A Farewell to Arms Catherine Barkley Quotes

A few paragraphs back he tells us he doesn’t love Catherine. A Farewell to Arms is a memory, Frederic’s memory of Catherine. He’s showing us the beginning of his love for Catherine, perhaps even the awakening of it. Do we trust Frederic here? If not, why? Is this his confession, to the reader, that he didn’t love Catherine enough at first? Does Catherine love him here?

These are the last words that Catherine and Frederic speak. She’s talked about love and death before, in terms of "a rotten game." Her first lover died, her son died, and now she’s losing her second lover, through her own death. Is love in A Farewell to Arms all a rotten game, or a dirty trick? Or, is there deeper meaning in all novel’s the loving, even though it ends tragically?

This is the only time we see Catherine act violently, and she doesn’t like what she’s done. She does want Frederic to kiss her, as we see. We wonder if she slaps him because she doesn’t want to be thought of as being too "easy." He seems to take her slap as an indication of just how much she does want him.