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Personification
Explanation and Analysis—Breasts:
In Chapter 43, Jordan and Maria see their love tested on the battlefield, engaged in a conflict that might see them both killed before the day's end. Despite this, and despite all of the chaos of the battlefield, Jordan still feels drawn to Maria—and she to him. Hemingway expresses this relationship through the use of personification:
He had never thought that you could know that there was a woman if there was battle; nor that any part of you could know it, or respond to it; nor that if there was a woman that she should have breasts small, round and tight against you through a shirt; nor that they, the breasts, could know about the two of them in battle. But it was true and he thought, good. That's good.
Maria's breasts "know," or have intellectual awareness of her and Jordan's relationship. Jordan expresses surprise that he still feels the same pull of attraction to Maria during the battle, having assumed that desire and warfare could not exist in the same space or mindset. This signifies both their unity as a couple and Jordan's increasing contentment with himself (i.e., allowing multiple parts of himself to coexist, and being happy with those parts).
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