The Picturesque Front in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

Abstract: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms portrays the brutality of the Great War by capturing the beauty of the land and lives that it interrupts and often destroys. Heir to the Romantics, Hemingway shared their love for nature and heroic ideals. Elements of the picturesque movement, a subgenre of Romanticism that focuses on landscape, in American literature can be detected in his scenic descriptions in Farewell . These beautiful scenes when contrasted with the harsh and grotesque tragedies of war provide a compelling illustration of the new modern era. Frederic Henry's description of the front as "picturesque" points to the beauty of Italy, and, ironically, the hideousness of war.