A Farewell to Arms (A BookHacker Summary)

Let’s be honest: sometimes you're asked to read an “important” book that you don't want or have time to read. Sometimes you try and it’s just so boring and impenetrable that you can’t get through it. And then, even worse, sometimes you’re asked to take a test or write a paper about it. If that sounds familiar, then BookHacker was designed for you.

BookHacker summaries strip away all the subtlety and stuffiness of literature’s classic works (100% “thou”-free guaranteed) and get right tothe point. Taking away all the guess work, BookHacker presents the book's warm gooey center in a concise, logical and entertaining way. Justbecause literary classics can be dry and boring doesn't mean understanding them has to be.

In Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, BookHacker takes you to theItalian front in World War I where an American ambulance driver named Frederic Henry is utterly disillusioned by the war. He harbors no illusions about honor or heroics in this war. We follow him as he falls in love with a British nurse, gets injured, gets shipped back to the front, deserts, then escapes to Switzerland with his love where they live happily ever after (except for the part where she and their baby die). BookHacker helps explain Hemingway’s view that war is a senseless but inescapable waste of life.

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BOOKHACKER BREAKDOWN:

1. Executive Summary - This is the Who, What, Where, When, Why, How in 60 seconds or less.

2. Plot - We do the reading so you don’t have to. The essential plot pointsof the story.

3. Scenes - Every great story has a number of number of important moments that are crucial (read: "testable") to its understanding. These are those.

4. Characters - If you can’t figure out what this section is about, you should probably be coloring.

5. Analysis - Themes, symbolism, and all manner of insufferable literary nonsense.

6. Quotes - All the intimacy of the book with none of the commitment.

7. Popular Culture - Books have a way of finding their place in the cultural consciousness. You might want to know about that.

8. Extras - Media, links and leftovers.