I. Intrinsic element
A.Character and characterization
Major characters
Jake Barnes : The narrator of the
story, Barnes served in World War I and was injured while fighting in Italy.
This injury left him impotent, which becomes his curse and a major theme of the
novel. He loves Brett, and she loves him, but she loves sex more. Since Jake cannot
have sex, their relationship is doomed. Jake must sit back and watch her have
affairs with Mike, Cohn, and Pedro. Unable to act himself, he will often help
her, as when he sets her up with Pedro Romero. As a means of coping, he tries
to be detached, focusing on the monetary value and the utility of things. Jake
takes a trip to Spain every summer, fishing and then going to Pamplona for the
festival. This year, his friends spoil his trip. Fishing with Bill is fun, but
once they join everyone in Pamplona, the trip becomes a disaster. Jake loves
bull-fighting, and his passion for the sport is greatly respected. But his
friends' bad behavior, especially Brett's fling with Pedro, is so devastating
that those who once respected him will no longer speak to him. Jake loses this
comfort, and also his self-respect as he continually comes to Brett's aid.
Robert Cohn : Jake Barnes friend,
Robert is Jewish, and he experienced anti-Semitism at Princeton. To counteract
his insecurity, Cohn took up boxing, earning Princeton's middleweight title. He
is nice but shy, and angry about his shyness. He is easily led by the women in
his life. He marries the first woman he dates after college, and lives
reasonably well with her. He thought about leaving her, but was afraid she would
not be able to handle it, when she left him. On the rebound he went to
California and helped fund a review of the Arts. He liked the power and respect
it gave him more than he liked the arts. While there he met Frances, whom he
began dating. Wrapped around her little finger, he agreed to take them to
Europe. And when Frances started to suggest they get married, Cohn seemed to go
along with that too. All this changed after Cohn wrote a novel and traveled to
New York. His ego was inflated, and he became mean. He especially did not like
when people told him to go to hell, and he occasionally threatened violence. He
also realized that Frances was probably not the best he could do. So he decided
to play the field, sending Frances away and going on a trip with Lady Brett
Ashley. His friend Jake, still in love with Brett, could not forgive him for
this. A hopeless romantic, Cohn foolishly tries to keep Brett, who wants
nothing more to do with him; he follows her around and annoys everyone. This
makes Jake even more angry, and when Jake sets up Brett with bull-fighter Pedro
Romero, Cohn beats up his friend. A strong boxer, Cohn also beats up Pedro
Romero, who warns him to leave town. Treated as an outsider, hated and taunted,
especially by Mike Campbell, Brett's fianc, nobody is sorry to see him go. He
considers Jake his best friend, but he hurts him terribly by sleeping with
Brett, and is very selfish and insensitive.
Lady Brett Ashley : Jake's love, Mike's
fiance, Cohn's lover, and then Romero's lover. Still married, but with a
pending divorce, to a member of the British aristocracy, Brett drinks a lot and
is addicted to sex. She loves Jake, but she cannot be with him, because he
cannot have sex. Wanting what she cannot have, Brett professes her love for
Jake while her many affairs continue. She is very attractive, but it is her
behavior and her unfeminine dress that make her stand out. Cohn compares her to
Circe, the sorceress in the Odyssey who turned men into swine. She is selfish,
expecting a lot from all her men. Her one unselfish act is when she sends
Romero away in Madrid. Brett has once married a man she didn't love, and is
poised to do that again. She is inconsiderate to those who love her, and turns
away from the men she loves. She is afraid of love, spending more time with
people she cares little for, as when she ran off with Cohn, leaving Jake alone
in Paris.
Mike Campbell : Brett's fianc, Mike
is always in debt. He drinks a lot and has no job. He is on an allowance,
waiting for his inheritance. He also fought in the war, but not in the serious
way Jake did. Mike does not take the war seriously, giving away war medals that
do not even belong to him. Though he is friendly and a lot of fun, he can also
be cruel. He hates Cohn-his Jewishnes and his love-struck chase after Brett; he
insults Cohn badly. Also enraptured with Brett, he stays around even after she
goes off with Romero. But unlike Jake, who takes much abuse and never gets the
girl, Mike expects Brett to return to him by the end of the novel.
Bill Gorton : Jake's friend, Gorton
is a writer, and likes stuffed animals. He travels with Jake to Bayonne, where
they fish and spend a peaceful few days. A big drinker, Bill gets along well
with Mike, but detests what he calls Cohn's 'Jewish superiority.'
Pedro Romero: A great bull-fighter,
he is only nineteen. His masterful and honest handling of the bulls suggest he
will be one of the great ones. Focused and controlled, he hardly drinks, and
has not been with many women. Brett falls in love with him, and they have a
brief affair, which the bull-fighting crowd disapproves of greatly. After
Pamplona they travel to Madrid. Romero asks Brett to marry him, but he wants
her to grow out her boyish hair and behave in a more ladylike manner. Not ready
for such a change, and fearful that their relationship will threaten what is
most important to him, Brett sends him away.
Minor Characters:
Cohn's first wife: The woman Cohn
married right out of college. He had three children with her, but was not very
happy. He was afraid to leave her, because he didn't think she could live
without him. So he was very surprised when his wife left him for a painter of
miniatures.
Frances Clyne: Cohn's new
girlfriend, he meets her in California while working on the Review of the Arts.
She dominates him, and insists they move to Europe. Later when she fears losing
him, she demands he marry her. He is inclined to, but changes his mind after he
gets his novel published. Frances is jealous and can be vicious; when Robert
sends her away to England, she tears into him in front of Jake.
Georgette Hobin (LeBlace): The young woman Jake
picks up and takes to dinner and then dancing with his friends. She is pretty
but has a terrible smile. Jake thinks she's boring, and he isn't sorry when she
spends the night dancing with other men.
Count Mippipopolous: Brett's friend, he
offers her money to go away with him. He is very wealthy from a chain of
American sweet shops he owns. He has fought or participated somehow in several
wars and revolutions, and he has the wounds to prove it. He takes great
pleasure in fine things, and knowing he got his money's worth.
Woolsey and Krum: Two of Jake's
newspaper friends. They have families, and wonder how Jake spends his nights.
His life is very different from theirs.
Harvey Stone: The broke gambler who
is friends with Jake and Bill. Depressed and indifferent, he insults Cohn, then
tells him he wouldn't care if Cohn hit him.
