Fall is a beautiful time, my favorite time of the year actually. I love how the leaves all turn colors and there are so many holidays to be celebrated. Everybody just always seems to be in such happy moods and I love it! However, according to How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the fall season correlates with “decline and middle age and tiredness” (Foster 178). This fall theme easily agrees with that attitude shown by Catherine and Frederick Henry because “that fall…[they] lived in a brown wooden house in the pine trees on the side of a mountain” (Hemingway 290). This move to the mountains shows that the couple is settling down and not as young as they once were. Instead of traveling around and continuing with their childish antics, that seems to ‘decline’ which leads them into their ‘middle ages’ where they’re relationship has become more serious and tiresome. The couple demonstrates this through their actions and habits, time schedule, and set up in their house which closely relates to those of an old married couple.
The actions by this young couple soon took a turn and seemed to be much more mature and older than what was viewed by the readers towards the beginning of A Farewell to Arms. For example, Catherine and Frederick “bought books and magazines in the town and a hard copy of ‘Hoyle’ and learned many two-handed card games” (Hemingway 291). I don’t know about other people, but when I picture a couple playing card games together and just sitting and reading I immediately think of an old burnt out couple. These are activities often found in an old folks home or by parents, not those of two young and in love adults. They’re still at the age when they should be livin’ it up and having memorable experiences but with the pregnancy they soon are forced to settle down and become more serious.
We also can see a change in their lifestyle as well. Instead of living a very casual, free-spirited life, the two begin to develop a time schedule and pattern for their days. Whenever “the sun was bright we ate lunch on the porch but the rest of the time we ate upstairs in a small room with plain wooden walls and a big stove in the corner” (Hemingway 291). Every day was the same thing. They ate at the same time and same place and the new and carefree attitude seemed to fade and they are become grown-ups. Basically, they’re lives became a boring routine where there were no longer anymore spontaneous moments or unexpected happenings.
Coming from being on the warfront and then moving to a nice, quaint house in the mountains is definitely a 180 degree transformation of one’s lifestyle. The house they lived in very much so resembled one like my grandparents. It consisted of “two comfortable chairs and a table for books and magazines and [they] played cards on the dining-table when it was cleared away” (Hemingway 290). The two chairs would be where they resided most of the day playing cards or in present day watching shows such as Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, ect. I would think that for a young couple that in their house there would be a couch where they could snuggle up together instead of two separate chairs for the both of them. That symbolizes disconnection from one another or even isolation with them being away from each other.
Once the news of the pregnancy hit, their lives were changed. Like the theme of fall, Catherine and Henry were forced to grow up and become more mature because it was time to think about having a kid in their lives. Their romantic relationship declined and they began acting differently than they once had when they were carefree and had nothing to tie them down on the front lines of the war. Fall began the embarking journey of the couple into their middle ages.
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