Bonello in A Farewell to Arms
Minor character
An Italian ambulance driver: brisk, dark-humored, pragmatic and ultimately self-preserving during the chaotic retreat.
Who is Bonello?
Bonello is one of the three ambulance drivers who accompany Frederic Henry during the Second Army’s retreat across the Bainsizza plateau and down toward Udine. He provides competent help with evacuations, steady banter under stress, and a tough, practical approach to survival. In the retreat he helps load wounded, drives with the column through mud and rain, and participates in efforts to free a mired car. Bonello shows a readiness to use violence when two sergeants try to desert—he boasts about killing one of them—and he shares in the dark humor that keeps the men focused amid fear and exhaustion. As conditions deteriorate, he chooses a different survival strategy from the others: when the three hide in a hayloft after Aymo is killed, Bonello deserts the hiding place and opts to be captured rather than continue the risky flight. He therefore functions as a pragmatic, morally ambiguous presence who underscores the novel’s portrait of wartime disillusionment and the precarious choices soldiers make to survive.
In the book: Bonello is one of the Italian ambulance drivers serving alongside Frederic Henry. A secondary figure, he provides brisk competence, dark humor, and a pragmatic, self-preserving outlook that highlights the chaos and moral uncertainty of the wartime retreat. Through his banter and choices, he helps illuminate the novel’s themes of disillusionment and survival without occupying the central emotional arc.
Personality
- Pragmatic
- When the cars are abandoned and the group must walk to Udine, Bonello helps strip what can be used and accepts the hard practicality of survival.
- Dark-humored
- During the retreat and stuck-in-mud episode he engages in brisk banter and jokes about bicycles, politics, and the killing that has just occurred.
- Competent
- He assists in evacuating field hospitals and hauling wounded through rain and mud from the Bainsizza plateau toward Gorizia and beyond.
- Self-preserving
- When the three hide in a hayloft after Aymo’s death, Bonello deserts the others and chooses to be taken prisoner rather than risk further escape.
- Decisive under fire
- After Henry wounds a fleeing sergeant, Bonello finishes the wounded man, an action he later boasts about.
Character arc
Bonello enters as a steady, practical ambulance driver who copes with the retreat’s chaos by focusing on concrete tasks—loading wounded, moving supplies, and keeping cars running when possible. As mud, rain, and the breakdown of the column escalate, he shares in the group’s gallows humor and proves able to act decisively in violent moments, claiming responsibility for killing a fleeing sergeant. When the drivers’ vehicles become irretrievable and the men are forced to walk, Bonello continues to press forward with pragmatic resourcefulness. The turning point for him comes after Aymo is shot: while Henry and Piani hide in a hayloft and later slip away, Bonello abandons the concealment and deliberately allows himself to be captured. This choice marks a shift from active, cooperative effort to a self-preserving withdrawal from the group’s shared attempt to escape—he refuses the risk of further flight and opts for the comparatively safer, passive fate of imprisonment. He thus moves from engaged practicality to individualistic survival, highlighting the pressures that break unit cohesion in retreat.
Relationships
- Frederic Henry Fellow ambulance driver and comrade-in-arms who shares the retreat’s labor, banter, and crises with Bonello.
- Piani One of the other drivers who works alongside Bonello to free mired cars and later hides with Henry while Bonello deserts.
- Aymo Fellow driver whose death deeply affects the small party and precipitates the hiding and flight during which Bonello deserts.
- the major Represents the military command structure whose orders and the broader retreat shape Bonello’s actions and choices.
- Rinaldi A colleague in the larger circle of ambulance drivers and soldiers whose earlier absence underscores the dislocation Bonello navigates.
Quotes by Bonello
“We’ll have a hell of a trip.”
Book 3, Chapter 27Said as they see the evacuated girls in Gorizia and prepare to leave—an uneasy, gallows humor before the retreat.
“They were left to do something to a bridge," Bonello said.”
Book 3, Chapter 28This line explains why two engineer sergeants are riding with Bonello and hints at fragmented units and confusion during the retreat.
“"I killed him," Bonello said.”
Book 3, Chapter 29After the wounded sergeant is finished, Bonello claims the killing and speaks of it with crude pride.
Why Bonello matters
Bonello embodies the practical, morally ambiguous survival instinct that runs through the retreat. He is not an idealist; his competence and dark humor reveal how soldiers cope by reducing events to tasks and jokes. His readiness to kill a deserter and his later choice to be captured rather than risk escape emphasize the novel’s themes of disillusionment, the erosion of traditional honor, and the personal calculus of survival under stress. As a secondary figure, he dramatizes how war forces individuals into compromises that undercut heroic narratives and expose the often grim, pragmatic human responses to chaos.
Chapters with Bonello
More A Farewell to Arms characters
Frederic HenryProtagonist
Catherine BarkleyMajor character
RinaldiMajor character
the priestMajor character
Helen FergusonMajor character
Miss GageMinor character
Dr. ValentiniMajor character
Miss Van CampenAntagonist
All chapter summaries ›Characters ›
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