A Farewell to Arms: an unhappy ending "I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I imagine myself dead inside" (P 126). This is a short quote from A Farewell to Arms (1929), by award-winning writer Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms has an unexpected death at the end. The reader sympathizes with the main character as he matures from the beginning to the conclusion of the novel. A Farewell to Arms is a love story during the First World War. The novel centers on Lieutenant Fredric Henry, an American who volunteered for the Italian army driving ambulances in Europe because the United States has not yet entered the war. Fredric is known as a lost man searching for order and value in his life. He is very submissive and doesn't care about himself or the war. In the first book of the novel, Fredric is characterized, along with the other characters. In the first book, Fredric takes a break from the war and travels the country in search of his purpose in life. During the second book, Fredric returns to the city on the war front and meets his closest friend, Rinaldi, who introduces Fredric to Catherine Barkely. Catherine is a French nurse with whom Fredric immediately falls in love. Fredric finds commitment to her and they begin to spend time together. Their relationship brings order and value to his life. He begins to care more about himself and Catherine. Being away from the war, Fredric feels safe with Catherine. When they are together, war seems to not exist. “The war seemed as distant as anyone else's college football games,” Fredric says (P 63). Catherine has experience with love and loss since losing her fiancé in a previous war. He can't depend on another person, so he tries not to depend on Fredric to bring order to his life and less chaos. This then allows her to be emotionally stronger when Fredric has to go to war again. While at war, Fredric and his other driver friends are sitting in a cave, when the Austrians attack. Fredric is shot in the knee while trying to help his friend, who dies. Fredric is taken to hospital in Milan. When he arrives at the hospital, Rinaldi and Caterina come to visit him. While recovering from knee surgery, Catherine becomes one of his nurses. The love story between Fredric and Catherine begins again. Now they can spend more time together and isolate themselves from everything and everyone else. In the third book Fredric realizes that he does not want to take part in the war, but only with Catherine. Fredric convinces himself that he has a "good life" (P 298). Catherine then discovers that she is pregnant with Fredric's baby. After a few months, Fredric is sent back to the war front and has to leave Catherine. During the war, Fredric leaves his troops because they did not follow his orders. German troops search for Fredric for leaving his troops. “Along the top of the stone bridge I could see the German helmets moving” (P 211). Floating along the Taglimento River, Fredric crosses the Venetian fields and then takes a train to safety. Returning to Milan, in the fifth book, Caterina is not in hospital and has gone to Stresa for a period of holidays. They stay at a motel and find out that Fredric will be arrested if they stay there. Leaving in the middle of the night, they travel to Switzerland to find safety. There they live in the mountains above Montreaux until Catherine nears the birth of the baby, then they move to a hotel in Lausanne. Until the end of the novel, Henry relies on Catherine for order in his life. Catherine and Fredric's love ends when Catherine dies of a hemorrhage while giving birth to their stillborn child. When Fredric sees his baby, he feels no sense of fatherhood.