e protagonist offers only reference points such as names of battles or cities, but everything he says is vague (Miller 61). The very first sentence of the novel begins “In the summer of that year…” (Hemingway 3). This avoidance of time has been created by the war and Frederic knows that if he dwells on the element of time, he would go mad waiting for the war to end. To Frederic, war means death. When the war inches closer to him, Frederic fears time and becomes very concerned with the times of the attacks and battles. He is able to escape the grasp of time, temporarily when he is hospitalized after being wounded. When his leave is up, however, he is extremely precise and acute with his descriptions (Miller 61-63). Along with death and war, Frederic also associates time with Catherine, as he grows more and more fond of her. He specifically notes the hours of her shifts at the hospital. After his desertion, the two lovers reunite in Stressa and decide to abandon all ties and disappear into Lausanne. As they retreat across the lake, time intrudes and becomes a factor since there is a clear danger of them being noticed. Although they attempt to virtually escape from reality, time is unavoidable. How can it be ignored when Catherine is pregnant? “Time becomes more important as danger increases” (63). During the labor, Frederic’s references to time are as detailed as the opening descriptions of the front. The final books of the novel mark Frederic’s final desperate attempts to derive meaning from his life. He has comes quite a distance since the beginning of the novel so far. Frederic has made the first big decision of his life that contains motive and cause. Of course joining the ambulance corps was a significant decision but Frederic had no reasoning behind it other than that “[He] was in Italy… and [he] spoke Italian” (Hemingway 22). Frederic’s desertion is ...
