Please discuss the tone (or tones) of Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms.

The tones of Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell
to Arms are various, and they tend to change as one moves through the book.
Often the tones of the early chapters are light-hearted, as in the episodes involving
Rinaldi, one of the most vividly comic characters Hemingway ever created.  Thus, at one
point Rinaldi mentions that he plans to court Catherine Barkley, the woman with whom
Frederic Henry (the book’s main character) becomes involved. Rinaldi asks Henry for a
loan by saying,

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“I must make on Miss Barkley the impression of a
man of great wealth. You are my great and good friend and financial
protector.”

“Go the hell,” I
said.

Henry’s reply catches
us by comic surprise. His pretended rebuff suggests that the men are actually very good
friends who feel entirely comfortable bantering with one another and pretending to
provoke one another. The scenes involving Rinaldi are often quite comical. As I have
written in a discussion of this novel in volume 3 of the Student’s
Encyclopedia of Great American Writers, Rinaldi is one
of

the most
lively, funny, and memorable people Hemingway ever created, [and] he adds wit, good
humor, vitality, and a spirit of affectionate friendship to the
novel.

The humor of some
sections of the first part of the book, moreover, helps intensify the dark, tragic tone
with which the book concludes. For example, the often funny and charming depictions of
the courtship between Frederic and Catherine help make the tragedies they eventually
suffer all the more powerful.

Hemingway also
creates an effective tone of suspense near the end of the book, where we wonder whether
Frederic and Catherine will make their escape into Switzerland and where we also wonder
what the outcome will be of Catherine’s attempt to deliver a baby. At the very end of
the book, of course, we discover that both Catherine and the baby have died. The tone
here is dark and devastating, partly because Frederic now seems utterly isolated. Part
of the power of Hemingway’s novel, then, depends upon the ways the tones of the book
alter, deepen, and darken as the book progresses.