Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: A Critical Study of war and its negative impact From an Ironic Perspective

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) is one of the many American writers who lived during the World War-I and was highly affected by it. He wrote a number of well-known war novels and the most famous of them is his war novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). Hemingway has adopted an ironic method to show the contrast between the ideal and the real of the world of war and its influence upon both the military and the civil people as well. Irony as used in this study involves the recognition of incongruities, the contrast between the appearance and reality. The role of irony in his fiction is to elucidate this attitude which affects his vision of the modern world and its horrible war. By analyzing the method of irony in A Farewell to Arms, this study aims at showing the writer's ironic point of view in treating the negative effects of the war and its atmosphere both physically and psychologically.