------- Chapter XLI Chen ning , Dong xuewei

Setting:Time: World War I(1914-1918)The war began with the assassination of Archduke Francis Fernand of Austria Hungary and his wife. Soon sides were drawn—France, Great Britain, Russia and three years later the United States against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey.

Place:Italy: where he serves as an army ambulance driver. Switzerland: Where Catherine died.

Plot:Frederic is a young American studying in Italy when World War I breaks out. He volunteers as an army ambulance driver .He is commissioned settotenente(2nd liutenent),and sent to the northern mountains where Italy is fighting Austria.

In the fall of 1916, he met an English girl named Catherine Barkley, who is working in the area hospital. They were attracted to each other

Henry considers their relationship a wartime flirtation ,but hardly anything more permanent .He does ,however, admit to himself one day when he got drunk,and missed seeing her. Catherine’s attitude is more complex. She seems want affection but is venerable because the previous year an English boy she had engaged to was “blown all to bits" in France. She encourages Henry and just before he went to the front she gave him an St. Anthony medal for protection.

At the front ,Henry’s leg is badly wounded by an canister shell, and was moved to an American hospital in Milan, where Catherine has been transferred. In Milan Henry convalesces. When Catherine visits him, he realizes the minute she went into the room that he loves her. She volunteers for night duty so that they can spend nights together.

When she got pregnant, Henry returned to the war .By now, things are going badly for the Italians. And Henry was almost caught by an Italian sniper(狙击兵). Having decided to desert, Henry went to meet Catherine, who is on leave. They escaped across the lake to Switzerland.

They find rooms in a mountain inn and spend an idyllic(田园诗的，牧歌的) time waiting for Catherine’s birth of baby. They hike, read, and talk about what they’ll do after the war. When her pregnancy nears its end, they move to Lausanne to near a hospital.

Catherine has a long and difficult labor. Her doctor resorts to anesthesia(麻醉手 术) .After she suffers hours, he decides on a cesarean(剖腹产). The baby is delivered dead. Henry visits Catherine. The nurse tells him “Mrs. Henry is very ill”. Catherine has had “one hemorrhage(出血) after another” and “there is no hope”

He watches her die. He tries to say goodbye to the dead body but realizes it is like talking to a statue. He leaves and walks back to the hotel in the rain.

Style:A new style of writing in America---the colloquial style Hemingway always choose words concrete, specific, more commonly found, and conversational, and employ them in syntax of short ,simple sentences, which are orderly and patterned, conversational and sometimes ungrammatical.

But it is good to that Hemingway's

style is deliberate and polished and is never natural as it seems to be, and its simplicity can be disastrously deceptive, as it is highly suggestive and connotative and capable of offering layers of undercurrents of meaning.

Hemingway's influence as a stylist was neatly expressed in the praise of the Nobel Prize Committee about “his powerful style-forming mastery of art” of writing modern fiction.