A Farewell to Arms

Book 1
Chapter 1 Summary

Before we embark on this tragic tale of love and war, we’d like to discuss a few issues that might be
confusing. A Farewell to Arms is narrated in the first person and in the past tense. The narrative is
the protagonist's memory of the events he’s narrating. We don’t get any kind of name for him until
Chapter Five, and we don’t get his first and last name until Chapter Thirteen. Also, although the novel
is written in the past tense, we talk about it here in the present tense, or the "historical present,"
because that’s the standard way of talking about literature.

 It is late summer. The narrator describes living in "a house in a village." The village is
separated from the mountains by a river of clear water, full of different sized rocks. Soldiers
pass the house and kick up the dust on the road.
 The house is on a plain, which is abundant in foodstuffs. At night, flashes from gunfire can be
seen in the mountains, where combat is going on. Marching troops and vehicles carrying their
supplies go by the windows of the narrator’s house at night.
 In the fall, the weather turns rainy and the dust on the road turns to mud, but the troops
continue passing through.
 The winter stays rainy, and there is an outbreak of cholera. The narrator says that, by the
war’s end, 7,000 army soldiers die of the disease.