ines escape through the river not only leads them to a better life but the unborn child, too.As a symbol of tragedy rain is frequently used by Hemingway in this novel. Rain is a symbol of disaster already beginning in the first chapter when the reader learns that the war is not going well and that the " the permanent rain brought the cholera". Here rain is related to illness. Rain also falls when Frederic and Catherine are looking for a hotel room so they can be together before Frederic must leave for the front. Catherine buys a nightgown for the evening. And when they find a room, she looks in the mirrors and feels cheap, while Frederic looks outside at the storm. The rain degrades the farewell of Frederic, and Catherine tells him that [she] never felt like a whore before". Rain also falls during the troop's retreat which is symbolizing a failure. One night when Catherine and Frederic are in the hotel in Italy, Frederic awakens to the sound of rain and learns that he will be arrested. And during their time of escape from Italy to Switzerland it is very windy and rainy. That symbolizes how their escape would definitely be difficult. It takes them many hours to row to Switzerlands shore. A second role that rain plays in A Farewell to Arms is to reflect death. On a "rainy day" when Frederic is recovering from his injury, Catherine describes the weather as scary. She tells him that she is afraid of the rain because sometimes [she] sees them dead in it." This may be interpreted as meaning that rain is an omen of death. And Hemingway foreshadows through this sentence how rain will symbolically impede and end their relationship. When the time comes for Catherine to have her baby, it is raining again and it continues to rain during the delivery. It is still raining when she and the child die, which proves Catherine's fears to be correct. Hemingway uses rain as a sign of death, sadness or to give one of his characters the state of being afraid....
