異国漂泊者の視点 : A Farewell to Armsの場合

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It is well known that Hemingway was influenced by Paul Cezanne. Hemingway's realism is subjective, expressionistic, as is Cezanne's. He does not rely much on the surface. He gets below it. He is not an impressionist by any means. He rationally studies what he perceives. A Farewell to Arms is Frederic Henry's reminiscences. The story is set in Italy and Switzerland. Frederic, protagonist-narrator, recalls and tells his experiences. Naturally the magic of time changes one's memory, so the story could not be the exact facts as he experienced them. That Frederic is a foreigner is also one of the most important factors that influence the stroy. He is an American expatriate. (Catherine Barkley, his sweetheart, who dies in childbirth at the end of the story, is a British expatriate.) Frederic joins an ambulance corps of the Italian army, but in a sense, he remains an outsider. He does not affiliate himself with the Italian army in the true sense. Besides, the reason he joins it instead of the American one is not very clear. He experiences a lot of miseries in the war. It is in the retreat from Caporetto that he faces the worst situation. What he experiences in this retreat is so devastating as to lead him to desert. He is almost executed because of his being a foreigner. The policy of the carabinieri and young officers at the checkpoint is to execute officers of the rank of major and above who were separated from their troops. Frederic should be out of this category as he is a lieutenant. In spite of this, they decide to shoot him because he is not an Italian. He escapes execution by throwing himself into the river. Finally he flees into Switzerland with Catherine. In Switzerland the war seems to him to be far away. He enjoys blissful honeymoon days with Catherine, without feeling guilty for deserting the foreign nation's army. (Catherine also says once, 'It is only the Italian army.') Frederic's attitude toward the army indicates that he is not very loyal and is lacking in the sense of duty. This must have something to do with his being a foreigner, too. Frederic is not alienated (though quite a few critics regard him as such), but actually it is he who alienates other people, the world. The native people's perception is one thing and the foreigner's, another. While abroad, one's perception tends to be more intense, more susceptive, and more romantic. Frederic's perception is evidence of this. His descriptions of the things he sees are not based upon impressions solely; he recomposes the surface to express an inner truth inherent in it. The results are poetic, lyrical, full of emotion, yet the emotion is tempered by rationality. The technique applied here owes a lot to what Hemingway learned from Cezanne. This technique succeeded in objectifying the wandering expatriate's emotions and thoughts.
桃山学院大学の論文
1995-12-20

異国漂泊者の視点 : A Farewell to Armsの場合

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