Frederic Henry’s Transient Identity in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms

• Main Authors: Qin, Kuang-min, 秦光敏
• Other Authors: Brother Nicholas Koss
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13460152209590354381

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 英國語文學系 === 96 === Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is reportedly and objectively written through the autobiographical narrator, Frederic Henry. The happenings in war and conversation between people are presented in such objective observation and description that the first person narrator is comparatively kept alienated and de-centered from whom the narrator really is. Dealing with Frederic’s identity crises in this novel, this thesis is to investigate Frederic’s protean, unstable, and transient identities which sustain his fickle flexibility to secure himself from the war and love threats. Only through the ambiguous struggles and transitions as well, such as the wound, pregnancy, war, and river, can Frederic shape his next temporary identity for survival. I will, therefore, divide my thesis into three chapters: Chapter One is the theoretical discussion on the themes of the interactive operation between the novelistic structure and Frederic’s self and other, which serves as the cause of the persona’s transient identity in A Farewell to Arms. With the early studies of the critics, consisting of Earl Rovit, Gerry Brenner, James H. Justus, E Robert Gajdusek, and Mary Prescott. I will further theorize the relation between self and other in the examination of the persona’s transient identities. Chapter Two analyzes Frederic’s formation of self by dealing with his ambiguous identities between Signor Tenente and the only son of the American Ambassador as well as the ambiguous relationships with Rinaldi, the priest, and Catherine. In chapter three, Frederic’s experiencing the ambivalent identities that contrast with those who he has been acknowledged earlier turn out a traitor and an anarchist in the battlefield. The concluding chapter ends up with a tragedy that Frederic’s transient identity is dismantled and regresses back to the origin as an expatriate on a foreign land. In a nutshell, Frederic is obliged with ambiguous struggles to secure his masquerading of his transient identities. Yet his surviving capability of being fickle and transient is threatened by his fatal assimilation, sameness, and fixedness with Catherine. In consequence, Frederic’s identity cannot be held protean, changeable, and flexible anymore but will be left permanently lost and nonexistence in the end.