Madame Duzinell: The concierge at
Jake's apartment. She is a snob and will only let people up to see Jake if they
are rich, well born, or sportsmen. But Brett is able to bribe her with money.
Montoya: The owner of the
hotel Montoya, where Jake stays during the festival. He is an aficionado, and
he respects Jake for his aficion. When Jake lets Romero keep company with Brett
and the other drunks, Montoya cannot forgive him. Their friendship is over;
Montoya will not even speak to him.
the
Basque peasants: The men on the bus when Jake and Bill travel to
Pamplona. There are many of them at the festival. They are friendly and
generous with their wine.
Harris (or Wilson-Harris): An Englishman whom
Jake and Bill meet at Burguete while they are fishing. He fits in well, and
Bill especially likes him. He is an aficionado of fishing, and a good friend.
He gives Jake and Bill a generous and personal gift when they leave for
Pamplona.
Lord Ashley: Brett's husband who
she is in the process of divorcing. He was an Admiral, and did not treat her
well. After the war he became crazy and threatened to kill her.
Belmonte: An old bull-fighter
who came out of retirement to reassert some honor into the sport. But his plan
for a triumphant return is squashed when Romero comes along. Romero is so pure
and graceful, so perfect, that the old and sick Belmonte looks awful. He used
to be wonderful, and after he retired, the public built a myth around Belmonte.
Now fighting again, he cannot compete with his own myth. Reality is a
disappointment, and the crowd hates him.
Vicente Girones: The man killed in the
running of the bulls. He had a wife and kids, and came down every year to
participate in the running. The group is indifferent when they hear about his
death.
The Sun Also Rises Themes
Themes in novel the sun also rises are : Dissatisfaction, Identity, Men and Masculinity, Drugs and Alcohol, Love, Man and the Natural World, Exile, Warfare.
Here are the further explanation :
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Dissatisfaction
People
have fun in this book, but that’s about it – what’s missing is a lasting sense
of contentment or satisfaction with life in general. The cause of this is the
massive social upheaval caused by the First World War; after the war, nobody
seems to care about the things that used to be important, and the whole world
has to re-define itself. Hemingway’s characters all struggle to discover their
individual brands of happiness, but none of them succeed in doing so. The
implication is that the postwar world is so disorderly and unstable that it’s
impossible to just settle down and figure everything out. This is
understandable – heck, it’s hard enough to do that when everything’s peaceful,
much less in the aftermath of a catastrophic global event.
The pervasive sense that
contentment is no longer possible in the postwar world means that The Sun
Also Rises is doomed to end unhappily from page one. Dissatisfaction fuels
Jake’s productive working life, and therefore his discontentment is
indispensable to him.
Quotation :
Quote #1
"Listen,
Jake," he leaned forward on the bar. "Don’t you ever get the
feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?
Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live
already?" (chapter 2. paragraph7)
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Here, Cohn brushes upon something resembling an early
mid-life crisis. His realization that he hasn’t done anything significant with
his life motivates his desire to act upon something – it ends up being his
infatuation with Brett.
Quote #2
I lay awake
thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I
started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking
about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of
smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. (chapter 4. Paragraph 15)
|
In this rare moment of release, Jake breaks down and
gives in to his despair about his hopeless relationship with Brett.
Quote #3
It is awfully easy
to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another
thing. (chapter 4. Paragraph 25)
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Again, Jake emphasizes just how difficult it is to
stay tough and rational at night – when we’re alone in the dark, it’s hard not
to think of the things that make us unhappy.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Identity
This
novel is just jam-packed with people who think they have their public
images worked out, but really are just big old messes on the inside.
Hemingway’s characters make a big show of being confident and witty, but we
quickly realize that they’re just frontin’ – nobody is really that confident,
and nobody is entirely true to themselves. Even our protagonist, who is one of
the novel’s more grounded characters, faces deep anxieties about his beliefs
and the ways in which his actions correspond with them. All of this has to do,
of course, with the destabilizing trauma of the war; just as nations have to
rebuild themselves after the war, so do individual people.
The characters of The Sun Also
Rises are all marked by the impossibility of claiming an identity, rather
than by a clear understanding of themselves. The postwar society Hemingway
reveals in the novel is one in the midst of a universal identity crisis.
Quotation :
Quote #1
So there you were.
I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing you could do anything about,
because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America
could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book
and I suppose the second came out of a book, too. (chapter 2. Paragraph 8)
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Jake comments upon Cohn’s easily impressed mentality;
Jake looks down upon this aspect of his friend’s personality.
Quote #2
As all the time I
was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of
myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and I regretted that I was such a
rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least
for a while and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I
only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time. (chapter 10.paragraph
21)
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Jake, attempting to find some kind of genuine
connection to his spirituality, realizes that despite his longing for faith,
he’s not a proper Catholic. His desire to "feel religious" here is
understandable – after all, religion explains the mysteries of life, which Jake
is certainly, well, mystified by.
Quote #3
Montoya could
forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks
of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who
had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me for all of my
friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something
shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in bull-fighting. (chapter
13. paragraph 24)
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For Montoya, aficion is the only element of
identity that matters. Since Jake has it, Montoya’s willing to overlook all his
flaws – even his friends.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Men and Masculinity
Masculinity
is somewhat problematic in the world of this novel. The insecurity of the
central male characters produces an atmosphere of competition, rivalry, and
mutual harassment, and we constantly witness petty arguments that are rooted in
this sense of challenged masculinity. The novel reevolves around several male
characters and their various relationships with each other, and with one
central female character; Hemingway plays up the tensions of competition and
jealousy to demonstrate just how uncertain his male characters are. The shared
sense of insecurity among many of the book’s central male characters suggests a
redefinition of masculinity post-WWI; particularly notable is the fact that the
protagonist’s impotence is caused by a wound he sustained in the war.
While most of the men in The
Sun Also Rises are insecure because of their shifting roles in a modern and
alienating society, Pedro Romero’s youth and proximity to nature produce his
sense of identity and confidence. Because Cohn unsuccessfully clings to pre-war
notions of honor and masculinity, his masculinity is targeted as a clear
example of weakness in the post-war world.
Quotation :
Quote #1
[Cohn] had married
on the rebound from the rotten time he had in college, and Frances took him
on the rebound from his discovery that he had not been everything to his
first wife. He was not in love yet but he realized he was an attractive
quantity to women and the fact of a woman caring for him and wanting to live
with him was not simply a divine miracle. (2.2)
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Cohn’s subjugation by women is at a breaking point
here – he realizes in a somewhat dangerous fashion very late in life that it’s
not a "miracle" for a woman to be attracted to him, and that he can
use this to his advantage.
