Henry’s recall of his injuries sound much like he has been affected by shell shock, a psychological devastation of war. The fact the soldiers get such an intense pleasure from killing really allows us to see that the soldiers have mental issues. They want to kill the “Boche”[14] with such a passion, that they dehumanised the Germans and focused on the kill. This is not the norm for the average person, it is abnormal behaviour and therefore the soldiers are mentally unwell.

Alcohol is a motif in A Farewell to Arms, with the characters constantly drinking. This drinking shows the psychological conflict as the men feel the need to drink away what they have witnessed. Henry even manages to develop jaundice as a result of prolonged alcoholism. Catherine Barkley knows that Henry drinks; she says to him “wouldn’t you like a drink darling? I know a drink always makes you feel cheerful.”[15] Catherine seeing Henry’s dependence on alcohol and it bothering her shows us that this was the norm for soldiers at the time. Rinaldi also drinks, he constantly offering Henry a drink, before they go to meet Catherine and Helen Ferguson he says “Perhaps we should have a drink.”[16] Rinaldi drinks himself into a stupor and develops syphilis later in the novel. This shows that Rinaldi has been severely affected by the war so much that he relies on alcohol and going to the “whorehouse”[17] to feel any pleasure. Alcohol clearly works as a numbing agent for the men in both A Farewell to Arms and Birdsong, as is shown when in AFTA Henry is injured and the doctor instructs an orderly to “bring him a glass of brandy.”[18] This gives a sense of alcohol numbing a physical pain, but the men use it to numb psychological pain. Hemingway also struugled with alcoholism, his much quoted advice to others was “write drunk; edit sober.”[19]Faulks presents psychological conflict in the novel through alcoholism much like Hemingway. Weir is shown as a soldier who is heavily affected by the war as he is constantly drinking, he is portrayed with “his eyes looked wild and red with whisky. The brownish stubble on his cheeks and chin was surely the result of more than one mornings missed shave.”[20] It is clear that Weir is psychologically damaged; he has no close friends apart from Stephen, who he heavily relies on. Weir has no other connections in his life, when he writes the letter to his parents it is detached and when he returns home on leave he feels misunderstood he says “I tried to explain to them what it is like… my father was bored… I would especially like a five-day bombardment on their street.”[21] Weir clearly resents his parents for their lack of understanding. Psychological conflict is also prevalent in the thrill that the men seem to get from killing. Many soldiers were affected psychologically, with prolonged exposure to warfare. The men see taking another life as nothing. This is shown when Henry and Bonello kill the two sergeants that refuse to help them get the car out of the mud, later they brag about the event as it is an achievement. Bonello says “I killed him… I never killed anybody in this war, and all my life I wanted to kill a sergeant.”[22] The men clearly feel no remorse and this shows their psychological damage.

