Hemingway

Everyone in the house tonight is locked in quiet, exhausted desperation, trying to finish their papers before the deadline tomorrow night. I'm already finished with my paper on Margery Kempe's madness, as well as I think I can be finished. I can't stop myself from re-reading it over and over again. Each time I seem to find a spelling error here, a comma error there. So, I can't seem to bring myself to submit the paper even though I know I won't make any more substantial changes to it tonight.

Between these intervals of proof-reading, I finished reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I felt completely unprepared for Catherine's death. The shock of that sadness and poor Henry's devastation has left me feeling very down.. His stream of consciousness style and plain, matter-of-fact way of putting things was terribly beautiful.


"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." (ch. 34)