American Literature books summary

Holden decides to go to Ernie's, a nightclub in Greenwich village that D.B.

used to frequent before he went to Hollywood.

Chapter Twelve:

In the cab to Ernie's, Holden chats with Horwitz, the cab driver. He asks

what happens to the ducks in Central Park during the winter, but the two

get into an argument when Horwitz thinks that Holden's questions are

stupid. Ernie's is filled with prep school and college jerks, as Holden

calls them. Holden notices a Joe Yale-looking guy with a beautiful girl; he

is telling the girl how a guy in his dorm nearly committed suicide. A

former girlfriend of Holden's brother, D.B., recognizes him. The girl,

Lillian Simmons, asks about D.B. and introduces Holden to a Navy commander

she is dating. Holden notices how she blocks the aisle in the place as she

drones on about how handsome Holden has become. Rather than spend time with

Lillian Simmons, Holden leaves.

Chapter Thirteen:

Holden walks back to his hotel, although it is forty-one blocks away. He

considers how he would confront a person who had stolen his gloves.

Although he would not do so aggressively, he wishes that he could threaten

the person who stole them. Holden finally concludes that he would yell at

the thief but not have the courage to hit him. Holden reminisces about

drinking with Raymond Goldfarb at Whooton. While back at the hotel, Maurice

the elevator man asks Holden if he is interested in a little tail tonight.

He offers a prostitute for five dollars. When she arrives, she does not

believe that he is twenty-two, as he claims. Holden finally tells the

prostitute, Sunny, that he just had an operation on his clavichord, as an

excuse not to have sex. She is angry, but he still pays her, even though

they argue over the price. He gives her five dollars, although she demands

ten.

Chapter Fourteen:

After the prostitute leaves, Holden sits in a chair and talks aloud to his

brother Allie, which he often does whenever he is depressed. Finally he

gets in bed and feels like praying, although he is "sort of an atheist." He

claims that he likes Jesus, but the Disciples annoy him. Other than Jesus,

the Biblical character he likes best is the lunatic who lived in the tombs

and cut himself with stones. Holden tells that his parents disagree on

religion and none of his siblings attend church. Maurice and Sunny knock on

the door, demanding more money. Holden argues with Maurice and threatens to

call the cops, but Maurice says that his parents would find out that he

spent the night with a whore. As Holden starts to cry, Sunny takes the

money from his wallet. Maurice punches him in the stomach before leaving.

After Maurice is gone, Holden imagines that he had taken a bullet and would

shoot Maurice in the stomach. Holden feels like committing suicide by

jumping out the window, but he wouldn't want people looking at his gory

body on the sidewalk.

Chapter Fifteen:

Holden calls Sally Hayes, who goes to the Mary A. Woodruff School.

According to Holden, Sally seems quite intelligent because she knows a good

deal about the theater and literature, but is actually quite stupid. He

makes a date to meet Sally for a matinee, but she continues to chat with

Holden on the phone despite his lack of interest. Holden tells that his

father is a wealthy corporation attorney and his mother has not been

healthy since Allie died. At Grand Central Station, where Holden checks in

his bags after leaving the hotel, he sees two nuns with cheap suitcases.

Holden reminisces about his roommate at Elkton Hills, Dick Slagle who had

cheap suitcases and would complain about how everything was bourgeois. He

chats with the nuns and gives them a donation. He wonders what nuns think

about sex when he discusses Romeo and Juliet with them.

Chapter Sixteen:

Before meeting Sally Hayes, Holden goes to find a record called "Little

Shirley Beans" for Phoebe by Estelle Fletcher. As he walks through the

city, he hears a poor kid playing with his parents, singing the song "If a

body catch a body coming through the rye." Hearing the song makes Holden

feel less depressed. Holden buys tickets for I Know My Love, a play

starring the Lunts. He knew that Sally would enjoy it, for it was supposed

to be very sophisticated. Holden goes to the Mall, where Phoebe usually

plays when she is in the park, and sees a couple of kids playing there. He

asks if any of them know Phoebe. They do, and claim that she is probably in

the Museum of Natural History. He reminisces about going to the Museum when

he was in grade school. He remembers how he would go there often with his

class, but while the exhibits would be exactly the same, he would be

different each time. Holden considers going to the museum to see Phoebe,

but instead goes to the Biltmore for his date with Sally.

