A Farewell to Importance

In "A Farewell to Arms" Hemingway uses food scenes to show how important Henry feels throughout the story. When Henry was on the front originally before he took his first leave he was well liked, you could tell because everyone dined with him and interacted with him, even the priest. As the story goes on Henry loses friends and the privilege of sharing communion with them, until at the end when he has to dine by himself. On page 318 in the second to the last chapter Henry is eating his meal and looking around the restaurant at all of the other people who are eating a meal with someone of significant meaning while he has to eat by himself. "I watched the people at the tables in the cafe. At one table they were playing cards. Two men at the table next me were talking and smoking." The whole book Henry has questioned his importance but now more than ever, This is the only time in the book where Henry has actually had to eat by himself and had time to actually be alone with his own thoughts. The only other time in the book when Henry had time to sit and think is when he was with his soldiers in the barn, and even then he didn't want to be by his self. "The zinc bar, where I had breakfasted, had three people behind it now: the old man, a plump woman in a black dress who sat behind a counter and kept track of everything served to the tables, and a boy in an apron. I wondered how many children the woman had and what it had been like?" Hemingway uses this to show the curiosity of Henry on how him and Catherine could be in the future and wonder about the amount of kids they will have, or Hemingway could be foreshadowing the death of Henry's baby and  the death of Catherine. "A Pump lady in a black dress" and he also mentions kids. The black dress is what signifies death and the plumpness signifies pregnancy. This foreshadowing will lead to his overall being alone again and the unimportance he will have after his wife and his son die. Almost like he was after he fled from the military.