The Rejected Endings of “A Farewell To Arms”

According to lore, Ernest Hemingway re-wrote the final sentence of his classic novel A Farewell To Arms 25 times.  After Frederic’s struggles to survive the war, and to be with his beloved Catherine, she dies suddenly.  And in typical Hemingway terseness, Frederic finally leaves her body at the hospital and Hemingway concludes: “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

Some of the rejected endings:

1. “After a while I left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain, and I didn’t have an umbrella, and I was like, ‘Could this day get any worse?’ and then a car went by and splattered me with mud, and I fell in a pile of garbage and that made me swallow my gum.”

2. “After a little while I left the hospital because those places totally give me…