1. Home

How Ernest Hemingway Uses Water Symbolism in A Farewell to Arms

In this essay on Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, the student argues that water, in the form of rivers and rain, functions as both symbol and foreshadowing tool to express themes of life and death across Frederic and Catherine's tragic love story.
PAGES
3
WORDS
841
  Cite
View Full Essay
About this essay
This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

More essays like this:

love and war, frederic henry
Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin
- Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University
Exactly what I needed.
- Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA
Wow. Most helpful essay resource ever!
- Chris Stochs, student @ UC Berkeley
Generating Preview...
This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

More essays like this:

love and war, frederic henry
Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin
- Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University
Exactly what I needed.
- Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA
Wow. Most helpful essay resource ever!
- Chris Stochs, student @ UC Berkeley

View other essays like this one:

Bridget's feedback:

"This essay boasts a solid and focused analysis of the novel's use of water, with clear reference to events in the book and other textual evidence. I encourage you to push your concluding thoughts one step further: can you brainstorm an umbrella term or conclusion that covers both rivers (rebirth) and rain (tragedy) under a more general meaning for water (change, life cycle, fate, ...?). This will help bring together the two threads of the current draft. (If you feel that the two can't be brought together, that would also be an interesting direction to pursue: why would Hemingway use two water-related symbols that resist a unified interpretation?)

I'd also like to check in on the last-minute claim about foreshadowing (first sentence of the last paragraph); this isn't signposted in the introduction, so you will need to think about how present this other function of water needs to be earlier in the essay. You will also want to explain the difference between foreshadowing and symbols, as well as how they work together as literary devices."

Learn more about this feedback