Free Essays - Role Playing in A Farewell to Arms :: Farewell Arms Essays

Role Playing in A Farewell to ordnance store    In Hemingways novel, A Farewell to Arms, the principle characters, hydrogen and Catherine, are forced by the war to face the fact of military man mortality.  As a defense mechanism, the two main characters, and several otherwises, bring to role-playing as a way to escape reality. Hemingway utilized role-playing as a way to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the characters. By placing Henrys ordered life in immunity to Catherines topsy-turvy one, and then letting each one assume a role which will bring them closer together, Hemingway shows the pairs in skill to accept their induce mortality.   John Stubbs has written an essay that examines the role-playing that Henry and Catherine use to protect themselves from the denudation of their insignificance and powerlessness...in a military personnel indifferent to their well being...  Stubbs begins by showing other examples, notably in In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises, in which Hemingways characters revert to role-playing in order to escape or retreat from their lives. The ability to create characters who play roles, he says, either to maintain self-esteem or to escape, is one Hemingway exploits extraordinarily well in A Farewell to Arms and therefore it is his richest and most successful handling of human beings trying to scratch to terms with their vulnerability.   As far as Stubbs is concerned, Hemingway is quite blatant in letting us know that role-playing is what is occurring. He tells that the role-playing begins during Henry and Catherines third encounter, when Catherine straight dictates what is spoken by Henry. After this meeting the two execute progressively comfortable with their roles and easily adopt them whenever the other is nearby. This is apparent also in that they can only successfully play their roles when they are in offstage and any disturbance causes the game to be disrupted. The intrusion of the outsid e world in any form prepares their role-playing impossible, as evidenced at the break away track in Milan, where they must be alone. The people surrounding them make Catherine feel uncomfortable and Henry has to take her away from the crowd. He goes on to describe how it is impossible for them to play the roles when they are apart and how they therefore become more dependent upon each others company.   Stubbs goes on to explain how, neither mistakes role-playing for a truly intimate relationship, but both recognize that it can be a useful device for satisfying certain emotional needs.