A Farewell to Arms (Earnest Hemingway): Henry's character portrayal

Ernest Hemingway’s portrayal of Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms is one of the triumphs in the sphere of characterization. Frederic Henry is the main character, protagonist. He worked as an ambulance driver in the Italian military. If we read the novel carefully, we find that there are two phases of his character: his character in war and his character as a lover.
       Frederick Henry is depicted in the beginning of the book as a disillusioned soldier. He wanders from brothel to brothel, engages in macho drinking contests and regularly gets drunk, but still doesn’t find any meaning of life in this sensuousness. He is a lonesome, confused and restless man. He is a rootless man and he has quarreled so much with the family that hardly he had any communication with them.
       We see that he wants to lead a different life. He doesn’t follow the priest’s advice, who invited him to his family’s house in Abruzzi, where one can lead a disciplined and orderly life. Finally he spends his life in taverns and whore houses and afterwards he feels he has wasted his time.
           The Hemingway hero developed a code of life when he devoted himself to Catherine. When he first met her, his attraction to her was only physical.  Later on, however, when she goes out of her way to become a nurse at the American hospital in Milan in order to see him, they develop a true love affair. They begin to feel quite lonely without each other. There was something special with his love for Catherine Barkley from the beginning.
            Having discovered his love for Catherine he prematurely returns to the front and sees the Italian army in total disorder and confusion.  He sees the Italian army trying and executing their own soldiers on trumped-up charges of desertion, Frederick Henry decides to desert also. In fact, he has never had a feeling of loyalty to abstract things like ‘Italy’ or ‘the cause’ of winning the war.
            While he is living a seemingly idyllic life in Switzerland, however, we see that he is still not content. He feels like a traitor and a criminal in having deserted, and lacks the circumstances to test himself as a man.
             Ultimately when Catherine dies, Hemingway does not describe the change in Henry’s thinking, letting us imagine. I believe he would have followed up on his promise to Catherine and never love another woman like he loved her.