Quote #2
My head started to
work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded and flying
on a joke front like the Italian. In the Italian hospital we were going to
form a society. It had a funny name in Italian. I wonder what became of the
others, the Italians. That was in the Ospedale Maggiore in Milano, Padiglione
Ponte. The next building was the Padiglione Zonda. There was a statue of
Ponte, or maybe it was Zonda. That was where the liaison colonel came to
visit me. That was funny. That was about the first funny thing. I was all
bandaged up. But they had told him about it. Then he made that wonderful
speech: "You, a foreigner, an Englishman" (any foreigner was an
Englishman) "have given more than your life." What a speech! I would
like to have it illuminated to hang in the office. He never laughed. He was
putting himself in my place, I guess. "Che mala fortuna! Che mala
fortuna!" (chapter 4. Paragraph 78)
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Jake’s impotence is apparently worse than death, if we
are to believe the very serious Italian colonel. This says a lot about the
expectations of men at the time; even though Jake presents this humorously,
it’s clearly disturbing to him.
Quote #3
Cohn smiled again
and sat down. He seemed glad to sit down. What the hell would he have done if
he hadn’t sat down? "You say such damned insulting things, Jake."
"I’m sorry. I’ve got a nasty tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty
things."
"I know
it," Cohn said. "You’re really about the best friend I have,
Jake."
God help you, I
thought. (chapter 5. Paragraph 10)
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Cohn’s guileless admission of friendship sets the
scene for a man-to-man moment of honest affection – but instead, we (like Jake)
just feel embarrassed that Cohn has put himself out there.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Drugs and Alcohol
The
characters in The Sun Also Rises are serious drinkers – they
drink like it’s their job. Actually, alcoholism practically is a
profession for one of the characters (Mike), a slacker whose major
distinguishing factor is his ability to get drunk and stay drunk for days,
possibly years, on end. Alcohol provides a much-needed escape from the
realities of the world that Hemingway’s characters move through; it allows them
to push away their personal doubts and fears, as well as renounce
responsibility for their actions. Drinking is a largely ineffectual coping
mechanism for this group of aimless, uncertain, and irresponsible people.
The characters in The Sun Also
Rises attempt to use alcohol as an anaesthetic, to avoid the pain of
dealing with their various identity crises. Different characters have different
uses for alcohol in the novel; while Mike uses drunkenness as an escape
mechanism and an excuse for his outrageous behavior, Jake and Bill are both
able to use alcohol productively to stimulate creativity.
Quotation :
Quote #1
I was a little
drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless. (chapter
3. Paragraph 25)
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We’re not exactly sure what the "positive
sense" of drunkenness is that Jake refers to, since people just seem to
get into more trouble when they’re drunk in this novel, but we have a feeling
it refers to the sense of carefree creative flow that emerges later in the
scenes between Jake and Bill. Drunkenness in the wrong social context, however,
as in this scene, leans more towards destructive rather than creative.
Quote #2
Under the wine I
lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice
people. (chapter 13.paragraph 57)
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Here, drunkenness is actually an effective mode of
distraction for Jake – the language in this quote emphasizes the artificiality
of this distraction. It "seems" that everyone’s nice, but we know
that when Jake’s sober again, he’ll remember what his friends are really like.
Quote #3
Mike was a bad
drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bill was a good drunk. Cohn was never drunk. (chapter
14.paragraph 6)
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This concise quote sums up the difference between Cohn
and the rest of the crowd (Jake included – we might as well add "Jake was
a good drunk" to the list). Cohn, unlike everyone else, never surrenders
himself to the experience of drunkenness, either because he can’t or he won’t.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Love
This novel set in Paris (city of love, duh), involves love. However, don’t forget that this is not exactly the romantic, sentimental Paris we usually imagine – Hemingway’s Paris is an ailing, disillusioned postwar city, and therefore Hemingway’s love is also a special kind of ailing, disillusioned, postwar love. The novel lacks a single substantial example of mutually shared and consummated romantic love. While some characters struggle with an outdated definition of love, for others, the prospect of love seems entirely subjugated to other concerns and realities. Love, when mentioned at all in The Sun Also Rises, is usually only brought up in the context of accusations or fights, or at best surrounding discussions of sex.
Although Brett and Jake love one
another, Brett’s prioritization of sex and independence above love, and Jake’s
physical limitations, prevent them from being together. Robert Cohn’s
unrealistic and outdated understanding of love renders him the perfect
scapegoat for Mike, Brett, and Jake, each of whom are insecure in their own
love lives.
Quotation :
Quote #1
For four years his
horizon had been absolutely limited to his wife. For three years, or almost
three years, he had never seen beyond Frances. I am sure he had never been in
love in his life. (chapter 2. Paragraph 1)
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Despite the fact that he’s been tied to certain women,
Jake suspects that Cohn has never really been in love with them – Cohn doesn’t
have an understanding of what love really is, beyond obligation.
Quote #2
"Couldn’t we
live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?"
"I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody. You
couldn’t stand it." (chapter 7. Paragraph 7)
|
Jake attempts to find some kind of unconventional
solution to their no sex problem, but Brett knows herself too well to accept
it. Her statement that she’d just tromper (cheat on) Jake with everyone
is true, and both of them know it.
Quote #3
Women made such
swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with
a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend.
I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something
for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always
came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
I thought I had
paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of
retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. (chapter14. Paragraph 4)
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Love and friendship here are depicted as
"exchange of values," reflecting Jake’s cynical view of relationships
between men and women. The "bill" that always comes is steep – in
transactions like this, someone always ends up paying with unhappiness.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Man and the Natural World
There
is an overwhelming sense that the modern world that Hemingway shows us runs the
risk of drifting dangerously far from the natural world. The author sets up a
clear-cut opposition between the decrepit urban space of Paris and the
rejuvenating, healthy realm of Nature. Furthermore, many of the characters are
divorced not only from capital-N-Nature, but from their own natural states; the
perpetual drunkenness and self-imposed oblivion that dominate the book remove
characters from their true thoughts and emotions. Our protagonist and a few
other characters share a profound appreciation for nature, and in it they are
able to take refuge from the negative effects of an unsatisfactory, unhealthy
society.
