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The war is coming back to life with the spring. It\'s still only a nuisance, but it has moved closer, further disturbing the natural rhythms of the town. The dewy garden next door is now the site of an artillery battery.
Henry checks his ambulances and finds that while he was gone things went on pretty much as usual. He\'s mildly miffed. Maybe he\'s not as necessary in this war as he thought he\'d be.
He goes to his room. Rinaldi is all s ... mehr
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Henry goes to call on Catherine but can\'t see her because she\'s on duty. In talking to the head nurse he tells his reasons for joining the Italian army. He\'s casual and understated as usual--\"I was in Italy, and I spoke Italian.\"
He drives to the bridgehead where the Italians are about to launch their spring offensive. Hemingway describes the relative positions of the Italians and Austrians. The Italians are dug in, but certain parts of ... mehr
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Returning from a two-day absence, Henry goes to visit Catherine. His description of her hospital shows him to be a person of some artistic sensitivity. (You\'ll learn later that he was a student of architecture before he went to war.) He doesn\'t like the white marble busts that line the hospital walls, he tells us, and that bleak image of dead statuary will be repeated, tragically, at the end of the book. In his rambling thoughts Henry also te ... mehr
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For the first time you encounter Frederic Henry at work transporting the wounded. He watches a regiment march by, hot and dusty, followed by stragglers and then by a single limping soldier. He goes to talk to the man. The soldier says he\'s suffering from a hernia and asks Henry to take him not to his regiment\'s medical officer, as regulations require, but to a hospital. The soldier, who has lived in Pittsburgh, recognizes Henry as an American ... mehr
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Henry gets his orders. There\'s to be an attack and he must take his ambulances to the lines. An interesting ironic sidelight--everybody speaks \"with great positiveness and strategic knowledge\" about the attack, but nobody really knows anything. The eternal rumor mill hard at work.
He stops at Catherine\'s hospital. Even though she\'s on duty, he asks to see her. When he tells her he can\'t see her that evening because there\'s \"a show up ... mehr
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Henry and his drivers now ride down a camouflaged road to a brickyard where they park their ambulances. There are troops dug in along the river bank and aid stations in some of the larger dugouts. Watching them are Austrians in observation balloons that float above the hills on the other side of the river.
Henry finds out what he is to do when the attack starts, and sets his men up in a big dugout. They ask about food and Henry is told that ... mehr
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In a very hot room in the field hospital, Henry rests and recovers. The atmosphere is peaceful, subdued.
Rinaldi visits. As usual the Italian is outgoing, the American subdued. A lot of discussion involves a possible decoration for Henry--Rinaldi hopes to magnify Henry\'s deeds to earn him a higher medal, but Henry downplays them.
Catherine\'s name comes up, casually, but Henry seems more interested in hearing about the girls in the Villa ... mehr
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Henry\'s next visitor is the priest. His visit is a contrast to Rinaldi\'s. It\'s sundown, cooler. Henry says that lying in bed at dusk makes him feel like a small boy.
The talk turns to the ever-present war and is loaded with meaning. Henry suggests that the priest is suffering from the \"war disgust\"--perhaps the hollow feeling that sent Henry to the city instead of to Abruzzi, a disgust and uncaring that begin with the fighting but exten ... mehr
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Briefly Henry relates the routine of the hospital. Note how off-handedly he describes soldiers dying, the new graves in the garden, and the orderly whose job is to paint names on crosses. Understatement again.
The night before Henry is transferred to the American hospital in Milan, Rinaldi appears with a major from Henry\'s mess. The three get very drunk. Hemingway\'s lurching prose shows how even important facts of war are losing their me ... mehr
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Henry arrives at the American hospital to find that it\'s not ready for him. He\'s met by an elderly woman, a Mrs. Walker, who\'s flustered at his arrival. Henry arranges tips for the porters who helped him and sets himself up in a room, despite Mrs. Walker\'s inefficiency. He sleeps, and when he awakes he\'s greeted by a nurse who\'s remarkably efficient; she washes him, takes his temperature, and makes his bed with him in it. The contrast is ... mehr
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This is a short, important chapter. Henry wakes to Miss Gage, who has discovered his wine bottles but sympathizes with him. She tells him, perhaps a little jealously, that Catherine\'s there. She washes him and arranges for a barber to shave him.
