Reflections on Violence and the Crisis of Modernity: Understanding A Farewell to Arms

Abstract

Based on A Farewell to Arms, this paper intends to figure out the connotation of the crisis of modernity embodied in this works through understanding the relationship between violence and war, violence and modernity. The novel reveals the cruel nature of war by the descriptions of the experience of the protagonist Henry in the war. It is not only an anti-war fiction, but also the author's discussion on the forms of violence, reflecting the author's philosophical thinking on the living conditions of modern westerners. Modernity is a process of rationalization of human society. With the intensification of human transformation and conquest of nature, scientific rationality paid too much attention to things while neglected man himself, thus providing space for violence to grow. War is a concentrated expression of violence. It not only pushes the relationship between man and nature into opposition with cold mechanical violence, but also leads to the alienation of interpersonal relations and the collapse of human spiritual home through omnipresent spiritual violence.