During Bill and Jake’s fishing
trip, their profound experience of the natural world creates a sense of
authenticity that is lacking in the rest of the novel. The most grounded
characters in The Sun Also Rises share a sense of appreciation and an
innate understanding of nature.
Quotation :
Quote #1
In the Basque
country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages
look well-off and clean… the houses in the villages had red tiled roofs, and
then the road turned off and commenced to climb and we were going way up
close along a hillside, with a valley below and hills stretched off back
toward the sea. (chapter 10. Paragraph 4)
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Doesn’t this just sound like paradise? The closer Jake
gets to the real country, the happier he is. Hemingway indulges in lengthy (and
for him, rather lush) descriptions of the Basque countryside to help his
readers appreciate it as much as Jake does.
Quote #2
It was a beech wood
and the trees were very old. Their roots bulked above the ground and the
branches were twisted. We walked on the road between the thick trunks of the
old beeches and the sunlight came through the leaves in light patches on the
grass. The trees were big, and the foliage was thick but it was not gloomy.
There was no undergrowth, only the smooth grass, very green and fresh, and
the big gray trees well spaced as though it were a park.
"This is country," Bill said. (chapter 12. Paragraph 19) |
Bill’s simple statement says it all. He and Jake have
no need for discussion – they have found what they’re looking for.
Quote #3
We stayed five days
at Burguete and had good fishing. The nights were cold and the days were hot,
and there was always a breeze even in the heat of the day. It was hot enough
so that it felt good to wade in a cold stream, and then the sun dried you
when you came out and sat on the bank. We found a stream with a pool deep
enough to swim in. In the evenings we played three-handed bridge with a man
named Harris, who has walked over from Saint Jean Pied de Port and was
stopping at the inn for the fishing. He was pleasant and went with us twice
to the Irati River. There was no word from Robert Cohn nor from Brett and
Mike. (chapter 12.paragraph 48)
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This is an idyllic break from everything that stresses
Jake out; he’s in the country, living the simple life with pleasant companions.
The lack of correspondence from Cohn or Mike is the icing on the cake.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Exile
Nationality
is a one thing that discuss in The Sun Also Rises. While all of its
characters are defined partially by their roots, there is an overwhelming sense
that national boundaries are no longer satisfactory in the aftermath of the
Great War. The community we encounter in the novel is one of American and
British expatriates living in France, in self-imposed exile from their
respective homelands. The pressing need for escape, self-invention, and
individuation from one’s country plays into the choices of the characters
Hemingway shows us, as well as the fractured and unstable image of society he
portrays.
Quotation :
Quote #1
"Listen,
Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all
that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
There’s nothing to that." (chapter 2. Paragraph 7)
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Jake opens up inadvertently here we learn that he went
through a stage of wandering simply to escape himself, also.
Quote #2
We ate dinner at
Madame Lecomte’s restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded
with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put
it on the American Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris
quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for
a table. (chapter 8.paragraph 21)
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Jake’s disgust with his compatriots and with their
rather sheep-like adherence to travel guides emerges here – he sees himself as
totally different from the American tourists.
Quote #3
"Hurray for
Wine! Hurray for the Foreigners!" was painted on the banner.
"Who are the
foreigners?" Robert Cohn asked.
"We’re the foreigners," Bill said.
(15.6)
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Cohn, with characteristic confusion, doesn’t get that
they are the outsiders in Spain, his self-centered vacation mentality is that
Spain is there for their use.
The Sun Also Rises Theme of Warfare
World
War I is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention
(yes, it occurred to us that this is probably the only time anyone has ever
compared World
War I to an elephant). When the war does come up,
characters attempt to make flippant comments about it, but there’s a lingering
sense of uneasiness – the experience of war is still too fresh in people’s
minds to even seriously discuss it. Our protagonist suffered a physical wound
that left him impotent as a result of the war; the other characters’ wounds are
mental and emotional, and society as a whole is scarred by this global event.
The rupturing event of World War I makes it impossible for Jake to
return to America, since he only feels comfortable in a community that shared
the traumatic experience of the war first-hand.
In The Sun Also Rises, the
central conflict (the impossibility of Jake and Brett’s relationship) is caused
by a war-inflicted wound that renders Jake impotent; one might therefore say
that the war itself is the main cause of conflict in the novel.
Quotation :
Quote #1
"When did she
marry Ashley?"
"During the war. Her own true love had
just kicked off with the dysentery."
"You talk sort of bitter."
"Sorry. I
didn’t mean to. I was just trying to give you the facts." (chapter 5.
Paragraph 8)
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A lot of things happen in wartime that should not
otherwise come to pass – in this case, the marriage of Brett to Lord Ashley. We
have to wonder if Jake’s telling the whole truth… we know that he is in
fact Brett’s "own true love" (in her words and his) and that she
can’t marry him because of his handicap. Hmm…
Quote #2
"My dear, I am
sure Mr. Barnes has seen a lot. Don’t think I don’t think so, sir. I have
seen a lot, too."
"Of course you
have, my dear," Brett said. "I was only ragging."
"I have been
in seven wars and four revolutions," the count said.
"Soldiering?"
Brett asked.
"Sometimes, my
dear. And I have got arrow wounds. Have you ever seen arrow wounds?" (chapter
7. Paragraph 18)
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The count’s definition of "seen a lot" is
associated with war – as though war is the only real experience a man can have.
Quote #3
It was like certain
dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, a
feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. (chapter 13.
Paragraph 57)
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Obviously, the feeling of warfare (now psychological)
carries over into this postwar period; now that the actual fighting is over,
the battles are on the emotional level.
C.Setting
Setting takes place in Paris, France; Burguete, Spain; Pamplona, Spain; Madrid.
First,
let’s tackle Paris: the first few chapters of the novel take place in a loosely
fictionalized version of the famous community of expatriate writers and artists
that Hemingway really lived in during the 1920s. After the war, Paris became a
mecca for English and American writers, including Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude
Stein, Sherwood Anderson, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, among others. Jake and
his friends move through the same world that Hemingway did, and they frequent
the same bars, cafés, and nightclubs. Hemingway depicts the atmosphere in Paris
ambivalently: it’s exciting but exhausting, simultaneously clean and dirty,
thrilling and banal, and filled with a sense of unease and illness. Jake’s
refuge is his newspaper office, where he can shut out the world and focus on
his work.
