cup empty to put whiskey in ... (328)This is an extremely important passage in the book. Here, Henry is clearly acting as God, or at least as a god-like figure. He has the power to save the lives of multitudes, but chooses not to simply out of apathy. This is the clearest expression of Hemingway's, and Henry's, views of religion and God that the reader will receive in the novel. God may or may not be there, but that doesn't affect, and certainly does not help, anyone in the book or in the war itself.The views Hemingway presents in the novel at this point become, if not clear, at least more accessible to the reader. The priest no longer represents God. He does represent religion, for this is why he receives the verbal battery he does from the soldiers. But to Henry and to the reader he is simply another man with strong beliefs. God, in the novel, either does not exist or is completely apathetic to the actions of man. The one religious icon the reader sees in the book, the St. Anthony necklace Catherine gives to Henry, is disregarded and lost within twenty pages. Henry's strongest sense of devotion in the book is to Catherine, and in this way love for him is a "religious" feeling, but by no other definition of the word is this true. The priest nicely expresses Hemingway's message when he says, "there in my country it is understood that a man may love God. It is not a dirty joke" (71). The frontlines are no place for religion. God has no place in war....
