Frederic Henry's perspective and attitude about war changes drastically in this story by Hemingway. How and why does Henry's change happen? Write a reflective essay in which you explain Henry's change in thinking about war and connect this to a personal experience where you underwent a significant change of perspective, how and why this change happened, and how this benefited your life. The essay's thesis statement and body contents should refer to A Farewell to Arms and clearly state the connection. The conclusion should refer back to A Farewell to Arms too.

   Since this question requires a comparison with a personal fact, I will do the analysis comparing Henry with Hemingway, so that you can take it as an example and you can do it with a particular event in your life.

Explanation:

It is not difficult to make the identification between Hemingway himself and Frederick Henry, due to the strongly autobiographical component of the work: both were of North American origin, they were ambulance drivers in the Italian army, they got the Medal of Plata al Valor, they suffered leg and knee injuries and were admitted to a hospital in Milan where they had a love affair with a nurse. The tragic outcome also unites them, although in a different way: faced with the outcome of Farewell to Arms, Hemingway was scorned and finally repudiated his nurse. There is another event that separates them slightly: during the war that wounded them Hemingway carried one of his wounded comrades on his shoulders, while in the case of Frederick he is the one transported.

  Hemingway bases this anti-war cry on the parallel development of the opposition between love and war. Frederick is a character with a heightened sense of justice and solid values, identifiable with those of the typical American hero, and of course with Hemingway himself. His motivations for participating in the war in an army, the Italian, which is not his, are not clear, but it seems that he is motivated by the need to collaborate in the creation of a better world. His exceptional situation draws the attention of Italian soldiers, who do not understand that a foreigner is coming to fight in a war that is not their own.

  Frederick starts from a conception of love that could be labeled as macho. Hemingway says of Frederick in the first days of meeting his future beloved Catherine Bartkley: "He was beginning to notice that difficulty, so masculine, of staying a long time with a woman in his arms." Frederick's primary intention is not to fall in love with her but to play with Catherine for a while, until he gets tired of her. However, after Frederick learns the hell of war, after being seriously wounded by a shell in one of Hemingway's most violent scenes, he seems predisposed to love. When he met Catherine again in the hospital, he fell in love with her: «When I saw her, I understood that he was in love with her. My whole being was transformed. The truth is that it is difficult to know if the transformation occurs after falling in love or if in fact he falls in love because he had previously already transformed on the battlefield when he knew death up close.

 Perhaps it is love that redeems Frederick. When the Italian army withdraws, his life is in danger on several occasions; All those around him are gradually disappearing, only he endures, he is only capable of overcoming all dangers, because the desire to meet Catherine is greater than anything that could happen to him and the need to have a life in common safely gives them the strength to flee from Italy. It is a conception of love with a strong Platonic component as well as Christian and even mystical.

Defeat contaminates the book in each of its pages, in each word. The characters in the book, not just Frederick, serve Hemingway to expose his own theory of wars. Pessimism is absolute: the war will not end even if one of the adversaries ceases to fight, because it is something that never ends, because ultimately, "war is not won with victory." And it is that defeat or victory are for Hemingway relative concepts: on a scale the pan would not tilt towards either side because they have the same weight. The fact of participating in a war implies being defeated from the beginning, it implies allowing oneself to be manipulated by those in power, it implies being forced to fight under threats of reprisals. Withdrawal is what is truly important, above victory or defeat.

c (: when ulrich considers throwing georg the flask