The love affair between Catherine and Lieutenant Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms has often been interpreted as a tragic love story akin to Romeo and Juliet or other such love stories with heartbreaking endings. However, the protagonists in Hemingway’s book and their relationship are rather complicated and incite the need for psychological analysis. Given the context in which this story takes place, the character’s behaviors and needs can be attributed to the war. In fact, one might wonder if these two characters would have ever fallen in love if the threatening conditions of war such as loneliness and isolation did not bring Catherine and Lieutenant Frederic Henry together. To make sense of these questions, it is important to analyze A Farewell to Arms from a psychological standpoint. Particularly, this essay will view their relationship and Lieutenant Henry’s memory of war and Catherine’s death from the perspective of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the principles of Freud’s defense mechanisms.
To begin, it is difficult for the reader to see how a stoic and aloof character such as Lieutenant Henry could ever fall in love, and if he did, the reader cannot help but question what his motivations were. Throughout the book, Henry’s behavior show that he has developed a defense mechanism in order to make the tragedies of war tolerable. To illustrate, Henry discusses his improbability of being killed saying that he would not be killed since the war “did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies”(Hemingway31).
Freudian’s principle of simple denial is exemplified when Henry convinces himself that he will not die. In addition, since he saw the war was like a movie, Henry was displacing the real threat of death and comparing it to something that was not real but similar. These defense mechanisms make Henry appear rather robotic and free from having emotions; however, one can argue that Henry’s defense mechanisms were necessary in order to protect himself. The necessity to feel that he is safe from being killed can fit under the hierarchy of safety needs according to Maslow. Here, both Freud’s theory of defense mechanisms and the hierarchy of needs are interrelated since humans need to feel safe, Henry has created a way to live in a safe place by convincing himself that he will not be killed during the war.
Adding to this, Henry’s social needs were always lacking although he was constantly surrounded by people. It is clear that his fellow soldiers did not fulfill his need for companionship and love. For instance, he points out that one of the reasons he drank alcohol was to create a sense of brotherhood with those around him(32). The audience can view this from two psychological perspectives; one being that he was using a defense mechanism to rationalize a reason behind his overdrinking. The other is that he shows that he drank so he could be more social because he desired connection with others—something that would not be possible without alcohol. Henry reveals his loneliness several times in the story, suggesting that his social needs were perhaps the least met of all. For example, Henry thinks to himself: “the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started”(216). Also, Henry only considered that he had real feelings for Catherine when he felt “lonely and hollow”(35) away from her presence.
Another possibility is that Henry and Catherine were confusing their fear and need to feel safe by putting their social needs first. This could be seen as exemplifying the compensation defense mechanism. For instance, many people who are experiencing trauma search for the comfort of others. In the same way, since Henry and Catherine’s safety needs were not being met because of the war, they naturally gravitated toward one another as a form of compensating the lack of satisfying this need for another. For instance, Catherine and Henry were also described to never feel “lonely and never feel afraid where [they] were together”(216). Here, it is clear that both characters were fulfilling a basic need of humanity by being in a relationship with one another.
Just like Henry uses his drinking as the defense mechanism of rationalization, Catherine also seems to protect herself from Henry’s questionable motivations by rationalizing as well. For instance, she asks Henry: “This is a rotten game we play, isn’t it”(26) when she realizes that his original intentions were to treat her as an object of pleasure. By stating this, she is both rationalizing with herself that she is partaking in an act of seduction, and at the same time, she is using another defense mechanism by using reaction formation. For instance, if she felt hurt or shocked that she was being used, she hid it by acting like she was doing the same instead of getting angry and over emotional with him.
In the same way, she does something similar when she is realizing that Henry only wants to marry her because “I thought girls always wanted to be married”(99). The audience could clearly see that Henry’s answer should have been that he loves her, but Catherine claims that there is no need to get married since they are already one entity. Another example of Catherine’s use of rationalization and reaction formation is when she notices Henry lost in thought and finds out that he is simply thinking about whiskey. Instead of getting upset, Catherine simply says, “Alright.” In both of these instances, it is clear that Catherine continues to rationalize with herself as a possible form of denial and at the same time reacts in a different way than she feels.
As a way to come to terms with Catherine’s death and the memories of war, Henry finds the necessity to tell his story. It is possible that in recounting all of the events, as well as his child’s death, Henry is clearly trying to rationalize his behavior and the situation around him through the novel’s entirety. At the same time, he was also trying to understand—not only Catherine—but his comrades, the war, and why his baby ended up dying.
Work Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition.