The “Rotten” matter in A Farewell to Arms: An Ecological Gothic reading

F1000Research · 4 authors, 4 centres

AI SUMMARY

FIDELITY 100%

This summary was generated by AI from a single paper. It has not been reviewed by a clinician and is not clinical advice. Verify against the source before acting on it.

AGENT 01 · STRUCTURED SUMMARY

TRACE TO SOURCE

“

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Ernest Hemingway's novel 'A Farewell to Arms' using an eco-gothic literary framework, arguing that depictions of rotten food, fragmented bodies, and gothic rain serve as counter-narratives to the dehumanizing forces of industrial warfare and medical objectification.

Full summary

428 CHARS

This narrative review employs material ecocriticism and ecological gothic theory to analyze Ernest Hemingway's novel 'A Farewell to Arms.' The analysis is structured into four sections examining rotten food, fragmented bodies, non-anthropocentric consciousness, and the gothic/romanticized nature. The author interprets these themes as critiques of the absurdity, destructiveness, and cannibalistic nature of industrial warfare.

STUDY TYPE

narrative_review

SPECIALTY

biomedical research

SUMMARISED BY

AI pipeline

FIDELITY CHECK

100% · A

ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10466005

The “Rotten” matter in A Farewell to Arms: An Ecological Gothic reading

F1000Research

READ THE FULL PAPER

ABSTRACT

This article uncovers the gothic tropes manifest in the “rotten” food, human bodies, landscapes, and rain in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms through an eco-gothic perspective. It demonstrates how the rotten food, the disjointed bodies, the broken landscapes, and the gothic rain can be viewed in the novel as counter-narratives against the narratives of war, the military, and modern medicine. The first part of this article suggests interpreting war as a form of cannibalism by exploring the representations of rotten food and the connection between eating and killing. Next, the author focuses on how the body is fragmented both metaphorically and literally by the discourse of war, the military, and medical science. The third part uncovers the non-anthropocentric consciousness embedded within the protagonist’s narrative, followed by the gothicizing and romanticization of nature in the fourth section. Here, the protagonist’s linking of the human body to the natural landscape, the descriptions of the gothic rain, and the romanticized snow—all these, as the author argues, can be interpreted as a collective resistance against industrial, anthropocentric warfare.

CITATION EXPORT

Lay Sion Ng, Carol Senf, Hideo Yanagisawa et al.. The “Rotten” matter in A Farewell to Arms: An Ecological Gothic reading. F1000Research. (2022). https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.75482.2

AUTHORS

4 · 4 CENTRES

Lay Sion Ng, Carol Senf, Hideo Yanagisawa, Scott Slovic

1CEGLOC, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8577, Japan
1School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
1Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan
1University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA