ed by McDowell, these characters are "flawed by lust, jealousy, dishonesty and carelessness" (47). None of the characters in the novel seem to have any meaningful goals in their lives. Furthermore, all their experiences of love and sex seem to be devoid of meaning. In this way, Jake's impotence on a personal level serves as a symbol for the inability to love on a social level. In the novel, Hemingway shows how this inability to love results in life becoming both frustrating and meaningless.
In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway makes a direct connection between "the twinned themes of love and death" (McDowell 60). The novel is concerned with Frederic Henry, an ambulance driver during the First World War. When he is seriously wounded, Frederic meets a Red Cross nurse named Catherine Barkley and falls in love with her. The relationship between love and death is implied by the fact that Catherine's first lover had been killed in the war. This relationship is emphasized by the fact that Frederic does not really fall in love with Catherine until he almo
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