Chapter Seventeen:

Holden meets Sally at the Biltmore, and when he sees her he immediately

feels like marrying her, even though he doesn't particularly like her.

After the play, when Sally keeps mentioning that she thinks she knows

people she sees, Holden replies "Why don't you go on over and give him a

big soul kiss, if you know him? He'll enjoy it." Finally, Sally does go to

talk to the boy she knows, George from Andover. Holden notes how phony the

conversation between Sally and George is. Holden and Sally go ice skating

at Radio City, then to eat. Sally asks Holden if he is coming over to help

her trim the Christmas tree. Holden asks her if she ever gets fed up. He

tells her that he hates everything: taxicabs, living in New York, phony

guys who call the Lunts angels. Sally tells him not to shout. He tells her

that she is the only reason that he is in New York right now. If not for

her, he would be in the woods, he claims. He complains about the cliques at

boarding schools, and tells her that he's in lousy shape. He suggests that

they borrow a car from a friend in Greenwich Village and drive up to New

England where they can stay in a cabin camp until their money runs out.

They could get married and live in the woods. Sally tells him that the idea

is foolish, for they are both practically children who would starve to

death. She tells him that they will have a lot of time to do those things

after college and marriage, but he claims that there wouldn't be "oodles"

of places to go, for it would be entirely different. He calls her a "royal

pain in the ass," and she starts to cry. Holden feels somewhat guilty, and

realizes that he doesn't even know where he got the idea about going to New

England.

Chapter Eighteen:

Holden once again considers giving Jane a call to invite her to go dancing.

He remembers how she danced with Al Pike from Choate. Although Holden

thought that he was "all muscles and no brains," Jane claimed that he had

an inferiority complex and felt sorry for him. Holden thinks that girls

divide guys into two types, no matter what their personality: a girl will

justify bad behavior as part of an inferiority complex for those she likes,

while claim those that she doesn't like are conceited. Holden calls Carl

Luce, a friend from the Whooton School who goes to Columbia, and plans to

meet him that night. He then goes to the movies and is annoyed when a woman

beside him becomes too emotional. The movie is a war film, which makes

Holden think about D.B.'s experience in the war. He hated the army, but had

Holden read A Farewell to Arms, which in Holden's view celebrates soldiers.

Holden thinks that if there is a war, he is glad that the atomic bomb has

been invented, for he would volunteer to sit right on top of it.

Chapter Nineteen:

Holden meets Carl Luce at the Wicker Bar. Carl Luce used to gossip about

people who were "flits" (homosexuals) and would tell which actors were

actually gay. Holden claims that Carl was a bit "flitty" himself. When Carl

arrives, he asks Holden when he is going to grow up, and is not amused by

Holden's jokes. Carl is annoyed that he is having a "typical Caulfield

conversation" about sex. Carl admits that he is seeing an older woman in

the Village who is a sculptress from China. Holden asks questions that are

too personal about Carl's sex life with his girlfriend until Carl insists

that he drop the subject. Carl reminds him that the last time he saw Holden

he told him to see his father, a psychiatrist.

Chapter Twenty:

Holden remains in the Wicker Bar getting drunk. He continues to pretend

that he has been shot. Finally, he calls Sally, but her grandmother answers

and asks why he is calling so late. Finally, Sally gets on the phone and

realizes that Holden is drunk. In the restroom of the Wicker Bar, he talks

to the "flitty-looking" guy, asking if he will see the "Valencia babe" who

performs there, but he tells Holden to go home. Holden finally leaves. As

he walks home, Holden drops Phoebe's record and nearly starts to cry. He

goes to Central Park and sits down on a bench. He thinks that he will get

pneumonia and imagines his funeral. He is reassured that his parents won't

let Phoebe come to his funeral because he is too young. He thinks about

what Phoebe would feel if he got pneumonia and died, and figures that he

should sneak home and see her, in case he did die.

Chapter Twenty-One:

Holden returns home, where he is very quiet as not to awake his parents.

Phoebe is asleep in D.B.'s room. He sits down at D.B.'s desk and looks at

Phoebe's stuff, such as her math book, where she has the name "Phoebe

Weatherfield Caulfield" written on the first page (her middle name is

actually Josephine). He wakes up Phoebe and hugs her. She tells about how

she is playing Benedict Arnold in her school play. She tells about how she

saw a movie called The Doctor, and how their parents are out for the night.

