Comparison In Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms

Lieutenant Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley are the protagonists of Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms. Although there aren’t any other characters in the majority of the novel, there are a few that make an appearance every so often, like Rinaldi, The Priest, Helen Ferguson and Miss Gage. For the sake of this paper I will only be looking at the minor character Helen Ferguson, who is close friends with Catherine. Helen, who is often referred to as Ferguson or Fergy, is the voice of reason in regards to Henry and Catherine’s relationship. She also foreshadows the tragic end of the novel and seems to have been put into the novel to help the reader get a better understanding of Catherine.

Although the novel is set during the war, it

When she is talking to Henry, when he is in the hospital, she tells him that she will not go to his and Catherine’s wedding because she doesn’t believe it will ever happen. Once he insists that he does want to marry her and he wants to make their relationship Helen says “Maybe you’ll be all right you two. But watch out you don’t get her in trouble. You get her in trouble and I’ll kill you.” (108) this is foreshadowing the fact that the trouble that Henry and Catherine get into will ultimately lead to a death. Of course Helen does not commit a murder and the death at the end of the novel doesn’t occur because of a murder at all but because Catherine loses too much blood when giving birth. Which is something else that Helen foreshadowed when she told Henry “Mind you watch out. I don’t want her with any of these war babies.” (109) Foreshadowing is important when it comes to a novel like this because we are reading the story in Henry’s perspective, and from his perspective, we do see the war and how that is a horrible situation, but when it comes to his relationship with Catherine he does not see anything going wrong, he knows what he wants and he plans on getting it. By the reader always seeing the couple as happy, or even when they do argue or Catherine is acting weird it always ends alright, they will not have any way

“We see Ferguson and Barkley in conventionally romantic settings. On the three occasions when Frederic Henry interrupts the two women, they have been sitting alone in the pleasant places where the main, heterosexual relationship will flourish.” (Mandel) Although this is an interesting reading of the character it is not one that I believe to be true. The reader is not given much of an insight into Catherine’s life since the story is told from Henry’s point of view. Henry has other characters that he interacts with which help the reader understand him better since the way he interacts with them tells us a lot about the type of person that he is, but we do not get this luxury with Catherine because we never see anything from her point of view. By having the reader learn about Helen and her friendship with Catherine we in turn learn about Catherine herself. From her relationship with Helen we can tell that Catherine is fairly naïve and potentially hypocritical. Towards Catherine “If you had any shame it would be different. But you’re (sic) God knows how many months hone with child and you think it’s a joke and are all smiles because your seducer’s come back. You’ve no shame