is a farewell to arms fiction or nonfiction
A Farewell to Arms Michael Reynolds, however, writes that Hemingway was not involved in the battles described. Because his previous novel, The Sun Also Rises, had been written as a roman à clef, readers assumed A Farewell to Arms to be autobiographical.[3] A Farewell to Arms was begun during his time at Willis M. Spear's guest ranch in Wyoming's Bighorns.[5] Some pieces of the novel were written in Piggott, Arkansas, at the home of his then wife Pauline Pfeiffer,[6] and in Mission Hills, Kansas while she was awaiting delivery of their baby.[7] Pauline underwent a caesarean section as Hemingway was writing the scene about Catherine Barkley's childbirth.[8]
All Quiet on the Western Front One of the major themes of the novel is the difficulty of soldiers to revert to civilian life after having experienced extreme combat situations. Remarque comments in the preface that "[This book] will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."[3] This internal destruction can be found as early as the first chapter as Paul comments that, although all the boys are young, their youth has left them. In addition, the massive loss of life and negligible gains from the fighting are constantly emphasized. Soldiers' lives are thrown away by their commanding officers who are stationed comfortably away from the front, ignorant of the daily terrors of the front line.