Holden shows Phoebe the broken record, and admits that he got kicked out.

She tells him that "Daddy's going to kill you," but Holden says that he is

going away to a ranch in Colorado. Phoebe places a pillow over her head and

refuses to talk to Holden.

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Phoebe tells Holden that she thinks his scheme to go out to Colorado is

foolish, and asks why he failed out of yet another school. He claims that

Pencey is full of phonies. He tells her about how everyone excluded Robert

Ackley as a sign of how phony the students are. Holden admits that there

were a couple of nice teachers, including Mr. Spencer, but then complains

about the Veterans' Day ceremonies. Phoebe tells Holden that he doesn't

like anything that happens. She asks Holden for one thing that he likes a

lot. He thinks of two things. The first is the nuns at Grand Central. The

second is a boy at Elkton Hills named James Castle, who had a fight with a

conceited guy named Phil Stabile. He threatened James, who responded by

jumping out the window, killing himself. However, he tells Phoebe that he

likes Allie, and he likes talking to Phoebe right now. Holden tells Phoebe

that he would like to be a catcher in the rye: he pictures a lot of

children playing in a big field of rye around the edge of a cliff. Holden

imagines that he would catch them if they started to go over the cliff.

Holden decides to call up Mr. Antolini, a former teacher at Elkton Hills

who now teaches English at NYU.

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Holden tells that Mr. Antolini was his English teacher at Elkton Hills and

was the person who carried James Castle to the infirmary. Holden and Phoebe

dance to the radio, but their parents come home and Holden hides in the

closet. When he believes that it is safe, Holden asks Phoebe for money and

she gives him eight dollars and change. He starts to cry as he prepares to

leave, which frightens Phoebe. He gives Phoebe his hunting hat and tells

her that he will give her a call.

Chapter Twenty-Four:

Mr. Antolini had married an older woman who shared similar intellectual

interests. When he arrives at his apartment, Holden finds Mr. Antolini in a

bathrobe and slippers, drinking a highball. Holden and Mr. Antolini discuss

Pencey, and Holden tells how he failed Oral Expression (debate). He tells

Holden how he had lunch with his father, who told him that Holden was

cutting classes and generally unprepared. He warns Holden that he is riding

for some kind of terrible fall. He says that it may be the kind where, at

the age of thirty, he sits in some bar hating everyone who comes in looking

as if he played football in college or hating people who use improper

grammar. He tells Holden that the fall that he is riding for is a special

and horrible kind, and that he can see Holden dying nobly for some highly

unworthy cause. He gives Holden a quote from the psychoanalyst Wilhelm

Stekel: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a

cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for

one." He finally tells Holden that once he gets past the things that annoy

him, he will be able to find the kind of information that will be dear to

his heart. Holden goes to sleep, and wakes up to find Mr. Antolini's hand

on his head. He tells Holden that he is "simply sitting here, admiring‹"

but Holden interrupts him, gets dressed and leaves, claiming that he has to

get his bags from Grand Central Station and he will be back soon.

Chapter Twenty-Five:

When Holden gets outside, it is getting light out. He walks over to

Lexington to take the subway to Grand Central, where he slept that night.

He thinks about how Mr. Antolini will explain Holden's departure to his

wife. Holden feels some regret that he didn't come back to the Antolini's

apartment. Holden starts reading a magazine at Grand Central; when he reads

an article about hormones, he begins to worry about hormones, and worries

about cancer when he reads about cancer. As Holden walks down Fifth Avenue,

he feels that he will not get to the other side of the street each time he

comes to the end of a block. He feels that he would just go down. He makes

believe that he is with Allie every time he reaches a curb. Holden decides

that he will go away, never go home again and never go to another prep

school. He thinks he will pretend to be a deaf-mute so that he won't have

to deal with stupid conversations. Holden goes to Phoebe's school to find

her and say goodbye. At the school he sees "fuck you" written on the wall,

and becomes enraged as he tries to scratch it off. He writes her a note

asking her to meet him near the Museum of Art so that he can return her

money. While waiting for Phoebe at the Museum, Holden chats with two

brothers who talk about mummies. He sees another "fuck you" written on the

wall, and is convinced that someone will write that below the name on his

tombstone. Holden, suffering from diarrhea, goes to the bathroom, and as he

exits the bathroom he passes out. When he regains consciousness, he feels

better. Phoebe arrives, wearing Holden's hunting hat and dragging Holden's

old suitcase. She tells him that she wants to come with him. She begs, but

he refuses and causes her to start crying. She throws the red hunting hat

back at Holden and starts to walk away. She follows Holden to the zoo, but

refuses to talk to him or get near him. He buys Phoebe a ticket for the

carousel there, and watches her go around on it as "Smoke Gets in Your

Eyes" plays. Afterwards, she takes back the red hunting hat and goes back

on the carousel. As it starts to rain, Holden cries while watching Phoebe.

