Starting in the very first chapter of A Farewell to Arms, rain clearly symbolizes death: "In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain," Henry tells us. "The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn." The rain symbolism is not entirely a literary conceit, either, as rain actually precedes an outbreak of fatal illness, the cholera that kills seven thousand that fall.
Later, during their Milan idyll, Catherine makes the symbolism of the rain explicit for Henry — and for the reader: "I'm afraid of the rain because sometimes I see myself dead in it," she says to him. "And sometimes I see you dead in it." Lo and behold, during Henry and Catherine's trip from the armorer's to the hotel near the train station on his last night with her, the fog that has covered the city from the start of the chapter turns to rain. It continues to rain as they bid one another farewell; in fact, Catherine's last act in this part of the novel is to signal to Henry that he should step in out of the rain. Back at the front, "the trees were all bare and the roads were muddy."
It rains almost continuously during the chapter when the tide of battle turns and the Italians begin their retreat from Caporetto — and from the Germans who have joined the fighting. The rain turns to snow one evening, holding out hope that the offensive will cease, but the snow quickly melts and the rain resumes. During a discussion among the drivers about the wine they are drinking with dinner, the driver named Aymo says, "To-morrow maybe we drink rainwater." Hemingway by this time has developed the rain symbolism to such a degree that the reader experiences a genuine sense of foreboding — and indeed, the following day will bring death to Henry's disintegrating unit.
