By: Jay Love is impossible to explain or fully understand; it is enfable and war is merely an outcome of disputes between ignorant aristocrats. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, is a novel about love and war. The narrator, Fredrick Henry is a war-time ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley is an English nurse, who find themselves in a love affair which must maneuver itself around the restrictions of World War I. The novel begins in Gorizia, Italy the center of operations for Fredrick’s troop, World War I. Fredrick is an American volunteer and in the Ambulance Corps for the Italian Army. He meets a English nurse Catherine named Barkley and does not truly fall in love with her u