A Farewell to Arms hardly ends with a happy ending. We are faced with such sadness by the harsh reality of how the war affected Fredrick Henry's life; its past, present and future. In life, however, not everything is a fairy tale with great endings and eternal loves, this is precisely the reality. Ernest Hemingway's book is classified as fiction, but in something so complex and sad, we know there is a biography to tell, perhaps a moment of autobiography, because whether we like it or not, our hearts are invested in the characters precisely like the author. Our investment puts us on the defensive, so I have to justify the ending of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms by showing the importance of expressing the theme of loss and the difficulties of reality, in his relationships with other characters and in his belief in faith. With this you will see that the ending is well justified as it is magnificent. How do we know we truly appreciate something if we don't know it will end? Can Fredrick Henry appreciate his life and his relationship with Catherine Barkley without the current reality of death? The joy of all that Catherine and life represented would be lost if death did not peek around the corner as it so often does in constant foreshadowing in this novel. Wallace Stevens, a poet, knew the importance of appreciating physical things because he knew they would not be there forever, “Death is the mother of beauty, so from her, / Alone, will come the fulfillment of our dreams / And gods our wishes". Ernest Hemingway knew this too, and we see it expressed in the loss Fredrick suffers. In the first section of the book he is untouched by the war and seems rather disconnected from the reality that is the war. The story is written in first person and this brings us as an audience closer to the action of the story and allows us to be emotionally connected or disconnected like Fredrick. We are Fredrick Henry: “You don't know how long you stay in a river when the current is moving fast” (116). It is only when Fredrick is injured that he begins to realize his involvement in the war and its potential effect on him. The naivety about the war is explicit when Fredrick speaks to Catherine about not being killed by the war: "Not in this war.