Brenner, Gerry.  "A Hospitalized World."  In Monteiro, George, ed. 
        Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. 
        New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1994: 130-144.

        Brenner sees deliberate design in all the hospitals we see in this novel, since Hemingway himself wasn't an ambulance driver, more like a volunteer in a hospital, obviously the biographical facts have been changed for artistic purposes.  "Frederic and Catherine meet in a hospital in Gorizia, reunite and consummate their romance in the Milan hospital, and separate in the Lausanne hospital," all under the auspices of the Red Cross flag.  Since that flag reverses the colors of the Swiss flag, Brenner sees an appropriate, if ironic, symmetry: "As Catherine nursed Frederic through his convalescence in Milan, he inverted their relationship in Switzerland, nursing her through pregnancy--almost" (130). 

Setting so much of the story in hospitals, then, suggests "that Hemingway's principal subject is not war and love but wounds" (131).  Although hospitals may be a "clean, well lighted place" where modern people wish to be made whole (having replaced churches in a way), these hospitals are ineffective against bleeding to death and wounds of the spirit, as is the priest, perhaps.  No institution can stand "against life's utter irrationality" (131). 

Neither family nor country offer Frederic Henry comfort or value; neither does education or learning, since he stopped studying architecture while in Italy, though that subject hints at his desire for order.  Brenner sees Henry's enlistment--and even service in the ambulance unit--as another sign of his search for order (131).  But after a year, he must have seen attempts at order in the Italian Front as ineffectual as his sidearm.  After deserting this army, he seeks out Catherine, placing his hopes for happiness and perhaps order in their relationship (132).  Unfortunately, medicine, faith, and love all fail to keep Catherine safe and alive.  So Hemingway's use of the title reverses the notion in its source, a poem by George Peele that speaks of "duty, faith, love are roots, and ever green."  All three wither in this novel.  Even "thinking is a poor remedy for human problems" (132) in the face of the twisted, even comical elements of life demonstrated in Henry's arrival to an empty and unprepared hospital in Milan, fixed horse races, and the irrational military situation that got him there--being wounded while eating cheese.  Even avoiding thinking in order to embrace sensation and nature can't work because "nature is no more orderly, controllable, or predictable than reason" (132).  Frederic can't prevent jaundice, Catherine's efforts can't prevent her getting pregnant, and her narrow hips overrule nature; even the umbilical becomes a noose, and spring becomes death instead of renewal of life (133).  So we're all "cooked," and only not knowing that sad fact is our only solace.  [Brenner doesn't refer here to the "killer world" passage, but it certainly seems in the right tone with his summary of the brutality of life without solace.]

Why does Frederic Henry tell his story?  The answer to this question reveals Brenner's thesis--and it's a wowser!

His manner reveals that he is disoriented by what has happened to him and so is an untrustworthy narrator; that he tells his story soon after Catherine's death; and that if he can discover in his story meanings with will nurture a desire to continue living, then his motive has been therapeutic.  If not, then his motive is testamentary: his story will explain his last decision--to commit suicide. (133)

If the novel is in the tradition of the Bildungsroman, the coming of age story, then Frederic has permanently changed for the better because of his relationship with Catherine.  Instead, Catherine's death negates all of his efforts; all institutions and relationships have failed him, and nothing remains (134).

Although most critics assume that Frederic is telling his story some years after its events, Brenner suggests that his "essayettes" [like the killer world passage] that keep breaking in on the action do so because he can't hold back his emotions (135).  Brenner compares Frederic as a narrator to other, earlier Hemingway story-telling voices, contrasting how clearly they differentiated the time of the story from the later time of the telling.  In addition, the very style of the novel, with its lack of specifics and frequent lack of subordination (lots of "ands") suggest how wounded he is.  Brenner quotes a characterization of that style by John Edward Hardy ("A Fare to Arms: The Death of Tragedy," in his Man and the Modern Novel [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964]: 136), citing his "anonymous and crippled sensibility . . . a radically maimed prose, a style that does not simply reflect but is the victim of the spiritual malady that afflicts" characters like Lt. Henry (136).  Brenner inventories several facets of the story telling that suggest how disoriented--and therefore untrustworthy--the narrator is.

But Frederic isn't crazy: "His disorientation, his being 'a little out of his head,' then, waxes and wanes, just as his regard for the priest seesaws against his affection for Rinaldi" (138).  Hemingway read other authors who used unreliable narrators--Joyce, Ford, Stein, and especially Joseph Conrad.  Such "out of his head" style even provides a reason for Catherine's characterization, perhaps; "her fragile grasp of reality persuades me that Frederic loves a marginally neurotic woman who is more than a little out of her head" (139).

[Somewhat overdoing it] Brenner examines tendencies throughout the novel that show Catherine's clinging to fantasy, even starting the us-against-the world theme and desiring to be Frederic, or at least one person with him (140).  Brenner even points to a night in Switzerland when the two look back on their early days together and Frederic dodges agreeing that Catherine is sane now during their idyllic time in Switzerland, suggesting it is even a strain for him to keep up the illusion.  So, Brenner sees co-dependency instead of self-sacrifice and love, "a crippled couple has retreated from even the illusion of their own psychic individuality" (141).  Thus, after losing this romantic defense against irrational reality, "the unhappy survivor . . . , a man neither innately strong nor confident nor supported by any traditional values, Frederic would have little reason to continue living once he has told his story . . . " (142).   

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