Next
up: Spain. We move through three locations in Spain, with varying degrees of
country and city. First, Bill and Jake go to Burguete, a small country town
where they fish and enjoy nature. This section is significant for its
difference from the rest of the novel – the purity of the landscape, combined
with their escape from the other characters, makes the fishing trip an
exhilarating experience for both men. They soon move on to Pamplona, a small
city famous for its bull-fights, where they meet up with the rest of the gang
for the fiesta of San Fermin. The transition from countryside to fiesta is like
Mike’s fall into bankruptcy: gradual, then all at once. When the fiesta really
gets going, with its continual drunkenness and sense of lawlessness, the
setting takes on an almost nightmarish quality. Finally, after a brief stop to
recover by the seaside at San Sebastian, Jake is drawn back into the nightmare
urban space of Madrid, where he goes to comfort Brett after she ends her
relationship with Romero. He experiences a kind of emotional numbness in this
other city, caused by his own guilt over Brett and Romero’s affair. It’s
important that Hemingway returns us to a purely urban setting for this last
scene – its bleakness is emphasized by the distance from nature.
Quotation
that show paris as the setting of the story :
On chapter 1
"Hello, Robert," I said. "Did
you come in to cheer me up?"
"Would you like to go to South America,
Jake?" he asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I never wanted to go. Too
expensive. You can see all the South Americans you want in Paris anyway."
Quotation on page 1 :
"You're from Kansas City, they tell
me," he said.
"Yes."
"Do you find Paris amusing?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
Quotation chapter 1 : Crossing the Seine I saw a string of barges being towed empty down the current, riding high, the bargemen at the sweeps as they came toward the bridge. The river looked nice. It was always pleasant crossing bridges in Paris.
Quotation that show Spain as the setting of the story :
On chapter 2 :
We drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona.
He said it had been a very pleasant race, and would have been worth watching if Bottechia had not abandoned it at Pamplona. The dust had been bad, but in Spain the roads were better than in France.
Setting of time : Hemingway's classic novel, The Sun Also Rises is set in the year of 1920s (1924) exactly in world war I.
D.Point of view
Point of view in this novel is first Person point of view.Jake as the main character is a classic First Person narrator. We see everything as he does, and the only thoughts and commentary we get are from him. Our understanding of the other characters, events, and relationships is limited to Jake’s own. We don’t see anything that happens when Jake’s not around, but we certainly hear about everything from his talkative friends. This perspective allows us to stay really close to Jake, our protagonist, and feel as though we’re intimately connected to his fate.
E.Plot :
Introduction : Life in Paris is happening as usual for our group of expatriates: lots of drinking, eating, and a little bit of working. As the novel opens, we meet our expatriate friends in their adopted home of Paris. They all have different feelings about the city; Jake clearly relishes his life there, despite his general sense of dissatisfaction. He seems to know, like, everyone in the city of Paris (or possibly in France), and it an expert at everything from picking the right restaurant to schmoozing with Parisian hookers. We get the feeling that Jake could fit in wherever he goes. Robert Cohn, on the other hand, isn’t comfortable anywhere.
Conflict : Jake wants Brett. Brett wants Jake. Brett and Jake can’t be together. This is a totally classic set-up. The relationship between Jake and Brett presents itself as the primary source of tension and anxiety in the novel. Although both Jake and Brett have romantic feelings for one another, Jake’s impotence is an insurmountable barrier for Brett. Throughout the rest of the novel, we are consistently reminded of the impossibility of their relationship.
Complication : Cohn has an affair with Brett in San Sebastian. Cohn, Mike, Bill, Jake, and Brett spend a week together in Pamplona. Jake’s discovery of Cohn’s affair with Brett frustrates his already difficult relationship with her. Because Mike, Cohn, and Jake each have strong feelings for Brett, their mutual presence in Pamplona intensifies everyone’s anxieties. Brett doesn’t help matters by failing to acknowledge the havoc she is wreaking – she doesn’t take responsibility for her actions (kind of a theme with this bunch of people).
Climax : In a fit of rage, Cohn beats up Jake, Mike, and Romero, then leaves Pamplona. Cohn’s attack of Jake, Mike, and Romero reflects the culmination of his anger about Brett and her liaisons. It embodies in a very physical manner the frustration and disillusionment experienced by all of the novel’s main characters. His departure from Pamplona signals the beginning of the end for everyone. When the fiesta’s officially over, it’s a relief to all of them – and, frankly, to us.
Suspense : Jake’s gang leaves Pamplona with no resolution regarding the relationship between Brett and any of the men in the novel. Jake heads to San Sebastian to rest and recuperate. When the gang departs from Pamplona, nearly everyone is dissatisfied. Cohn has disappeared, Mike is bankrupt and in emotional disarray, Jake is in need of some major alone time, and Brett has left with Pedro Romero, leaving us to question the nature of the novel’s central relationships. Things are even less certain at this point than ever before, and in their last couple of days together, Bill, Jake, and Mike have the sense that a whole lot of people are missing.
Denouement : Brett contacts Jake for help; Jake returns to meet her in Madrid. Brett informs Jake that she has sent Romero away. After only a brief respite, Jake learns that Brett has sent Romero; she telegraphs him urgently in San Sebastian to come and help her. The incident renews the question of a potential relationship between Brett and Jake. We hope against hope that something can work out, but by this point in the novel, we should really know better. Jake himself is cynical and resigned to his guilt and unhappiness with regards to Brett.
Conclusion : Brett and Jake decide again that they cannot be together. Brett is left at a crossroads – she has made the right decision in letting Romero go, but now has nowhere to go herself. She eventually decides to go back to Mike, who is "so damned nice and… so awful," and is the kind of guy she can handle. In a final resolution to the central conflict of the novel, it is decided that Brett and Jake could never be together. While this was Brett’s decision earlier in the novel, Jake is the one who finally decides that they never really had a chance.
As briefly (to make it
short) , we can divided the conflicts into :
Major conflicts : Jake is in love
with Lady Brett Ashley, but they cannot maintain a relationship because he was
rendered impotent by a war wound. Jake loses numerous friendships and has his
life repeatedly disrupted because of his loyalty to Brett, who has a
destructive series of love affairs with other men.
Rising action : Jake, Brett, and
their friends pursue a dissipated life in Paris; Jake introduces Brett to
Robert Cohn; Brett and Cohn have an affair; Cohn follows Brett to Pamplona.