Chapter Twenty-Six:

Holden ends his story there. He refuses to tell what happened after he went

home and how he got sick. He says that people are concerned about whether

he will apply himself next year. He tells that D.B. visits often, and he

often misses Stradlater, Ackley, and even Maurice. However, he advises not

to tell anybody anything, because it is this that causes a person to start

missing others.

A FAREWELL TO ARMS

SOME INFO ON ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The first son of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall

Hemingway, Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in a suburb of Chicago. He was

educated in the public schools and began to write in high school, where he

was active and outstanding, but the parts of his boyhood that mattered most

were summers spent with his family on Walloon Lake in upper Michigan. On

graduation from high school in 1917, impatient for a less sheltered

environment, he did not enter college but went to Kansas City, where he was

employed as a reporter for the Star. He was repeatedly rejected for

military service because of a defective eye, but he managed to enter World

War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. On July 8, 1918,

not yet 19 years old, he was injured on the Austro-Italian front at

Fossalta di Piave. Decorated for heroism and hospitalized in Milan, he fell

in love with a Red Cross nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, who declined to marry

him. These were experiences he was never to forget.

After recuperating at home, Hemingway renewed his efforts at writing,

for a while worked at odd jobs in Chicago, and sailed for France as a

foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. Advised and encouraged by other

American writers in Paris--F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound--

he began to see his nonjournalistic work appear in print there, and in 1923

his first important book, a collection of stories called In Our Time, was

published in New York City. In 1926 he published The Sun Also Rises, a

novel with which he scored his first solid success. A pessimistic but

sparkling book, it deals with a group of aimless expatriates in France and

Spain--members of the postwar "lost generation," a phrase that Hemingway

scorned while making it famous. This work also introduced him to the

limelight, which he both craved and resented for the rest of his life.

Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring, a parody of the American writer

Sherwood Anderson's book Dark Laughter, also appeared in 1926.The writing

of books occupied him for most of the postwar years. He remained based in

Paris, but he traveled widely for the skiing, bullfighting, fishing, or

hunting that by then had become part of his life and formed the background

for much of his writing. His position as a master of short fiction had been

advanced by Men Without Women in 1927 and thoroughly established with the

stories in Winner Take Nothing in 1933.

Among his finest stories are "The Killers," "The Short Happy Life of

Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." At least in the public

view, however, the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) overshadowed such works.

Reaching back to his experience as a young soldier in Italy, Hemingway

developed a grim but lyrical novel of great power, fusing love story with

war story. While serving with the Italian ambulance service during World

War I, the American lieutenant Frederic Henry falls in love with the

English nurse Catherine Barkley, who tends him during his recuperation

after being wounded. She becomes pregnant by him, but he must return to his

post. Henry deserts during the Italians' disastrous retreat after the

Battle of Caporetto, and the reunited couple flee Italy by crossing the

border into Switzerland. There, however, Catherine and her baby die during

childbirth, leaving Henry desolate at the loss of the great love of his

life.

Hemingway's love of Spain and his passion for bullfighting resulted in

Death in the Afternoon (1932), a learned study of a spectacle he saw more

as tragic ceremony than as sport. Similarly, a safari he took in 1933-34 in

the big-game region of Tanganyika resulted in The Green Hills of Africa

(1935), an account of big-game hunting. Mostly for the fishing, he bought a

house in Key West, Florida, and bought his own fishing boat. A minor novel

of 1937 called To Have and Have Not is about a Caribbean desperado and is

set against a background of lower-class violence and upper-class decadence

in Key West during the Great Depression.By now Spain was in the midst of

civil war. Still deeply attached to that country, Hemingway made four trips

there, once more a correspondent. He raised money for the Republicans in

their struggle against the Nationalists under General Francisco Franco, and

he wrote a play called The Fifth Column (1938), which is set in besieged

Madrid. As in many of his books, the protagonist of the play is based on

the author. Following his last visit to the Spanish war he purchased Finca

Vigia ("Lookout Farm"), an unpretentious estate outside Havana, Cuba, and

went to cover another war--the Japanese invasion of China.

