And yet, A Farewell to Arms is at the same time a tender love story — one of the most tender and affecting ever written. It has been compared to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and the reference is an apt one. Both stories concern young lovers antagonized by their societies. (In Shakespeare's play, the Montague-Capulet blood feud is the problem; in Hemingway's novel, the Great War is to blame.) Both stories seem to vibrate with a sickening sense of doom that only increases as the stories near their respective conclusions. And both end in heartbreaking tragedy. If not one of the greatest love stories ever told, A Farewell to Arms is certainly among the greatest of the twentieth century.
Actually, it is the very combination of love and war that makes this book so potent and memorable. Regarding the woman he loves, the hero of Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls tells himself "You had better love her very hard, and make up in intensity what the relation will lack in duration and continuity." Frederic Henry of A Farewell to Arms could say the same thing of his affair with Catherine Barkley. Because they meet in a time and place in which every day could be their last together, Frederic and Catherine must wring every drop of intimacy and passion from their relationship. (Notice how soon Catherine begins to speak of love, and how soon — especially considering the conservative mores of the time in which the book is set — they sleep together.) The result is an affair — and a story — almost unbearable in its intensity.
