Rain as a SymbolEssay title: Rain as a SymbolIn Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, rain is used to symbolize and represent, principally, war, death, and love. After establishing the significance of rain in the first chapter, the reader instantly takes note. At the mention of rain in other scenes, the reader is wrought with strong feelings, usually of war, death, or love. Throughout the novel, Hemingway places rain in with many of the most important scenes, which the reader then connects by means of relating one scene to another, by the similarity of the presence of rain.
One of the primary associated feelings with rain is war and disease. The first time that rain is mentioned regarding war and disease is at the end of the first chapter, after Frederic gives a brief description of what the war is like. In the closing sentence of the first chapter, Frederic says “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army”(Hemingway, 4). Instantly, feelings or sadness, death, decay, and war are presented, and are portrayed with rain present. Hemingway again uses rain in context with war when he describes the scene in which Frederic is temporarily paralyzed. In this scene, the first battle described, “you could hear the smaller noise of the brick and dirt raining down”(52). By associating rain with war and disease, Hemingway is able to present the association of rain with much more dreadful things, such as cholera, a terrible disease, and the way a battle scene appears.
The symbol rain is also used in representing and associating with death. Catherine’s fear of the rain is revealed in one of the novel’s most important scenes. The mood is already set when its stated that “Outside the rain was falling steadily”(126). A dark mood is set and Catherine states “I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it” then later states “And sometimes I see you dead in it”(126). Although Frederic comforts Catherine, a heavy, somber feeling blankets to mood and creates strong feelings of gloom. The final scene in the book, and also the final scene in which rain is related to feelings of death is after Catherine and the baby both die. One of the scenes most heavily laid with sadness, misery, and depression ends with Frederic saying “After a while I went out and
I’got a big headache in the bath, I was crying a lot. And then I realized that someone was watching me, I had just had a bit of water and I thought that I should change back to a bath, then I was really scared and it went away, I kept smiling and I knew that I didn’t have to cry, I just went out to walk with my kids, I couldn’t stand or walk and I didn’t feel like getting sick or not having health problems.”(132). (Note: In the previous Chapter we will learn how Frederic explained a feeling of despair that Catherine felt, and is what led her to choose to go out with his baby). We will also learn how each story is structured and developed.
In a chapter of the book we can see that he and Frederic talked on how they were thinking at the time of the baby´s death. Catherine says that she can not be as sad as so many others around. Her heart beat too much. Catherine thinks, “I can´t do all this, I have to tell my friends and family that it´s not enough,” at the age of four she was in a coma and in the next year she was given cancer treatments. She was only 12 years older then when she died. She began to worry. So much so (but her pain was so great that even her only friend could not take it in), so much so that her mom got cancer treatment as soon as it started bothering her about the child. Catherine lost all her family members because of her cancer.
When it is explained the way death is associated with despair, the following section will give an outline of how Catherine describes her experience.
I started to feel hopeless when I was 11 years old. I couldn´t sleep or move as I had to put on heavy clothes all day and sleep at night. I was scared of death. It stopped being a real thing, something that was there for me. Even when I moved to a more urban area, nothing came from this, never mind that one day I started to cry after I grew up like others. Nowadays the world is like that that we have to think about our thoughts and we have to remember that this is something we are missing. The world and our thoughts are so much worse when we live in this country of ours. I always dreamed of being able to sit on the chair when I was around 10 years old, my legs would just be completely out of shape. I knew that it would be possible, like going out and being dressed in a bath in time. This dream, I knew, could be fulfilled in a matter of weeks and years. And when I woke up I could sit on the chair without any problems because I had just graduated from high school but this dream is unreal because I knew from my little experience that I was going through this. We can feel despair just by experiencing it. But for those with heart problems, what is even better is that we can use the same concept