Then comes a scene of some comedy, for the barber thinks Henry is not an American but a captured Austrian, an enemy. His flashing razor makes Henry nervous. It\'s a bit of comic relief that provides ... mehr
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The good news of the doctor\'s arrival turns bad. He gets to the hospital, but he and the two physicians with him prove to be additional examples of Hemingway\'s hated incompetents. They stall, they test, they mix up X rays, and at last they decide that Henry must wait six months before surgery to remove the shrapnel from his knee.
Henry\'s furious. He\'s noticed that the surgeon is only a first captain. If he were any good, Henry reasons, h ... mehr
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You begin again with some fine sensory description of Henry and Catherine in his hospital room--the sights, the sounds, the sensations of a cool night, even the taste of crackers and vermouth and, the next morning, the smell of coffee sipped by the antiaircraft gun crew on the next roof.
You get the impression that \"their\" room, as Henry now calls it, is a refuge from the war. Although Milan is not in the combat zone, evidence of the fight ... mehr
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Henry wakes from surgery feeling so sick that he doesn\'t even care whether Catherine visits him.
A few other patients are admitted, a lucky break for the lovers because now the hospital can justify keeping the full staff of nurses. Catherine volunteers for night duty to be with Henry.
When he\'s not with her, Henry sends Catherine notes, using Helen Ferguson as a messenger. At one point he has a significant conversation with Helen regard ... mehr
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The first sentence sets the tone for all of this brief chapter: \"We had a lovely time that summer.\" They do have a lovely time, going out to dinner and strolling, Henry on crutches, through the streets of Milan, and they continue to spend their nights together. Note how in the long paragraph beginning \"After dinner,\" the tempo of the prose increases as it leads them through the city and back to the hospital for lovemaking.
Hemingway inse ... mehr
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The summer goes on and Henry\'s legs heal enough to let him walk with a cane. He takes daily treatments at another hospital but can\'t wait to return to Catherine in the evening. Ironically, the more he recovers, the less he can be seen with her, because nurses are forbidden to accompany patients who don\'t need them. He follows the war news; the only conclusions he can draw are that too many men are getting killed and that the war looks as if ... mehr
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Catherine and Henry go to the races. Even here the war shows itself, in the form of their injured companion, Clowell, and in the form of the many other soldiers in attendance. On a tip from Mr. Meyers, Henry and Catherine back a horse whose appearance has been doctored. He wins, but last-minute cheating has made the odds so low, they gain little. Later they bet on a choice of their own that finishes next to last. Catherine, though, feels \"clea ... mehr
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In one of his masterful compound sentences, Hemingway tells you that summer is gone. That\'s not all. The fighting is going \"very badly\" again in Italy, as well as in France. There\'s great pessimism and resignation as Henry discusses the war with a British major who believes \"we were all cooked.\" The summer has faded, and with its passing comes the certain but unspoken knowledge that Henry must go back to the war and that the nights of lov ... mehr
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The cold autumn rains begin, and Henry feels ill. The house doctor diagnoses jaundice. Henry is sick with it for two weeks, during which time he has a run-in with Miss Van Campen over his drinking. She accuses him of purposely giving himself jaundice by drinking so that he won\'t have to go back to the front. He, nastily, debates her on the issue, but she puts him on report and he loses his leave. Authority prevails.
... mehr
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This chapter takes place on the night Henry is to return to the front. He makes his good-byes at the hospital, arranges for a seat on the train, and meets Catherine in town. They walk through the misty Milan streets.
In a series of sharply etched images and incidents, Hemingway creates an atmosphere that varies from pathetic to poignant to ominous.
Near the great Milan cathedral they see a soldier and his girl huddled together under the m ... mehr
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