A Farewell to Arms: ThemeTracker

The LitCharts ThemeTracker is a mini-version of the entire LitChart. The ThemeTracker provides a quick timeline-style rundown of all the important plot points and allows you to track the themes throughout the work at a glance.

	Back- story	Henry enlists in the Italian Army and becomes an ambulance driver in Word War I. Catherine’s fiancé dies in battle during the war.
	1	Henry describes the situation of the Italian troops. Cholera breaks out, but “only” 7,000 soldiers die.
	2	The following year, Henry’s unit is stationed in the town of Gorizia, which is near the front but is safe enough to have cafés and brothels for the soldiers.
	3	Henry takes a winter leave and then returns to Gorizia. His friend the priest is hurt that Henry did not visit his family, but went instead to big cities.
	4	Henry’s friend Rinaldi introduces him to two English nurses: Helen Ferguson and Catherine Barkley, who has lost a fiancé in the war. Catherine and Henry are immediately attracted to each other.
	5	Henry goes back to see Catherine. When Henry tries to kiss Catherine and she starts crying, he realizes she is emotionally unstable.
	6	The next time Henry visits Catherine, she asks him to tell him he loves her. He does, though he has no intention of loving her. She acknowledges that they are playing a “rotten game.”
	7	Henry encounters an American soldier in the mountains and helps him fake an injury in order to get out of combat. At dinner, Henry gets into a drinking contest, and when he realizes he has forgotten to visit Catherine, he feels genuine regret and loneliness.
	8	Catherine gives Henry a St. Anthony’s medal for luck as he heads toward a battle along the river.
	9	Henry and the other ambulance drivers debate the justifications for war. While they are eating macaroni and cheese, a mortar shell hits their bunker, killing one of them and wounding Henry in the leg. He is taken away in a stretcher.
	10	Rinaldi comes to visit Henry in the hospital and insists Henry will get a medal, even though Henry knows he did nothing heroic.
	11	Next, the priest visits. He asks Henry whether he loves anything enough to sacrifice for it, and Henry admits that he does not. The priest suggests that Henry will one day want to sacrifice for a person he loves.
	12	Henry is to be shipped to another hospital in Milan. The news that America has joined the war causes Henry and several officers to get so drunk in Henry’s hospital room that he is hung over for the entire train ride.
	13	Henry finds the hospital in Milan badly managed. There is no doctor, and the head nurse, Miss Van Campen, forbids him to drink alcohol for his pain.
	14	Catherine Barkley is transferred to Henry‘s hospital. When he sees her, he knows he is in love with her. They make love for the first time on his hospital bed.
	15	Three timid doctors examine Henry’s leg and conclude that he should wait six months before risking an operation. He asks for another opinion, and the brash and competent Dr. Valentini agrees to operate in the morning.
	16	Before the operation, Catherine tenderly gets Henry ready. She asks him how many other women he has loved, then how many he has slept with. His answer, true or not, is “None.”
	17	The operation is successful, though Henry feels sick for a while afterward. More American soldiers arrive in the hospital. One has injured his eye trying to unscrew the fuse cap from a shrapnel shell to keep as a souvenir.
	18	Henry and Catherine have an idyllic summer together in Milan. Henry offers to marry her, but Catherine prefers to avoid such an official engagement.
	19	Henry meets a war hero, Ettore Moretti, in a bar and is bored by him. Henry and Catherine lie awake listening to the rain. Catherine is afraid of rain and says she can see herself dead in it.
	20	Henry and Catherine go to a horse race, where Catherine refuses to take a hot tip and instead bets on a losing horse.
	21	Henry will soon have to go back to the front. Catherine reveals to him that she is pregnant.
	22	Miss Van Campen discovers Henry’s stash of alcohol bottles and accuses him of trying to give himself jaundice by drinking. He loses his convalescence leave.
	23	The night before Henry is to leave for the front, he checks into a hotel with Catherine, where they say their goodbyes. He also buys a pistol.
	24	The train going back to the front is so crowded that Henry doesn’t get a seat.
	25	The mood at Gorizia is more serious than when Henry left. The mess hall is quieter, and although Rinaldi tries to mock the priest, his jokes turn to anger at the war.
	26	Henry tells the priest that he does not believe in victory or defeat, but only in sleep.
	27	Austrian and German troops have broken the Italian lines. Henry and his fellow ambulance drivers prepare to join the mass retreat out of Gorizia.
	28	The main road is so clogged that Henry orders his drivers, who have picked up spare passengers along the way, to cut across the muddy countryside.
	29	The ambulances become stuck in the mud. Two sergeants who have been riding with them refuse to help, and start to run away. Henry shoots one of them and Bonello finishes him off.
	30	They try to sneak along the river, and Aymo is shot by friendly fire from the Italian rear guard. When they finally reach the bridge to cross the river, Henry sees that military police are executing officers for having retreated. To save himself, he jumps into the river and the current carries him away.
	31	Henry climbs out of the river and cuts the lieutenant’s stars from his sleeve to disguise himself. He sneaks onto a train going to Milan.
	32	While lying in a pile of guns on the train, Henry decides he is done with the war and that Catherine is all that matters to him.
	33	When Henry gets to Milan, he learns Catherine has gone to the resort town of Stresa. He borrows civilian clothes from Ralph Simmons, and takes the train to Stresa.
	34	Henry finds Catherine in a hotel in Stresa, accompanied by Helen Ferguson. Helen, who knows Catherine is pregnant, gives Henry a stern lecture and then bursts into tears. Catherine goes back to Henry’s hotel and they are reunited.
	35	Henry plays billiards with Count Greffi. The Count complains that Henry has not grown more religious as he has grown older, and reminds Henry that love is a religious feeling.
	36	Emilio warns Henry and Catherine that the military police have come to arrest Henry. They escape in Emilio’s boat.
	37	Henry and Catherine, though exhausted, make it across the lake to Switzerland. They are detained by Swiss officers, who eventually believe their story about being students on holiday and let them have visas.
	38	Henry and Catherine move into a chalet outside the ski resort of Montreux. They plan to marry after the baby is born.
	39	Henry grows a beard and tries to find ways to pass the time. Neither of them is excited about the baby’s arrival.
	40	They go to the town of Lausanne on vacation, with a mutual feeling that they should not waste any time together.
	41	Catherine’s water breaks and they go to the hospital. The birth becomes complicated. The baby is stillborn and Catherine dies of multiple hemorrhages. Henry walks out into the rain, alone.

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