The harvest of Hemingway's considerable experience of Spain in war and

peace was the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), a substantial and

impressive work that some critics consider his finest novel, in preference

to A Farewell to Arms. It was also the most successful of all his books as

measured in sales. Set during the Spanish Civil War, it tells of Robert

Jordan, an American volunteer who is sent to join a guerrilla band behind

the Nationalist lines in the Guadarrama Mountains. Most of the novel

concerns Jordan's relations with the varied personalities of the band,

including the girl Maria, with whom he falls in love. Through dialogue,

flashbacks, and stories, Hemingway offers telling and vivid profiles of the

Spanish character and unsparingly depicts the cruelty and inhumanity

stirred up by the civil war. Jordan's mission is to blow up a strategic

bridge near Segovia in order to aid a coming Republican attack, which he

realizes is doomed to fail. In an atmosphere of impending disaster, he

blows up the bridge but is wounded and makes his retreating comrades leave

him behind, where he prepares a last-minute resistance to his Nationalist

pursuers.All of his life Hemingway was fascinated by war--in A Farewell to

Arms he focused on its pointlessness, in For Whom the Bell Tolls on the

comradeship it creates--and as World War II progressed he made his way to

London as a journalist. He flew several missions with the Royal Air Force

and crossed the English Channel with American troops on D-Day (June 6,

1944).

Attaching himself to the 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, he

saw a good deal of action in Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. He

also participated in the liberation of Paris and, although ostensibly a

journalist, he impressed professional soldiers not only as a man of courage

in battle but also as a real expert in military matters, guerrilla

activities, and intelligence collection.Following the war in Europe,

Hemingway returned to his home in Cuba and began to work seriously again.

He also traveled widely, and on a trip to Africa he was injured in a plane

crash. Soon after (in 1953), he received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for

The Old Man and the Sea (1952), a short, heroic novel about an old Cuban

fisherman who, after an extended struggle, hooks and boats a giant marlin

only to have it eaten by voracious sharks during the long voyage home.

This book, which played a role in gaining for Hemingway the Nobel

Prize for Literature in 1954, was as enthusiastically praised as his

previous novel, Across the River and into the Trees (1950), the story of a

professional army officer who dies while on leave in Venice, had been

damned.By 1960 Fidel Castro's revolution had driven Hemingway from Cuba. He

settled in Ketchum, Idaho, and tried to lead his life and do his work as

before. For a while he succeeded, but, anxiety-ridden and depressed, he was

twice hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he

received electroshock treatments. Two days after his return to the house in

Ketchum, he took his life with a shotgun. Hemingway had married four times

and fathered three sons.He left behind a substantial amount of manuscript,

some which has been published. A Moveable Feast, an entertaining memoir of

his years in Paris (1921-26) before he was famous, was issued in 1964.

Islands in the Stream, three closely related novellas growing directly out

of his peacetime memories of the Caribbean island of Bimini, of Havana

during World War II, and of searching for U-boats off Cuba, appeared in

1970.Hemingway's characters plainly embody his own values and view of life.

The main characters of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For

Whom the Bell Tolls are young men whose strength and self-confidence

nevertheless coexist with a sensitivity that leaves them deeply scarred by

their wartime experiences. War was for Hemingway a potent symbol of the

world, which he viewed as complex, filled with moral ambiguities, and

offering almost unavoidable pain, hurt, and destruction. To survive in such

a world, and perhaps emerge victorious, one must conduct oneself with

honour, courage, endurance, and dignity, a set of principles known as "the

Hemingway code."