Climax : The jilted Cohn beats up Mike and
Jake, and afterward Pedro Romero.
Falling action ·: Jake and his friends leave
Spain; Jake enjoys the solitude of San Sebastian and Brett wires Jake to rescue
her in Madrid after forcing Romero to leave her.
II.Exstrinsics elements
A.Author biography and his career
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, a prosperous suburb of Chicago that
was also home to the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His father,
Clarence E. Hemingway, was a doctor; his mother, who was very religious, had
given up a promising career as a singer in order to rear six children, of whom
Ernest was the third and the oldest boy. Hemingway attended public school in
Oak Park, and the family vacationed in the north woods of Michigan, where
Clarence taught Ernest hunting and fishing and a general love of the outdoor
life. Later, Hemingway would portray Oak Park's bourgeois values in an
unflattering light in stories like "Soldier's Home"; his parents'
marriage was the subject of the bitterly resentful tale "The Doctor and
the Doctor's Wife," among others. On the other hand, Hemingway wrote with
nothing less than adoration about life "Up in Michigan," in the story
of that name and many others featuring his fictional alter ego Nick Adams.
Clarence Hemingway committed suicide in 1928.
Upon graduation from high school at the age of 17, Hemingway left Oak
Park for a stint as a reporter at the highly respected daily newspaper The
Kansas City Star. Shortly afterward, he enlisted in a Red Cross ambulance
corps stationed on the Austrian front in Italy during the last year of World
War I. Hemingway was wounded almost immediately (he was delivering cigarettes
and chocolate to Italian soldiers beyond the front lines) and sent to an
American hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with an American nurse named Agnes
von Kurowsky; these events inspired the Hemingway novel A Farewell to Arms
(published 1929). After the war, Hemingway returned to the States in the hopes
of beginning a career of one kind or another that would support him and Agnes,
whom he planned to marry. That plan was shattered when she wrote from Europe to
say that she'd fallen in love with another man.
Instead, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921; shortly
thereafter, the couple moved to Paris, where the first of the writer's three
sons was born. All the while, Hemingway was reading as much as he could,
writing stories and poems, and trying to find his voice as a writer.
During the First World War he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front but was invalided home, having been seriously wounded while serving with the infantry. In 1921 Hemingway settled in Paris, where he became part of the expatriate circle of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ford Madox Ford. His first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was published in Paris in 1923 and was followed by the short story selection In Our Time, which marked his American debut in 1925. With the appearance of The Sun Also Rises in 1926, Hemingway became not only the voice of the "lost generation" but the preeminent writer of his time. This was followed by Men Without Women in 1927, when Hemingway returned to the United States, and his novel of the Italian front, A Farewell to Arms (1929). In the 1930s, Hemingway settled in Key West, and later in Cuba, but he traveled widely--to Spain, Italy, and Africa--and wrote about his experiences in Death in the Afternoon (1932), his classic treatise on bullfighting, and Green Hills of Africa (1935), an account of big-game hunting in Africa. Later he reported on the Spanish Civil War, which became the background for his brilliant war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1939), hunted U-boats in the Caribbean, and covered the European front during the Second World War. Hemingway's most popular work, The Old Man and the Sea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and in 1954 Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration." One of the most important influences on the development of the short story and novel in American fiction, Hemingway has seized the imagination of the American public like no other twentieth-century author. He died, by suicide, in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961. His other works include The Torrents of Spring (1926), Winner Take Nothing (1933), To Have and Have No (1937), The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938), Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), and posthumously, A Moveable Feast (1964), Islands in the Stream (1970), The Dangerous Summer (1985), and The Garden of Eden (1986).
B.Ideology
of the story
Based on the story , Ernest Hemingway try to
put the ideology through the character. Brett, who has a multitude of “affairs”
with “people” who represent different ideologies/beliefs, cannot “believe” in
any of them for long. Why? Because her master- Jake- is impotent. His faith had
been shattered on account of, and during, the war. Every time Brett begins to
believe in something, she invariably becomes disillusioned and returns to Jake,
who believes in nothing. Brett’s final affair is with Pedro Romero, a Christ
figure. Even though it seems like this relationship/belief is going to be a
lasting one, Brett, alas, ends up leaving him, too, because he criticized
her on account of her “hair being too short”, which is an allusion to
Christianity. The New Testament specifically says that it is “shame for a woman
to have short hair”. There are many, many allusions to Christ in this portion
of the novel when describing Pedro Romero. At the end of the book, when Brett
(= the need to believe element within Jake) once again returns to the “nada”
concept/Jake, she states, “Oh Jake, we could have had such a damn good time
together”. Jake responds with, “Isn’t it pretty to think so”- the last line of
the novel. What critics have failed to perceive is that Brett and Jake are not
talking about their relationship with one another here (which has been assumed
by all of the critics) but rather are referring to Brett’s latest
relationship with Pedro Romero. Brett, upon returning to Jake this last time,
had continued to bring up, in her conversation with Jake, her
relationship with Pedro Romero, and is doing so again this final time. When
Brett states, “Oh Jake, we could have had such a damn good time together”, she
is not talking about her relationship with Jake, for they are inextricably
bound to each other! Rather she is once again bringing up her relationship with
Pedro Romero- the Christ figure- and her regret over losing him. Jake knows his
tragic situation- that he is incapable of believing in anything, and so he
states, “Isn’t it pretty to think so”. This is the “damn tragedy” that
Hemingway was referring to in his comment about this novel. Jake is doomed to
believe in “nada/nothing” as a result of what he experienced on earth. Even
though the “Sun” (a pun on the word “Son”- Pedro Romero, the Christ figure) had
risen in the life of Jake, the “earth” and it’s hard lessons (the
injustices) abides forever in the life of Jake. He believes in
“nada”/nothing. Yes, it is “pretty to think” that belief in something
meaningful is possible, but unfortunately, no, tragically, it is not possible.
In Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also
Rises, the quote "'Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think
so." represents the ideological beliefs of those who were a part of
America's lost generation. The context puts the protagonist, Jake, in a
position of not being able to have sex. This, in turn, makes his possible
relationship with a woman, Brett, impossible to have. This lack of physical
consummation results in the conflict invoking the quote. Brett states that they
would have had a "damned good time together" and Jake replies. The
interaction at hand represents the conflict between the ideological views of
the lost generation and the harsh truth of reality.
