A Fetid Feast: Hunger and Violence in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

Abstract: Hemingway's casting of the Great War's battlefields as a "stockyard" is monumental within A Farewell to Arms . The comparison captures the brutality and waste of the industrialized murder from which Frederic must escape. Resounding beyond the distress of the mechanical effciency of the war, this image complicates depictions of commensality and consumption. While Frederic eats cheese, the war eats people. Frequently, Hemingway draws us to meals achieved and attempted to meditate on a diffcult truth: sustenance and violence mingle by their nature.