To behave well in the lonely, losing battle with life is to show "grace

under pressure" and constitutes in itself a kind of victory, a theme

clearly established in The Old Man and the Sea.Hemingway's prose style was

probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. He wished to

strip his own use of language of inessentials, ridding it of all traces of

verbosity, embellishment, and sentimentality. In striving to be as

objective and honest as possible, Hemingway hit upon the device of

describing a series of actions using short, simple sentences from which all

comment or emotional rhetoric have been eliminated. These sentences are

composed largely of nouns and verbs, have few adjectives and adverbs, and

rely on repetition and rhythm for much of their effect. The resulting

terse, concentrated prose is concrete and unemotional yet is often resonant

and capable of conveying great irony through understatement. Hemingway's

use of dialogue was similarly fresh, simple, and natural-sounding. The

influence of this style was felt worldwide wherever novels were written,

particularly from the 1930s through the '50s.A consummately contradictory

man, Hemingway achieved a fame surpassed by few, if any, American authors

of the 20th century. The virile nature of his writing, which attempted to

re-create the exact physical sensations he experienced in wartime, big-game

hunting, and bullfighting, in fact masked an aesthetic sensibility of great

delicacy. He was a celebrity long before he reached middle age, but his

popularity continues to be validated by serious critical opinion.

Context

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in the summer of 1899.

As a young man, he left home to become a newspaper writer in Kansas City.

Early in 1918, he joined the Italian Red Cross and became an ambulance

driver in Italy, serving in the battlefield in the First World War, in

which the Italians allied with the British, the French, and the Americans,

against Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Italy, he observed the carnage and

the brutality of the Great War firsthand. On July 8, 1918, a trench mortar

shell struck him while he crouched beyond the front lines with three

Italian soldiers.

Though Hemingway embellished the story of his wounding over the years,

this much is certain: he was transferred to a hospital in Milan, where he

fell in love with a Red Cross nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky. Scholars are

divided over Agnes' role in Hemingway's life and writing, but there is

little doubt that his affair with her provided the background for A

Farewell to Arms, which many critics consider to be Hemingway's greatest

novel.

Published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of Frederic

Henry, a young American ambulance driver and first lieutenant ("Tenente")

in the Italian army. Hit in the leg by a trench mortar shell in the

fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary, Henry is transferred to a

hospital in Milan, where he falls in love with an English Red Cross nurse

named Catherine Barkley. The similarities to Hemingway's own life are

obvious.

After the war, when he had published several novels and become a famous

writer, Hemingway claimed that the account of Henry's wounding in A

Farewell to Arms was the most accurate version of his own wounding he had

ever written. Hemingway's life certainly gave the novel a trenchant

urgency, and its similarity to his own experience no doubt helped him

refine the terse, realistic, descriptive style for which he became famous,

and which made him one of the most influential American writers of the

twentieth century.

SUMMARY

Book I, Chapters 1-6

Frederic Henry begins his story by describing his situation: he is an

American in the Italian army near the front with Austria-Hungary, a mile

from the fighting. Every day he sees troops marching and hears gunfire;

often the King rides through the town. A cholera epidemic has spread

through the army, he says, but only seven thousand die of it.

His unit moves to a town in Gorizia, further from the fighting, which

continues in the mountains beyond. His situation is relatively enjoyable;

the town is not badly damaged, with nice cafes and two brothels--one for

the officers and one for the enlisted men. One day Henry sits in the mess

hall with a group of fellow officers taunting the military priest. A

captain accuses the priest of cavorting with women, and the priest blushes;

though he is not religious, Henry treats the priest kindly. After teasing

the priest, the Italians argue over where Henry should take his leave;

because the winter is approaching, the fighting will ease, and Henry, an

ambulance driver, will be able to spend some time away from the front. The

priest encourages him to visit the cold, clear country of Abruzzo, but the

other men have other suggestions.

When he returns from his leave, Henry discusses his trip with his

roommate, the surgeon Rinaldi. Henry claims to have traveled throughout

Italy, and Rinaldi, who is obsessed with beautiful girls, tells him about a

group of new English women and claims to be in love with a Miss Barkley.

Henry loans him fifty lire (Italian money). At dinner that night, the

priest is hurt that Henry failed to visit Abruzzi. Henry feels guilty, and

tells him that he wanted to visit Abruzzi.

The next morning, Henry examines the gun batteries and quizzes the

mechanics; then he travels to visit Miss Barkley and the English nurses

with Rinaldi. He is immediately struck by Miss Barkley's beauty, and

especially by her long blonde hair. Miss Barkley tells Henry that her

fiancee was killed in the battle of the Somme, and Henry tells her he has

never loved anyone. On the way back, Rinaldi observes that Miss Barkley

liked Henry more than she liked Rinaldi, but that her friend, Helen

Ferguson, was nice too.

