"Your love is my drug": Hemingway’s archetype on summer loving

In “A Farewell to Arms,” Hemingway capitalized on the archetype of summer to further develop the passionate love of Catherine and Frederic, ultimately leading them to the idea of marriage. The idea of being together however is the leading force that causes them lots of pain; since Hemingway is the writer you can expect this PAINted, no pun intended LOL, in a very long and excruciating process. Frederic Henry begins by narrating that they “had a lovely time that summer” (Hemingway 112). Hemingway sets up the scene by introducing the time of year. Not only does he stage the season, but he describes it as “lovely.” The archetype related to summer usually involves the connotations of love, passion, and burning desires.  However, Hemingway tends to be overly ironic at times, so we need to be careful as we read his work. Ernest didn’t make it difficult for us this time, by the useof the adjective “lovely” he help us understand that he is going to make this passage one of passionate love, which will probably not turn dark….probably. For the majority of the passage things are as they should be in the summer, filled with LUST!! Frederic is obviously lusting after Catherine, it is confirmed when Mr. Henry states that “if we let our hands touch, just the side of my hand touching hers, we were excited” (112). Talk about being easily hot and bothered, they are obvious sinners (lol), giving into their animalistic senses that are hyped even more due to summer. Hemingway really plays on the heat of summer, as a simple side of hand touch, NOT-EVEN the whole hand, can really get them excited. I’m just going to come out and say it, “we were excited” is being directed towards sexual connotations. However, due to the time of the year we can safely say that these are more than “normal” levels of lustful desire…. In other words,they really reallyreally want each other, like for real. This really makes one wonder if there “love” is really just a big pile of animalistic “lust.” Love that is based on lust is one that quickly burns out, but as we can see at the moment they are just worried about the now, so I guess what they really want to do is to get a room…….so they DO!

 I’ve always heard the saying “love is blind,” but I think that saying doesn’t justify how people act when they’re in love. It should be more like….. “Love is a hallucinogen” because the characters didn’t seem to function properly as the passage continued. Well, I guess if they really wanted to blame something they could blame the summer heat. Anyways, Hemingway writes “we said to each other that we were married the first day she came to the hospital” (114). They are so into each other that they decided that they’ve been together longer than what they actually have; I didn’t think time bending was possible. However, when you’re on the drug of LOVE nothing is impossible. I also think that Hemingway is trying to ease them into the fact that this is no longer a summer lust, but its turning into an actual lifelong commitment that they both want. We can conclude that they are both fully awarethat this isn’t going to be the easiest thing for them to do. So Hemingway allows them to pretend to be married, haha I picture little kids acting as though they are grown-ups “pretending” to be married. However, we know what Catherine and Frederic have done….so they are far from children. “Pretending” also takes away from the pressures of true life. They are willingly choosing to ignore the tough life ahead and create an alternate universe where they can be happy AND married. But, it makes them seem kind of crazy;especially because in the following dialogue they go between reality and illusion…. “I wanted us to be married really… ,but we pretended toourselves we were married and I did not worry much and I suppose I enjoyed not being married, really” (115).Really? Frederic is so overdosed with love that he can’t even think straight. He came out of the illusion, but then realized that is easier to live a pretend life so he quickly took another shot of the hallucinogen. We can see how Hemingway uses the archetype of summer to give the characters room for flakiness.  The summer allows them to fully indulge in their passion and stay there. Even if a conversation gets serious due to the time of the year we can write them off simply because we all know that summer loves DON’T last. So Hemingway can introduce the idea of “marriage”, but not fully have his characters commit to it, solely because of the time of year. Through the use of an archetype Hemingway led his characters through a passionate summer that made them realize that they are crazy enough for each other to get married.