hemingway

     This book was the first I had read by the famous author, Earnest Hemingway. I was expecting something old fashioned and hard to read, but this wasn't. There were sort chapters and easy, fun reading. And, of course, I was impressed with the quality of the writing.
     Hemingway paints such wonderful characters. When the Tenente was talking or having dinner with the other officers, I had fun as if I was there. I had a mental picture for each character, and the personalities were distinctly clear. When he talked about the priest, for instance, I thought of the "father" from the T.V. show M*A*S*H. Reading Hemingway was not dissimilar to watching a movie.
     I also remember one part in particular that was very powerful and moving. The Tenente was talking about death and dying and being killed when he said, "and the first time they caught you off base, they killed you.....Stick around and they killed you"(may be a paraphrase)
     These and many other parts made most of the book one of the more enjoyable that I've ever read. I felt as though I got to know the Tenente's Italian friends, and was, "on the edge of my seat," so to speak, as I read about his troubles in the army as his front retreated.
     However, the book also had a very powerful ending. It was an ending that I truly didn't like and didn't enjoy. In the end, after the Tenente defects from Italy into Swiss and gets his wife pregnant, she dies. She loses her baby in child birth, and the dies herself. I was deeply saddened, disappointed, and even angry at this outcome. As I read I would have normally assumed this is how it would end, because that is what would be most powerful. But, I had grown attached to the characters and felt the Tenente's grief as I read what I thought was an unnecessarily sad ending.

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