A conflict of masculinity is also raised in A Farewell to Arms. Rinaldi is a flamboyant, metrosexual character who constantly addresses Henry as “darling”[23] and kisses him on the cheek whilst he is in hospital.  Rinaldi defies the stereotypical ideals of a soldier, who would be expected to be masculine and strong. This view coincides with those of Simone de Beauvoir, she believes “one is not born a woman, one becomes one.”[24] This tells us that gender roles are not set, and that a person can be male and feminine, just like Rinaldi. A crisis in masculinity in Birdsong is also shown in the form of homosocial love. Working class males are often connected to masculinity. Andrew Tolson believes that, “manual labour is suffused with masculine qualities and given certain sexual overtones… The toughness and awkwardness of physical work and effort…takes of masculine lights and depths and assumes significance beyond itself.”[25] Jack Firebrace is the ultimate working class character, he posses all the qualities traditionally associated with men. Jack feels this homosocial love for Shaw, as is shown when the men take their baths and Jack notices Shaw’s “huge back, with the muscles slabbed and spread out across his shoulders”[26] he also presents homosocial love for Evans when he is “following Evan’s crawling buttocks”[27] in the tunnel. This love defies masculinity as it is not what would have expected in the army or the stereotypical working class male. Catherine Barkley is also a conflicting character in regards to masculinity. She is very independent, which would have been unusual during World War One. Catherine constantly changes her mind about where she stands with Henry. When they first meet she is withdrawn and tells him that she “grew up”[28] with her fiancé, who she was engaged to for “eight years.”[29] Understandably Catherine is upset about the loss of her fiancé, who died in the Battle of the Somme. This is possibly foreshadowing by Hemingway, with Catherine herself and her unborn child dying at the end of the novel.  Seeing this trauma helps explain Catherine’s strange behaviour when the two first meet, later on Catherine sees her behaviour as odd, and Henry admits she was “crazy girl.”[30]As the story continues Catherine finds that she does indeed love Henry and she becomes besotted with him. Catherine constantly asks for Henry’s approval and if he “loves”[31] her. This change of heart is very contradictory and it becomes clear that Catherine is too experiencing inner conflict, much like Henry, and indeed Stephen, whith his inner conflicts towards Isabelle.Catherine challenges gender roles as is shown by her willingness to have a child out of wedlock. When Henry asks Catherine to marry him, he is shocked by her refusal, explaining that he thought “all girls wanted to get married.”[32] Roger Whitlow argues that female characters like Catherine are “too often merely adopted a posture towards the women held by the male characters.”[33] Since the narrative is written from the Henry’s view, the reader sees Catherine primarily through his eyes. For Henry, a young male soldier in World War One, Catherine is seen at first to be a sexual conquest. But as their relationship grows, Henry continues to focus on Catherine and her beauty, not the fact that she has changed his views on love and war. Catherine is a foil for Henry, she is his opposite in terms of strength and love.

The psychological, physical and masculine conflicts link A Farewell to Arms and Birdsong together effectively. They both allow us to explore the mind of a soldier, any conflicts they experience and any conflicts they see.

Word count: 2,224

 

Bibliography

Beavoir

Erasmus

Faulks

Furness

Hemingway

Morrison

Tolson

Van der Kolt

Whitlow

 

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[1] Erasmus, Desiderius

[2] Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms (Warwickshire: Arrow; New addition: 1994) page 8

[3] Mullan, J. The Guardian

[4] Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms (Warwickshire: Arrow; New addition: 1994) page 52

[5] Furness, H. The Guardian

[6] Ibid, Faulks, page 124

[7] Faulks S. Birdsong (London: Vintage: 1993)

[8] Ibid, Hemingway, page 27

[9] Ibid, Hemingway, page 75

[10] Ibid, Hemingway, page 256

[11] Ibid, Faulks, page 284

[12] Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms (Warwickshire: Arrow; New addition: 1994) page 52

[13] van der Kolt, B. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (New York: Infobase publishing: 2009)

[14] Ibid, Faulks, page 339

[15] Ibid, Hemingway, page 109

[16] Ibid, Hemingway, page 17

[17] Ibid, Hemingway, page

[18]Ibid, Hemingway, page 51

[19]Morrison, B. The Guardian

[20] Ibid, Faulks, page 284

[21] Faulks, S. Birdsong (London: Vintage: 1993) page 294

[22]Ibid, Hemingway, page 161

[23]Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms (Warwickshire: Arrow; New Edition: 1994) page 56

[24]Beavoir, S. The Second Sex (London: Vintage Classics; new edition: 1997)

[25] Tolson, A. Limits of Masculinity (London: Tavistock Publishing: 1977)

[26] Faulks, S. Birdsong (London: Vintage: 1993) page 142

[27] Ibid, Faulks, page 122

[28] Hemingway, E. A Farewell to Arms (Warwickshire: Arrow; New Edition: 1994) page 10

[29]Ibid, Hemingway, page 10

[30]Ibid, Hemingway, page122

[31]Ibid, Hemingway, page 28

[32]Ibid, Hemingway, page 115

[33]Whitlow, R. (Connecticut: Greenwood publishing group: 2003)