A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway
There is a sense of inevitability in A Farewell to Arms. As Lieutenant Henry’s courtship of Catherine Barkley proceeds so simply; as the collective feelings towards the war turns sour so abruptly; and as Lieutenant Henry’s escape from the front (by foot, river current, and rail) back to Catherine and then safely to Switzerland goes so perfectly—there is a sense, as one notices the pages dwindling down and sees things proceeding too uneventfully, that, just like in the hopeless war, triumphs are short-lived and, ultimately, reality will fatally strike our characters as a matter of course.
This inevitably is to a great extent due to Hemingway’s writing style, which is direct and economical. The narrative does not get sidetracked with flourishes of rhetorical bravado or tangential stream-of-consciousness. Even dialogue between characters tends to be efficient, with the characters speaking in a manner congruent to Hemingway’s writing (i.e. terse). Instead of probing the minds of characters and entering the infinite world of thoughts, conflicting motivations, and memories, Hemingway focuses on the resulting end product of such processes.
This focus does not mean that Hemingway merely leaves the reader with the worthless husks of the novel’s characters. The end products of internal processes are actually the seed from which things happen. They are the choices ultimately made. What is said as opposed to what is thought. Man’s interaction with his environment. In the real world, these are the only things that we can look at in others to judge their character.
However, a byproduct of this is the feeling that the characters are automations. Perhaps the strings of fate are pulling them along. Or perhaps they are acting in accord with an algorithm precisely attuned to their personality and circumstances. Whatever the case, a sense of inevitability pervades.
The Straining Reader 