Monday
In Joe Biden’s primetime address last Thursday evening, he quoted a line from Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. It’s a powerful image on its own and even more so when seen in the context of the novel.
Among Biden’s objectives for the address were to (1) honor those who have died of Covid, (2) report on progress being made, (3) instill hope that an end is insight, and (4) advocate for maintaining Covid precautions since a premature relaxing of sanctions (such as we’re seeing in a number of states) will lead to new outbreaks. “I need your help,” the president said, looking straight at the camera.
Hemingway was invoked as Biden honored the 530,000+ who have died. “And so many of you, as Hemingway wrote, being strong in all the broken places,” Biden said.
The passage occurs at a special time in Farewell to Arms. Frederic Henry has escaped the nightmare of World War I, where he has seen Italians mowed down by Austrian firepower and Italians executing their own officers for retreating. He himself, having deserted, will be shot if he is caught. Yet it’s worth it because he has fallen in love with Catherine, an army nurse. The two have found momentary respite in a northern Italian resort:
At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way that you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time.
Then comes the best-known passage from the book, the one that provides Biden with his quote. F. Scott Fitzgerald apparently wanted Hemingway to end his book with it (Fitzgerald knew all about killer endings), but I can understand why Hemingway didn’t. He uses it to foreshadow the actual ending (more on that in a moment) as it sums up beautifully his philosophy of life:
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
In other words, the world will break those who stand up for what is right—in this case, a couple declaring love in the face of war and death—and those people, if they manage to survive, will turn their hurt into strength. Biden has become an effective consoler-in-chief in part because losing a wife and two children has made him strong at the broken places.
Not all will survive the world’s hurt, Hemingway acknowledges. Some of “the very good and the very gentle and the very brave” will be killed. But one might as well act in accordance with these values, regardless of the cost, because we are all going to die eventually (the world “will kill you too but there will be no special hurry”). Best to have something to show for it.
Blogger Arshan Dhillon alerts me to a David Foster Wallace passage (from a magnificent Commencement address given at Kenyon College) that clarifies what Hemingway might mean by “the very good and the very gentle and the very brave”:
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. This is real freedom.
Catherine and Frederic are willing to devote the attention, awareness and discipline that truly caring for each other involves. Therefore, even though the world kills Catherine at the end of the novel, Frederic can look back at his precious moments with her. To spur your own memories of time spent with a loved one, here’s the continuation of the memory:
I remember waking in the morning. Catherine was asleep and the sunlight was coming in through the window. The rain had stopped and I stepped out of bed and across the floor to the window. Down below were the gardens, bare now but beautifully regular, the gravel paths, the trees, the stone wall by the lake and the lake in the sunlight with the mountains beyond. I stood at the window looking out and when I turned away I saw Catherine was awake and watching me. “How are you, darling?” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” “How do you feel?” “I feel very well. We had a lovely night.” “Do you want breakfast?” She wanted breakfast. So did I and we had it in bed, the November sunlight coming in the window, and the breakfast tray across my lap.
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s fascinating film After Life has the premise that, after death, we are to choose a memory in which to spend eternity. We watch characters struggle over their choices—they are guided away from a day in Disneyland—and some, unable to choose, spend eternity in limbo. The memory I have chosen is lying on a large bed in Ljubljana (where I spent two Fulbright years) on a Sunday morning with Julia, reading aloud to our three sons. Since then I have lost one of those sons, but he still lives on in the picture I carry around within me.
Though Justin’s loss broke me, I am stronger in that broken place. Joe Biden knows this can be true for us all in the face of this pandemic. How wonderful that he has Hemingway to provide the words to express it.