Due to the war, many Americans who fought
became disenchanted with America as a whole. This resulted in a mass exodus to
Europe, where many felt they could live their lives in piece. They also felt
that they could escape all the problems of life by running away from them. The
ideology is that without the war the world would have been a perfect, ideal
place for them. Even with the war occurring, the ideal ending would have been
without Jake's accident. Although, Hemingway seems to push that even with the
war not existing, or existing with a different outcome, the world would not
have fit the dream world the generation wished. Their own lifestyles
perpetuated what happened, so even with different events, the end result could
have been similar.
The
truth of the times was that many of the lost generation permitted much of what
happened to them in Europe to continue too far. In the situation between Brett
and Jake, Brett permitted her own acquaintances to increase in number to the
point where there were many men clambering to know her. When Brett was engaged
to Mike there were men, even then, trying to get to know her. Robert Cohn for instance
was continuously questioning Jake about Brett whenever they were together. This
proved that those wishing for a better world did little in their own power to
try and change it for the better.
Overall,
the quote embodies the truth about the situation in Europe at the time. People
were wishing for a better world, yet doing nothing to actually help it. Brett's
statement shows the ideological side, while Jake's shows the factual.
C.Background of the story
In
the 1920s Hemingway lived in Paris, was foreign correspondent for the Toronto
Star, and traveled to places such as Smyrna to
report about the Greco–Turkish War.
He wanted to use his journalism experience to write fiction, believing that a
story could be based on real events when a writer distilled his own experiences
in such a way that, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, "what he made
up was truer than what he remembered". With his wife Hadley,
Hemingway first visited the Festival of San
Fermín in Pamplona, Spain in 1923, where he became fascinated
by bullfighting. The Hemingways returned to Pamplona in
1924—enjoying the trip immensely—this time accompanied by Chink
Dorman-Smith, John
Dos Passos, and Donald Ogden Stewart and his wife. The
couple returned a third time in June 1925; that year they brought with
them a different group of American and British expatriates: Hemingway's Michigan
boyhood friend Bill Smith, Stewart, Lady
Duff Twysden (recently divorced), her lover Pat Guthrie,
and Harold Loeb. In Pamplona the group quickly
disintegrated. Hemingway, attracted to Lady Duff, was jealous of Loeb, who had
recently been on a romantic getaway with her; by the end of the week the two
men had a public fistfight. Against this background was the influence of the
young matador
from Ronda, Cayetano Ordóñez,
whose brilliance in the bullring affected the spectators. Ordóñez honored
Hemingway's wife Hadley by presenting her, from the bullring, with the ear of a
bull he killed. Outside of Pamplona, the fishing trip to the Irati River (near Burguete in
Navarre)
was marred by polluted water.
Hemingway
intended to write a non-fiction book about bullfighting but thought that the
week's experiences had presented him with enough material for a novel. A few
days after the fiesta ended, on his birthday (21 July), he began to write
the draft of what would become The Sun Also Rises, finishing eight weeks
later. By 17 August, with 14 chapters written and a working title of Fiesta
chosen, Hemingway returned to Paris. He finished the draft on
21 September 1925, writing a foreword the following weekend and
changing the title to The Lost Generation.
A
few months later, in December 1925, the Hemingways left to spend the winter in Schruns,
Austria, where Hemingway began revising the manuscript extensively. Pauline
Pfeiffer joined them in January and against Hadley's advice urged
him to sign a contract with Scribner's. He left Austria for
a quick trip to New York to meet with the publishers, and on his return, during
a stop in Paris, began an affair with Pauline, before returning to Schruns to
finish the revisions in March. In June, he was in Pamplona with Hadley and
Pauline. On their return to Paris, Hadley asked for a separation and left for
the south of France. In August, alone in Paris, he completed the proofs, and
dedicated the novel to his wife and son. After the publication of the book in
October, Hadley asked for a divorce, and he gave her the royalties
from The Sun Also Rises.
D.About the story
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel
written by American author Ernest
Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who
travel from Paris to the Festival
of San Fermín in Pamplona to
watch the running of the bulls
and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist
novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey
Meyers writes that it is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work",[2]
and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel.[3]
The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by the publishing
house Scribner's. A year later, the
London publishing house Jonathan
Cape published the novel with the title of Fiesta. Since then it has been
continuously in print.
Hemingway
began writing the novel on his birthday (21 July) in 1925, finishing the
draft manuscript barely two months later in September. After setting aside the
manuscript for a short period, he worked on revisions during the winter of
1926. The basis for the novel was Hemingway's 1925 trip to Spain. The setting
was unique and memorable, showing the seedy café life in Paris, and the
excitement of the Pamplona festival, with a middle section devoted to
descriptions of a fishing trip in the Pyrenees.
Equally unique was Hemingway's spare writing style, combined with his
restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, which
became known as the Iceberg Theory.
On
the surface the novel is a love story between the protagonist
Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him impotent—and the promiscuous
divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be
upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador
Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona.
The novel is a roman à clef;
the characters are based on real people and the action is based on real events.
In the novel, Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost
Generation", considered to have been decadent,
dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World
War I, was resilient and strong. Additionally, Hemingway
investigates the themes of love, death, renewal in nature, and the nature of
masculinity.
III.Impression/Conclusion
My conclusion/ my impression about this story
is I do interested in this story because most of the story tells us about the
real life of Ernest Hemingway that basically has same occupation with the main
character of the story that is Jake. His occupation is as an journalist. And
one interesting point is about the setting of time that was happened in World
War I. It was a devastating period for
the world's youth not only physically, but emotionally as well. Besides, one
interesting point I can catch is about one character that represent "Lost
Generation" as the other name of the novel is Robert Cohn. He can defeat
the influences of Jake as main character in the story . There are distinct
characteristics of Cohn that separate him from those same people. Unlike
everyone around him, for instance, Cohn has not been directly affected by the
war. Jake had sustained a serious injury in the war that left him impotent.
Brett had been a nurse who had lost her husband to battle. Mike had gained his
inhuman-like drinking ability from his service in the war. Everyone had felt
the impact of war except Robert Cohn. This direct connection of a great loss
from the war was a key element of the "Lost Generation" that Cohn did
not seem to have, at least to the extent of the others. Cohn's inability to
drink on a large scale also put him at odds with the group. After waking from a
drunken stupor, Cohn rejoins the others and states, "What a lot we've
drunk." Mike replies, "You mean what a lot we've drunk. You went to
sleep" (Hemingway 163). This separates him from the group as well, and the
others resent him for not having to deal with his problems by drinking.
