A Study of A Farewell to Arms as Ernest Hemingway’s Autobiographical Novel: A Freudian Analysis

Abstract

The objectives of this document-oriented study are to prove that the main character in A Farewell to Arms represents Ernest Hemingways’s real life while serving his country during World War I and to demonstrate that Freudian psychological concepts of the organization of personality, instinct and anxiety can reasonably explain the similarity between the main character in A Farewell to Arms and Ernest Hemingway himself including the situation they have to go through and people they associate with.

The results of this study confirm that the purpose of Hemingway’s novel is to present the nature of himself as a human being and emphasize the importance of penetrating the unconsciousness, which is the best means of resolving self-conflicts.

Moreover, the comparative study of the main character in A Farewell to Arms and its author, Ernest Hemingway, shows that his novel is an autobiographical novel because the main character is the personification of himself and the incidents in the novel depict his own experiences.