This novel, written by Ernest Hemingway focuses mainly on the adventures of Frederic Henry, an American serving for the Italian Army in the context of WWI. In this context, Henry meets an English nurse, Catherine, with whom he eventually falls in love. The story could be said to be a metaphor of life using war as its interpretative key. Passini is an ambulance driver in the novel and he represents the character who most vehemently protests the war and wishes to stop fighting; he is eventually killed during the war, perhaps symbolizing that whoever stops fighting, in war just as in life, will be consumed by that which he protests: life or war, it is the same.
In the characters actions or instead of the idea of their magical actions, you can find the theme, or lesson when a certain problem is solved or unsolved.
