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Essay on The Symbol of Rain
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, is an emblematic love tale. A Romeo and his Juliet positioned against the odds. In this book, Romeo is Frederick Henry and Juliet is Catherine Barkley. Their love affair must continue to exist the obstacles of World War I. The setting of war-torn Italy adds to the disaster of the love story. The war affects the emotions and principles of each character.
The love between Catherine and Frederick must survive long separations, life-threatening wartime situations, and the vagueness of each other's whereabouts or circumstance. This story is a striking love story of two people who require each other in a period of commotion. Henry’s love affair begins as a disintegrating game of time of war seduction but soon it acquires the extent of honor and self-esteem. Consequently, the escaping lovers reach a little village and a villa nestled in snow-covered mountains. Catherine becomes the center of the mountain image herself. She signifies home, happiness, security, and ease, just as the mountains do. (Charles Scribner, 1929)
Rain in this tale is a persistent representation. In the very first chapter, there is an allusion to the rains, which carry cholera that kills seven thousand people. Catherine is scared of the rain for the reason that she sees herself dead in it and without a doubt it happens at the end. All the main devastating actions in the novel, such as the draw back, the parting of the lovers after Henry’s recuperation, and Catherine’s pains of work and her death, the rain accompanies all. It signifies hard luck, suffering, and death. Rain is used not as an icon of life but as an inveterate symbol of death and hopelessness. "The unalterable march of catastrophic warning which is echoed in the metaphors, the rain"(Rovit 105). This is a rain linked with shadows, muck, and death.....
