The New York Post declared Charles Yale Harrison’s novel Generals Die in Bed “the best of the war books.” (Nielsen n. pag.) Considering the number of books related to World War I that were published, including Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, this is no small praise. Harrison and Hemingway used somewhat similar writing styles to share the experiences of soldiers in war, but Harrison’s more economical diction written in the present tense makes Generals Die in Bed a more effective condemnation of war than Hemingway’s novel. A Farewell to Arms is written in a more polished style, using the past tense, and lacks some of the impact of Generals Die in Bed.
Both Generals Die in Bed and A Farewell to Arms reveal the author’s repulsion to war. They were both written from the first person point of view, which is very effective as it tends to give a story more realism, making the reader feel involved in the events as well as allowing the author to constantly convey the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. Harrison, however, combined the first person point of view with the use of the present tense, which pulls the reader even deeper into the events. In contrast, Hemingway used the past tense, which makes the reader feel like an observer rather than a participant.
While both novesl were about World War I, Hemingway’s protagonist is an American officer in the Italian army while Harrison’s novel covers the experiences of a young Canadian, who is unnamed. Harrison’s decision not to give the narrator a name helps get across the universality of his experiences. This young man could be any recruit from any nation. His story is shared by hundreds of thousands of other young men fighting on both sides. When the reader considers how many men endured the horrors recounted in this novel, such as finding an officer’s boot with a dead foot still insider it (Harrison 31), it multiplies the novel’s effectiveness in getting across the terrors faced by the enlisted men. Hemingway, on the other hand, chose to give his narrator a name. While naming a narrator can make the reader more empathetic towards him, it also eliminates the “collective experience” effect as a method of recounting the horror of war.
The diction used by the author is also very important in conveying an experience. Harrison uses extremely straightforward language. His complete lack of lavishness in his word choices gives Generals Die in Bed, in the words of war novelist Ford Madox Ford, “a sort of flat-footed straightness that gets down the torture of the front line about as accurately as one can ever get it” (Nielsen, n. pag.). Hemingway’s diction is also quite straightforward, but not to the same degree as Harrison’s, whose utter and deliberate lack of poetry completely removes all traces of romanticism, leaving only pure realism. Harrison’s diction indicates that Generals Die in Bed was written purely to expose the hideous nature of war, and that entertainment was not a goal when he wrote it. His sentences are short and clipped, and the everyday language he uses leaves the reader with the impression that the book was written with an entirely monosyllabic vocabulary. This ordinary language used by the narrator is the same language the reader would use himself if he was actually trying to relate the events of war as they were happening. The reader sees what the narrator sees, and both the reader and the narrator are left to form their own opinions of the events and people encountered. On the other hand, Hemingway’s language and sentence structure is frequently more typical of a novel. The sentences in A Farewell to Arms are often longer than Harrison’s, and in a number of places, Hemingway tends to let his characters (both the narrator and the other characters) use longer, more poetical phrases than most readers would use in the same situation. For example, when the narrator of A Farewell to Arms is wounded, a doctor comments that his “blood coagulates beautifully” (Hemingway 59). When a character uses more eloquent language than the reader would use in the same situation, the situation loses some of its realism and authenticity. The characters are elevated above the level of the reader and it is more difficult for the reader to appreciate the characters’ experiences. By allowing his characters to be more articulate than the reader (even though this is only occasional), Hemingway loses some realism, which costs A Farewell to Arms some effectiveness as a denunciation of war.
On the whole, both Generals Die in Bed and A Farewell to Arms are novels about World War I that try to present war not as a noble battle willingly fought by heroic men, but as the harsh struggle of ordinary men to survive a terrifying and thoroughly miserable experience. Both Hemingway and Harrison use the first person narrative style in their novels, which is very effective in conveying the horrors of war. Though the authors have similar styles, Harrison is overall more effective than Hemingway. Harrison uses the present tense rather than the past tense to draw the reader into the novel as a participant, while Hemingway leaves the reader out of the action by using the past tense. Harrison’s decision to leave the narrator unnamed gives his novel a sense of being common to the hundreds of thousands of men who served in the war, and amplifies its effect. Hemingway does give his narrator a name, so this effect is lost in A Farewell to Arms. Most importantly, Harrison’s diction is extremely plain, which gives his novel a coarse, unrefined air of truth, of “shooting from the hip.” Hemingway, on the other hand, sticks mainly to everyday language, but he occasionally oversteps this boundary and slides into more polished language. This removes some of the realistic effect for the reader. On the whole, Harrison’s Generals Die in Bed seemed to be written purely to reveal the true nature of war as experienced by the infantrymen. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was written not only to share the experience of war but also to tell the story of a man falling in love, and because it had more than one goal, it is less effective at achieving either one.
Works Cited
Gagne, David. “A Farewell to Arms”, 1995.
Harrison, Charles Yale. Generals Die in Bed. Toronto: Potlatch, 1975
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957.
Nielsen, Robert F. Introduction. Generals Die in Bed. By Charles Yale Harrison. Toronto: Potlatch, 1975.
