World War I

Though there is no way to know quite what the characters were like before the war, it is obvious that they have been changed and scarred by it. Jake is clearly emotionally traumatized and physically damaged by the war. His physical loss in the war has made it so he cannot reasonably have a mate in life, isolating him from the only true comfort he seems to seek. Brett is a woman lost between tradition and freedom - she has a good upbringing, access to money, access to men, yet she cannot allow herself to stick in one place long enough to order a few drinks or have a short, strained conversation. Her struggle with Jake in loving him only because they cannot have each other is indicative of the struggle endured by many women after the war - once you've lived far from tradition, how do you find it again?

Jake's bitterness and need for quiet are something many can identify with, but they are magnified by his experiences and losses in the war. At night when settling to sleep, his mind races to thoughts of torment about all the things in life he cannot have. He lives a life of sorry repitition, moving from meaningless bar to meaningless bar, full of people and drinks that never seem to touch his core. He is a man living behind a shield of "not talking about it", constantly denying and ignoring the pain and emptiness in his daily life.

I feel like this reading reaffirmed much of what we have already covered in the course.  The survivors of the war were left empty.  They lost so many that they knew and the whole country was in a crisis, fearing that there would not be enough men to continue sufficiently populating.  This is no different in The Sun Also Rises.  the drinking is heavy, the sleepless nights are many.  In order to numb themselves, Jake and the other characters drink themselves into oblivion.  The numbess is easier to handle than the reality of what was left after the war.  There was a loss of hope for the future in both the personal and reproductive aspect.

Jake is left impotent from a war incident that left him practically castrated.  This seems to be a symbol, however uncomfortable of one it may be, for the feelings of the nation.  So many young men's lives were lost.  As mentioned before, not only was there a deep emotional grief but there was also an anxiety that there simply were not enough functional, young men in order to continue on into the next generation.  And so, we are let into Jake's personal battles with his impotenance as a sort of mirror into the feelings of the rest of society.

References to the War and its effects occur all throughout the first part of The Sun Also Rises; however, the brief scene in which Jake Barnes is attempting to fall asleep particularly struck me. After his night on the town and a disappointing talk with Brett, Jake goes back to his flat and prepares for bed, knowing that he probably won’t be able to sleep. “Perhaps I would be able to sleep,” (38) he says, indicating that sleeplessness is probably a fairly common for him. Of course, he cannot immediately fall asleep, due to the annoying habit of the mind deciding to work in overdrive precisely when you want it to calm down. “My head started to work. The old grievance,” (38) is his reflection on the situation. Again, this indicates that his sleeplessness is a recurring problem.

All of this reminded me of several references to the inability to sleep in The Waste Land. In the very first stanza, the narrator states, “I read, much of the night,” (18). A bit later, the poem switches to a conversation between a returned soldier and his wife. The man cannot sleep, and says, “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me,” (111).

All of these issues with sleep, both in The Sun Also Rises and The Waste Land speak to the trauma of serving in the War. Though Jake Barnes probably does not suffer from severe PTSD like many men of his era, his insomnia is nevertheless a symptom of stress. The minute he attempts to settle down for the night, he begins thinking of his time serving in Italy. Though he calls it a “joke front” he was wounded. His inability to rest peacefully is an internal manifestation of his physical scars from the War. 

Like much of Hemingway's work, The Sun Also Rises is defined by its sparse construction and compact diction. Hemingway uses short senteces, broad details, and colloquial diction to create a barren and incomplete world, convincingly emulating the postwar modern experience. This is particularly evident in the conversations Jake holds with the other characters in the novel, especially Brett. The dialogue in The Sun Also Rises feels fragmented and incoherent; partly because the actual snippets of conversation often vacillate abruptly between banal trivialities and emotionally-charged outbursts, and partly because of Jake's mental notes and observations which provide context and depth to seemingly-banal surface conversation.

This approach to conversation is exemplified in Jake's first exchange with Brett, which features such cryptic lines as "It's in restraint of trade" and "You've made a new one there" (30). Short, snappy, matter-of-fact lines such as these convey an atmosphere of weary familiarity. Both participants have been over this conversation many times before, and can communicate its essentials with a minimum of effort. Neither Brett nor Jake have anything new or interesting to contribute to their relationship, and the conversation reflects that worn-out dissatisfaction.