The next day, Henry calls on Miss Barkley again. The head nurse

expresses surprise that an American would want to join the Italian army,

and tells him that Miss Barkley is gone-- but says that Henry may come back

to see her at seven o'clock that night. Henry drives back along the

trenches, eats dinner, then returns to see Miss Barkley. He finds her

waiting with Helen Ferguson; Helen excuses herself, and Henry tries to put

his arm around her. She refuses, but allows him to kiss her. Then she

begins to cry, and Henry is annoyed. When Henry goes home, Rinaldi is

amused.

Three nights later, Henry sees Miss Barkley again; she tells him to

call her Catherine. They walk through the garden, and Henry tells Catherine

he loves her, though he knows he does not. They kiss again, and he thinks

of their relationship as an elaborate game. To his surprise, she suddenly

tells him that he plays the game very well, but that it is a rotten game.

Henry sees Rinaldi later that evening, and Rinaldi, observing Henry's

romantic confusion, feel glad that he did not become involved with a

British nurse.

Book I, Chapters 7-12

Driving back from his post, Henry picks up a soldier with a hernia;

they discuss the War, and Henry arranges a way to get the man to a

hospital. Henry thinks about the War, and realizes that he feels no danger

from it. At dinner that night, the men drink and tease the priest; Henry

nearly forgets he had promised to go see Catherine, and before he rushes

over, Rinaldi gives him some coffee to sober him up. At the nurses' villa,

Helen Ferguson tells Henry that Catherine is sick and will not see him.

Henry feels guilty and surprisingly lonely.

The next day an attack is scheduled. Henry goes to see Catherine, and

she gives him a Saint Anthony medal. He spends the day driving to the spot

where the fighting will take place.Henry and his men wait in the trenches

as the shelling begins. They are hungry, and Henry risks being shot to

fetch some cheese. As he sits down to eat it, he hears a loud noise and

sees a flash and believes he has died. A trench mortar shell has struck him

in the leg. Wounded men fall all around him.

Henry's surviving men carry him to safety; a British doctor treats him

on the field, then sends him in an ambulance to the field hospital. Henry

lies in intense pain. Rinaldi comes to visit him at the field hospital, and

tells Henry that he will get a medal. Henry shows no interest in medals.

Rinaldi leaves him a bottle of cognac and promises to send Miss Barkley to

see him soon.

At dusk, the priest comes to visit. They discuss the war, then God.

Henry tells the priest he does not love God--he says he does not love

anything much. The priest tells him he will find love, and it will make him

happy. Henry claims to have always been happy, but the priest says Henry

will know another kind of happiness when he finds it. Half delirious, Henry

thinks about Italian towns, then falls asleep.

Rinaldi and a Major from their group come to visit Henry the night

before he moves to a better hospital in Milan. Henry is still half-

delirious, and they drink profusely. After a confused conversation, Henry

falls into a drunken sleep. The next day, he is taken on a train to Milan.

Book II, Chapters 13-17

At Milan, Frederic Henry is taken to the American hospital. A young,

pretty nurse named Miss Gage makes his bed and takes his temperature. The

head nurse, Miss Van Campen, irritates Henry by not allowing him to have

wine. Henry pays some Italians to sneak wine into his room with the evening

papers.

In the morning, Miss Gage tells Henry that Miss Barkley has come to

work at the hospital--she claims not to like her, but Henry tells her she

will learn to like her. The porter brings a barber to shave Henry, but the

barber mistakes Henry for an Austrian soldier and threatens to cut his

throat. After the barber and the porter leave, Miss Barkley comes in, and

Henry realizes he is in love with her. He pulls her down into the bed with

him, and they make love for the first time.

Henry goes through a round of doctors who remove some of the shrapnel

from his leg. The doctors seem incompetent, and tell Henry he will have to

wait six months for an operation if he wants to keep his leg. He cannot

stand the thought of spending six months in bed, and asks for another

opinion; the house doctor says he will send for Dr. Valentini. When Dr.

Valentini comes, he is cheerful, energetic, and competent and says he will

perform the operation in the morning.Catherine spends the night in Henry's

room, and they see a bat. Catherine prepares him for the operation, and

warns him not to talk about their affair while under the anaesthetic.

