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Literary critics call the point of view employed by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms limited, first-person narrator/participant. This means that he writes from the point of view of one of the characters in the story (in this case, Frederic Henry), and that the character tells you only what he himself sees, hears, feels, and thinks, never reporting scenes in which he wasn\'t involved, never entering other characters\' minds.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of this narrative method is that it gives you a tremendous sense of involvement with the story. Seeing everything through the eyes of an active narrator lets you participate in the events almost as intensely as he does. This stance, coupled with Hemingway\'s vivid prose, makes it hard not to feel that you are sharing Frederic Henry\'s wartime trials: you are there when the shell strikes the dugout, on the brutal retreat from Caporetto, in the boat gliding over the dark waters of Lake Maggiore, and, most bitterly, in the hospital room where Catherine Barkley lies dying. And having shared these trials you are in a position to share more completely the changes they bring: you feel firsthand Frederic Henry\'s transformation from the callow boy to the mature lover and then to the disillusioned, tragic figure of the book\'s end. By this wise choice of point of view, Hemingway has made sure that his theme--the pain that is the fate of even the best and bravest of us--strikes us with great force.
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