2. Literature Review

     A Farewell to Arms is one of Hemingway’s representative works which is also regarded as his semi-autobiographical novel. Many foreign scholars have conducted thorough analysis about this novel. In the thesis “Tragic form in A Farewell to Arms”, Robert Merrill studied the novel’ tragic form which was often neglected by other critics. Carlos Baker described Henry and Catherine’s love as Romeo and Juliet’s love tragedy in his book Hemingway, the Writer as Artist. In addition to these researches, There are also a considerable number of domestic researches about this novel which are mainly from the viewpoint of writing technique, symbolism, anti-war theme, view of gender, the love tragedy of the protagonists. For example, Bi Yujia analyzed the iceberg principle of this novel’s language characteristics in “Review of A Farewell to Arms”. Chen Fei discussed symbolism in the novel in her thesis “Natural Symbolism Used in A Farewell to Arms”. Huang Fang, Qian Rui studied the essence of the war with the breakthrough point of anti-war thoughts. In the thesis “Re-reading A Farewell to Arms From the Perspective of Ecological Feminist”, Peng Yaying made an exposition of Hemingway’s view of gender. Lin Xueqin and Zhuang Manman carried out collaborative research about the change of protagonists’ love view. Ye Shuxian analyzed the motivation of writing this novel in his thesis “Hemingway’s Writing Motivation and A Farewell to Arms”. Sun Yongjie expounded Hemingway’s attitude towards the war in “Analysing Hemingway’s View of War through A Farewell to Arms”.

     This paper analyzes the novel A Farewell to Arms from another angle, namely, from the perspective of ecological criticism with an intention to arouse people’s ecological awareness. Through the study of how people’s ideology and culture affect or even destroy the nature, people can redefine their position in nature and try to find the proper way to protect the environment and live in harmony with the nature.源`自,吹冰`.论"文'网[www.chuibin.com

3. An Ecological Criticism of A Farewell to Arms

3.1 The spoilt nature under the war

     Any battle, not only threatens people’s life and their property, but also brings harmful effect on the environment inevitably. Since the ancient times, people have been always opposed to wars. However, People usually put more emphasis on the cruel fact that wars swallowed material wealth and creatures of the world relentlessly and showed less concern about the damage which wars had done to the environment. In fact, the environment problem is objectively existent and the war has a long-lasting impact to the environment. With the development of human society, especially the emergence of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, the problems of pollution caused by wars become more and more serious. Since then, people began to be aware of the problem and attach importance to the environmental situation. It is obvious that the nature has always been the victim of wars.