After the operation, Henry is very sick. As he recovers, three other

patients come to the hospital--a boy from Georgia with malaria, a boy from

New York with malaria and jaundice, and a boy who tried to unscrew the fuse

cap from an explosive shell for a souvenir. Henry develops an appreciation

for Helen Ferguson, who helps him pass notes to Catherine while she is on

duty. Catherine continues to stay with Henry every night, but Henry and

Miss Gage finally convince her to take three nights off of night duty--Miss

Van Campen has commented that Henry always sleeps till noon.

Book II, Chapters 18-24

That summer Henry learns to walk on crutches, and he and Catherine

enjoy Milan. They befriend the headwaiter at a restaurant called the Gran

Italia, and Catherine continues to see Henry every night. They discuss

marriage, but Catherine remains opposed to the idea for the time being.

They pretend to be married instead. Catherine tells Henry that her love for

him has become her religion.

When not with Catherine, Henry spends time with a soldier named Ettore

Moretti, an Italian from San Francisco who is very proud of his war medals.

Ettore is extremely boastful about his military prowess, and Catherine

finds him annoying and dull. One night Henry and Catherine lie in bed

listening to the rain, and Catherine asks Henry if he will always love her.

She says she is afraid of the rain, and begins to cry.

Henry and Catherine go to the races with Helen Ferguson, whom Henry now

calls "Fergie," and the boy who tried to unscrew the nose cap on the

shrapnel shell. They bet on a horse backed by a racing expert and former

criminal named Mr. Myers; they win, but Catherine feels dissatisfied, so

they pick a horse for the next race on their own. Even though they lose,

Catherine feels much better.

By September, Henry's leg is nearly healed. He receives some leave time

from the hospital, and Catherine tells him she will arrange to go with him.

She then gives him a piece of startling news: she is six months pregnant.

Catherine worries that Henry feels trapped, and promises not to make

trouble for him, but he tells her he feels cheerful and thinks she is

wonderful. Catherine talks about the obstacles they will face, and mentions

the old quote about how the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but

one. She says that, in reality, the brave man dies perhaps two thousand

deaths in his imagination--he simply does not mention them.

The next morning it begins to rain, and Henry is diagnosed with

jaundice. Miss Van Campen finds empty liquor bottles in Henry's room, and

accuses him of producing jaundice through alcoholism to avoid being sent

back to the front. Miss Gage helps Henry clear things up, but in the end he

loses his leave time.

Henry prepares to travel back to the front. He buys a new pistol, and

takes Catherine to a hotel. The hotel makes Catherine feel like a

prostitute, but before the night is over they feel at home there. Before

midnight, they walk downstairs and Henry calls a carriage for Catherine.

They have a brief good-bye, and Henry boards the crowded train that will

take him back to the war.

Book III, Chapters 25-28

After returning to Gorizia, Henry has a talk with the major about the

war--it was a bad year, the major says; Henry was lucky to get hit when he

did. Henry then goes to find Rinaldi; while he waits for his friend, he

thinks about Catherine. Rinaldi comes into the room and is glad to see

Henry; concerned, he examines Henry's wounded knee. He says that he has

become a skilled surgeon from the constant work with the wounded, but now

that the fighting has died down temporarily he has a frustrating lack of

work. They talk about Catherine, and at dinner the officers tease the

priest.

After dinner, Henry goes to talk with the priest. The priest thinks the

war will end soon, but Henry remains skeptical. After the priest leaves,

Henry goes to sleep; he wakes when Rinaldi comes back, but quickly falls

asleep again.

The next morning, he travels to the Bainsizza area, and sees the damage

caused by the war: the whole village is destroyed. Henry meets a man named

Gino, and they discuss the fighting. Gino says the summer's losses were not

in vain, and Henry falls silent--he says words like those embarrass him. He

says that the names of villages and the numbers of streets have more

meaning than words like sacred and glorious.That night, the rain comes down

hard, and the Croatians begin a bombardment. In the morning, the Italians

learn that the attacking forces include Germans, and they become very

afraid--they have had little contact with the Germans in the war so far,

and prefer to keep it that way. The next night, the Italian line has been

broken, and the Italian forces begin a large-scale retreat.

As the forces slowly move out, Henry returns to the villa, but finds it

empty; Rinaldi is gone with the hospital. Henry finds the drivers under his

command, including Piani, Bonello, and Aymo. Before leaving in the morning,

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