The significance of the rain《永别了,武器》读书报告由刀豆文库小编整理，希望给你工作、学习、生活带来方便，猜你可能喜欢“永别了武器阅读答案”。
The significance of the rain
——Book report of a farewell to arms
A farewell to arms is written by Hemingway(1899-1961)who is good at using brief language and dare to try different kinds of writing skills to elaborate the plot.Symbolism is an important writing style in Hemingway's works.A farewell to arms is a good example of the symbolism usage.Among the descriptions of the natural scenery is lot of deep symbolic significance, especially the description of the rain.It not only implies heroine’s encounter but also adumbrates heroine's fate in this novel.In the following text we will discu the symbolic significance of the image--rain
In the novel, Hemingway endowed “rain” with special significance.The word “rain” is a clue through the whole novel natural descriptions.To the author’s point of view, “rain” indicate all the hardship, suffering and the beginning of the heroine’s tragic ending.At the beginning of the novel, the author gave us a bleak miserable picture of wizen leaves, full of dust, the pierce cold wind, and the freezing rain of winter.All of these implied a disastrous ending.The first presence of the “rain” is in the first chapter, with the sentence: “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera.But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.”(page220)This is the first time of the author combining the “rain” with “death”.The disaster and misfortune are companied with the “permanent rain”.The rain cased the cholera and only this caused more than seven thousand deaths in the army.There had lost a lot of soldiers’ lives before the war beginning.We could imagine that when the real war began how many people would die? The number must be numerous!Here, the description of “rain” serves as a foil.In the following chapthers, the author mentioned a lot of “rain”.The “rain” have been a indispensable setting of the novel.When the troops moved forward, Henry and another three comrade-in-arms withdrawed difficultly in the heavy rain, Henry and Catherine fled to Switzerland in the clod rain, even when Catherine died from hemorrhages, the weather was still rainy.All the tragedy happened in the rain.In the ninteen chapter, there is a description of rain like this: “ The moon was supposed to rise but there was a mist over the town and it did not come up and in a little
while it started to drizzle and we came in.Outside the mist turned to rain and in a little while it was raining hard and we heard it drumming on the roof.＂(Page311)This wispy change of the weather is more like the change of the herion’s mood and implies herion’s unpredictable fate.When Henry talked to Catherine，Catherine said:＂That’s good.Because I’m afraid of rain.＂ Henry: “Why?”
Catherine: “I don’t know, darling.I’ve always been afraid of the rain.” Henry: “I like it.”
Catherine: “I like to walk in it.But it’s very hard on loving.”
Catherine told Henry: “I am afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it.And sometimes I see you dead in it.” She was crying.Henry comforted her and she stopped crying.But outside, it kept on raining.(Page 312)
No doubt, the author borrows Catherine’s lines and implies the tragic ending of the story.This time, Hemingway combined the “rain” with “death” again.At this time, the rain makes readers feel cold, fearful and Catherine is doomed to death.In the last part of the novel, Catherine died in childbirth and hemorrhages.The weather is rainy also.All the misery happened in the rain.The novel ended with: “But after I had got like saying good-bye to a statue.After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”(Page470)
Although the novel ends with few words, no crying, no tears, we could still touch the grief-stricken feelings from Henry’s bottle of heart.This is the last time that the author combines the “rain” with “death”.This time, Henry says farewell to his best love.His aspiration of pursuing ordinary happy life is destroyed by the war.The last “rain” takes Henry’s happine and hopes, the remains are only the feeling of helple.
