A Farewell to Arms

Water symbolizes both life and death. In Chapter 1, when the rains come, it is not life-giving rain. The rains cause 7,000 men to die from cholera. In Chapter 29, the rains create mud, and the mud is what traps Frederic’s vehicles during the calamitous retreat, eventually leading to Frederic’s shooting of a deserting soldier as well as leading to his own desertion.

But water also represents survival and life for Frederic. He dives into the Tagliamento river in order to escape being shot. His emergence from the water is a type of baptism as he emerges with a new identity, that of a civilian, and he sheds his old identity as a soldier. And again, he and Catherine must escape from Italy so that Frederic won’t be arrested for desertion, so they row all night until they reach Switzerland.

Catherine predicts her own death when she admits to Frederic that sometimes she sees herself dead in the rain. By the end of the novel, she is dead from childbirth, and Frederic must head out into the rain, alone.

The mountains resist the war. Although fighting takes place in the mountains, Frederic much prefers the flatter grounds for fighting since it seems hopeless to achieve victory in the endless mountains; once you conquer one mountain, there’s always another mountain waiting that must be conquered.