Critics generally agree that assigning a clear conflict in
A Farewell to Arms, a title which has a double--even a
triple--meaning, is problematic. Henry's conflicts all stem from an essential inner
conflict: a desire to attain something that the world circumstances--the reality of
world war--make impossible to attain. Such a conflict is that between his life with
Catherine and the demands of returning to his assignment on the front or that between
his expectations of himself on the front and the reality of what he can truly accomplish
there. The painful irony of this conflict is that such desires as devoted love and valor
may have earlier been more attainable.
In light of this, the conflict
of the novel might arguably be narrowed down to an inner one of Humankind versus Self
with many manifestations and variations in Henry's life in a world where reconciliation
with reality is as unattainable as reconciliation with inner desire. The farewell to
arms that the title envisions is, first, a farewell to Catherine's loving arms as her
death is a climactic moment and, second, a farewell to the glory of courage and valor
shown by accomplishment in war, which are no longer possible as the justice of war is
dissolved. A third farewell may be said to be a psychological farewell to idealized love
and the courage, honor, valor, and accomplishment of duty in a just
war.
The metaphor for the dissolution of the justice of war may be
said to lie in the image of officers tearing off their insignia as they retreat from the
"sacred soil of the fatherland" where captured deserters at Tagliamento River bridge
were assaulted by "The questioners [who] had all the efficiency, coldness and command of
themselves of Italians who are firing and not being fired on." Further, this “command”
may arguably be seen as a metaphor for the novel's conflict: Henry finds reality in a
world torn by war to have "all the efficiency, coldness and command" of soldiers "who
are firing and not being fired upon."
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