Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (main characters)
Rinaldi - Rinaldi's character serves an important function in A Farewell to Arms. He
dominates an array of minor male characters who embody the kind of virile, competent,
and good-natured masculinity that, for better or worse, so much of Hemingway's fiction
celebrates. Rinaldi is an unbelievable womanizer, professing to be in love with Catherine
at the beginning of the novel but claiming soon thereafter to be relieved that he is not,
like Henry, saddled with the complicated emotional baggage that the love of a woman
entails. Considering Rinaldi's frequent visits to the local whorehouses, Henry later muses
that his friend has most likely succumbed to syphilis. While this registers as an
unpleasant end, it is presented with an air of detached likelihood rather than fervent
moralizing. It is, in other words, not punishment for a man's bad behavior but rather the