Perhaps
the most apparent difference between Cohn and those of the "Lost
Generation" lies in his high morality in an immoral world. Jake's
description of Cohn's commitment to relationships shows that Robert did not sleep around with
women on a regular basis like those around him. Of the past relationships Cohn
has had with his ex-wife and Frances, Jake explains, "For four years his
horizon had been absolutely limited to his wife. For three years, or almost
three years, he had never seen beyond Frances. I am sure he had never been in
love in his life". Cohn felt a sense of love, or at least a pretense of
love, which kept him committed to his relationships. Perhaps this is why Cohn
could not give up on Brett so easily.
Robert
Cohn is definitely portrayed as a man who has no place in his society. Unlike
Jake, Brett, Mike, and Bill, however, Cohn does not fit in because he is not
part of the "Lost Generation." Cohn was eventually ostracized by the
group because of his outdated sense of values and morality. Cohn was not shaped
by the war, he did not have as bad of a drinking problem as the others, he held
romantic ideas of love and commitment, and he held onto a code of honor that
was becoming extinct. Robert Cohn is an interesting character because he is an
outsider among outsiders. Although he has his own problems with identity, as
most people do, Cohn is not part of the "Lost Generation" that the
other characters belong to. Robert Cohn is simply a symbol of pre-war life and
morality that does not fit into the post-war angst and loss of the "Lost
Generation."
IV.Summary
The Sun Also Rises introduces us to the
novelist Robert Cohn, a graduate of Princeton University who married a wealthy
woman and founded a literary journal soon after college. When Cohn's wife left
him, he became involved with a woman named Frances Clyne, and they traveled together
to Paris, where they are living at the start of the novel's action. It is the
mid-1920's.
Cohn visits the story's narrator and main character, Jake Barnes, in the
Paris offices of the newspaper for which Jake works. Later, Jake picks up a
prostitute named Georgette, and the two of them join a group including Cohn,
Frances, and some others. The group goes dancing at a nightclub, where a woman
named Brett (also known as Lady Ashley, because she is, by marriage, a titled
British aristocrat) appears. Cohn is attracted to Brett, but she leaves the
club with Jake.
Jake tries to kiss Brett, but she withdraws, telling him that although
she loves him, she "can't stand it." (Apparently, Jake has been
castrated in combat during the Great War and cannot consummate his love for
Brett.) They rejoin their friends and are joined in turn by a Greek Count named
Mippipopolous before Jake returns to his apartment, where he lies in bed, drunk
and miserable. The next day, Cohn speculates that he may be in love with Brett,
and Frances tells Jake that she believes Cohn plans to break up with her.
When Brett and the Count visit Jake's apartment, Jake tells Brett he
loves her and asks if they can live together. She replies that doing so is
impossible because she would be tempted to cheat on him. She also tells him
that she is about to travel to San Sebastian, a coastal town in the Basque
region of Spain. Later, Brett admits to Jake that she feels miserable,
apparently due to her unfulfilled love for him.
Jake receives a postcard from Brett in San Sebastian, as well as a note
from Cohn saying that he's leaving the country for a while; it is rumored that
Frances has gone to England. Jake's friend Bill Gorton visits Paris, severely
intoxicated. They are joined by Brett, back from San Sebastian, and Mike
Campbell, her fiancé. Mike, too, is falling-down drunk.
Jake writes to Robert Cohn in Spain to say that he and Bill will meet
Cohn at Bayonne (near the French-Spanish border) to go fishing together near
the Spanish village of Burguete. Mike invites himself and Brett along, and they
arrange to rendezvous in the nearby town of Pamplona. Then Brett reveals to
Jake that Cohn was with her in San Sebastian. Jake and Bill depart Paris via
rail and arrive in Bayonne in the evening. The next morning, Jake, Bill, and
Cohn travel to Pamplona; however, Brett and Mike are not on the train they were
scheduled to take. The following day, Jake and Bill go fishing as planned. Cohn
has announced his decision to remain in Pamplona. For five days, Jake and Bill
hear nothing from Cohn, Brett, or Mike. While fishing, they befriend an
Englishman named Harris.
After receiving telegrams from both Mike and Cohn, however, Jake and
Bill return to Pamplona. There they meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn before
walking to the corrals outside of town to see the unloading of the bulls for
the coming bullfights. At a café afterward, Mike browbeats Cohn for tagging
after Brett. Apparently, Cohn returned to San Sebastian while Jake and Bill
were fishing in Burguete.
Pamplona's yearly fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days,
begins. Musicians and dancers fill the streets and shops — including the wine
store, where Brett is placed on a cask so the Basque peasants can dance around
her as if she were a pagan idol. Jake sleeps while his friends stay out all
night and then attend the running of the bulls from the corrals to the
bullring, through the streets of town. Jake meets the 19-year-old matador Pedro
Romero, and the next day, after Romero performs admirably in the ring, Brett
cannot help talking about her attraction to him.
The hotelier Montoya visits Jake to express his concern that mixing with
rich tourists will corrupt Romero. Later, at dinner, Brett invites the
bullfighter to her table. Montoya looks on with disapproval. Once again, Mike
picks on Cohn. Brett too lashes out at him, then tells Jake that she feels
guilty for having slept with Cohn while engaged to Mike. She asks Jake if he
loves her, and when Jake says that he does, Brett says she is in love with
Romero. So Jake helps Brett find the matador in a café, where they flirt
openly. Jake leaves; when he returns, the two are gone. Later, Cohn calls Jake
a pimp, and in the ensuing fistfight, Jake is beaten up. The next day, Mike
reports that Cohn found Brett in Romero's room and beat the bullfighter up,
too, after which Cohn cried. Mike admits that he is upset by his fiancée's
promiscuity.
On the last day of the fiesta, Cohn has left town, presumably to return
to Frances. Jake and Brett pray at the Pamplona cathedral before she visits
Romero. Then Jake, Brett, and Bill attend the bullfight, in which Romero,
beloved of the crowd, performs spectacularly. Brett leaves town also, in the
company of the matador.
The rest of the group splits up. Jake travels to San Sebastian, where he
relaxes alone in cafés and on the beach. Soon, however, a telegram from Brett
arrives, begging him to join her in Madrid. Jake finds Brett in her hotel room
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