The Aesthetic Modernity In A Farewell To Arms

The First World War that broke out in the early20thcentury has a great impact on Americansociety in the fields of politics, economics and literature, etc. America became a new power afterthe war. However, with the collapse of the traditional moral criteria, the disillusionment ofAmerican dreams as well as the loss of faith in God, this country declined to be a barren fieldwithout spirit. The particular period of history created unique faces of the literature works. Thosenovelists in that time started to transfer their concerns about social lives to the fate of individualsand attempted to reflect a confusing and perplexing world directly or indirectly in their works.Under this circumstance most modern novels share the similar themes of resisting authoritarian,emphasis on individual struggles and on the recognition of self. In this context，Hemingwaychose the theme of war and uncovered the cruelty and meaninglessness of it through depictingpeople suffered from the war. He looked at the war in the perspective of humanity and unfoldedhis readers a certain and hard period in history.In most of his works Hemingway always focused on the inevitable tragedy of man andstudied the essence of human. His works are common in the themes like “nothingness”,“death”,“agony” and “absurd”. A Farewell to Arms is considered as one of the great anti-war novels, aswell as an autobiography of Hemingway, which was accomplished on the basis of the author’sreal personal war experience. In this novel Hemingway vividly describes the cruelty of the warand the miserable fate of his protagonist, Frederic Henry. Hemingway shows his denouncementof the war and holds the view that it is the war that leads to man’s physical and psychologicaldestructions. The miserable and disaster situation of his protagonists just reflects the inhumanityand the absurdity of the war. In this novel Hemingway not only successfully portrays those lonely,depressed and distorted figures but also states that the tragedy of human beings is doomed. Hefurther acclaims that the tragedy of man is caused by the force that is destructive, uncontrollableand not understandable. He not only concerns about the fate of individual, but also the wholegeneration involved in the war. This novel has aroused people’s meditation on the crisis of man’sexistence and the meaning of modern people’s existence in a world full of fear, depression andabsurdity. In a sense A Farewell to Arms is regarded as a novel with the significance of aestheticmodernity. Aesthetic modernity refers to the reflection and criticism of the conditions that endangersthe existence of man in the process of the modernization of society. It is also the expression orreflection of the spiritual crisis of modernity. This thesis tries to explore the practical significanceof A Farewell to Arms in a new perspective of aesthetic modernity instead of studying its tragic,disillusionment and anti-war themes as well as the author’s writing styles. This thesis provokespeople’s concerns about man’s existence situation and the meaning of life through analyzing therepresentations of aesthetic modernity: decadence, dehumanization, loss of god and utopia inorder to study the literary and ideological values of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.