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Write a 3-4 page paper on the significance/meaning of this passage
Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.


A Farewell to Arms Paper
Naomi Biden
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is a story about love and war, and the protagonist Frank Henry’s ultimate failure at both. Frank Henry is a man uninhibited by the desire most men in uniform feel to be the hero of their story. Whether in his relationship with Catherine Barkley or during battle fighting for the Italian army Frank Henry is neither brave nor heroic. In the final pages of his story Frank Henry reflects on lives of ants. He remembers and finds it worthy to tell of an instance when he had an opportunity to save the lives of ants but decided against it. That moment and Henry’s decision to tell of that moment are significant to his character and his story, and ultimately sum up one of the most powerful messages the book offers on the inevitability of death.
The ants Frank the narrator speaks of were on a log that Frank had set on top of the fire. Frank watched as the ants struggled and then fell to their death or escaped barely only to face death from their injuries soon. Frank remembers contemplating how grand it would be to take this opportunity to be a sort of ‘messiah’ and remove the log from the fire saving the remainder of the ants. But he doesn’t. Instead he pours the contents of his cup on the log so he can fill it with whiskey. Frank the narrator finishes the story with the sentiment that the water on the burning log ‘only steamed the ants’.
His frankness when telling the story contrasts greatly with the emotional last few pages during and following Catherine and the baby’s death. Immediately before this passage Frank is thinking about whether the baby’s death counted because it was only alive inside of Catherine and that Catherine herself would die. Thinking about death causes him to reflect on Aymo and Rinaldi’s lives and deaths, which bring him to the conclusion “Stay around and they would kill you”. They perhaps being the nature of the world, maybe even the same they that had to make Catherine’s pregnancy difficult in the end. If so then Frank the narrator’s story about the ants would suggest that Frank Henry has always felt and known the inevitability of death and that he may have even thought he was cutting the ants a break because if they didn’t die then they’d be worse of when they died later. Frank Henry is not cruel in the instance he decides not to save the ants he just recognizes that saving them wouldn’t actually make him a messiah. If that is true then maybe telling this story after he tells about the baby and Catherine’s death is therapeutic for him.
Frank is working through the guilt he feels for not doing something to save Catherine, for impregnating her in the first place and maybe even for not being with her when she got the surgery like he promised. When Catherine suggests that she might die Frank says that he “won’t let her” (p323). He breaks that promise to her. He isn’t her hero at all. He is a coward in the face of her death and therefore the world will break him slowly. Just like the ants that got out but with their bodies “burned and flattened” and “not knowing where they were going”. Frank Henry is also broken and injured and living a life that no longer has any direction.
When Franks tells that he made a conscious decision not to save the ants it speaks to his character throughout the entire story and of his lack of development from the time the story begins till when Catherine dies. His indifference and lack of interest in being a hero or saving anyone is first evident after he injures his knee and Rinaldi tells him that he is sure to be decorated with war metals. He doesn’t care at all about war metals or glory because he sees himself for what he is. He isn’t a man or a soldier who uses “abstract words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow” he is concerned only with the “names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates”. This in part is because he doesn’t see the war as anything but another way people die, and that the war, like the fire, swallows people up. Saving them is a noble effort but in the end they too will die.
The story of Frank not saving the ants is much like the entire story of Frank’s life. Does the story of the ants make Frank an unlikable character? Is he an unlikeable or unrelatable character for not loving his baby or for not doing more to save Catherine or his friends? Perhaps his failure or indifference only makes him more relatable and likable. Hasn’t everybody watched a fly or small helpless bug drown in a pool when it was in their power to save that bugs life. Frank Henry is not cruel for not saving the ants he is simply victim to human nature just as Rinaldi, Aymo, the baby, Catherine and the ants all are.
The significance of the passage in the novel is in how telling it is of Frank Henry’s character and the protagonist’s message on life and death. That is, “everybody dies”, humans are mortal and mortality if fragile. The lives of the characters in the novel are as powerless to death as the ants and most importantly that Frank Henry is aware of that truth throughout the entire story. Had he saved the ants he would have only been delaying their inevitable death.