Hemmingway’s characters all are trying to fill in a void within them. Cohn is in search of companionship and comrades within his setting. He sees himself as inferior to his peers and desperately tries to prove himself with his writings. Still feeling inadequate after his success, he entreats Jake to go to South America trying to escape these internal feelings of loneliness.

Jake, psychologically as well as physically is scarred by the Great War. It has been implied that Jake has lost his masculinity from one of the battles. He too, is tired of his lonely solace and seeks an evening with a prostitute to fill the void of his afternoons. Jake resents the fact that Cohn considers him his best friend; due to the fact that Cohn is strong, intelligent, ‘complete’, and now is rich due to his own success.

Though Lady Brett Ashley comes off as a charismatic lady, she too suffers from the displacement of war. Her experience of the War was through the V.A.D. program, where she met Jake. We, the reader, are unsure of what her character was like before the war, but it is has undoubtedly changed after. She is seen as going from one man to another, probably unsure of her value in society. She wants very much to be loved and happy- maybe a traditional dream she had before the war- but now she is seen as wandering from man to man like she does from bar to bar.

They are all part of the ‘Lost Generation’ because none of them are able to grasp what they want in life. They fill their days squandering their money on booze to help fill their individual voids. All of them suffer from depression, which was not considered a medical disease at the time, so they even lacked the medical means to help them.

View Map of The Sun Also Rises in a larger map

Here is a map that I made of Book I of The Sun Also Rises.  In the map, I mark places that are either referenced or visited by the book's characters.  Throughout the process of mapping the book, I gained an appreciation for how spatial Hemingway's references are.  Primarily, the book revolves around France as the centerpiece, following expatriot soldiers and their acquaintences in Paris.  It seems as though Europe becomes home for the narrator of the story, Jake, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the injury he recieved in the war.

Mike Campbell also suffered a wound from WWI, but unlike Jake, his major problem results from his loss of aristocratic rank. This seems to be emphasized by Cohn's affair with Brett. Cohn represents the opposite of what we might see in the Count; he's is Jewish and has no family in Europe.

I'd write a bit more, but I spent a very long time making this map, haha.  Hope someone else can use it!

What strikes me the most after reading book one of The Sun Also Rises is strong sense of meaninglessness in human interactions. This can be seen in the relationships of many different characters. Jake and Brett are in love, but this is rendered meaningless by Brett's plans to go on and marry Micheal anyway. Robert promised to marry Frances, but this is rendered meaningless by his desire to go and live a more adventurous life.

I believe that this sense of meaninglessness in interpersional relations could be the direct result of the first World War on the characters. The first World War saw countless individuals slaughtered in the name of conflicts they had no personal stake in due to Europe's outdated system of alliances. Living in the aftermath of a war which saw so many people rapidly dying, it strikes me as no surprise that these characters should place little to no value in their relationships. After all, how do they know that these people will even be there tomorrow?

I read through this novel fairly quickly and I really enjoyed it. Hemingway is one of my favorite authors, the way he delivers his stories is so enjoyable for me. There is a lot of unfairness and disguise in this novel. Brett is hiding in a lot of ways. She never seems to be happy with her situation and continues to find ways to escape. The relationship between Brett and Jake is sad. They both love each other, but for their own reasons can't be together. Throughout this novel Brett holds onto Jake like he is attached to a leash. All of the characters are escaping the war and the tragedies of it, but they are finding new dangers to replace the ones from the war. Jake comes home, but he is not considered a "complete" man anymore and therefore any dreams of being with someone he loves is out of reach because he cannot come to her a "full" man. In some ways he is dead because he cannot give life, almost useless as a person. They are all trying to escape the pain and nothing really works for any of them. They cannot see the beauty in what is around them, everything has dimmed in their eyes and, Brett especially continues to search for something that she may not find. The war has paralyzed them all in different ways. 

Brett is always making excuses for herself and brings forth the idea that others believe there is something damaging about her. This is partly her way of moving on, but then she blames her partners too, that it is not just her fault but they are all better without her. Brett is damaged in ways that it seems she cannot be with others because she is not completely happy with herself. She is also running from the fact that there is no other person she would really rather be with except for Jake, which is way she can't let go and continues to hold on to him in some way. I think Jake knows this and is helpless, he wants Brett anyway he can get her even if he can't have her the way either of them deserves. 

One of the main things I've noticed thus far in "The Sun Also Rises" is the flailing masculinity that all the male characters exhibit. During the aftermath of WWI, there was a radical re-evaluation of what it meant to be masculine and the issues that the male characters in this book deal with represent a small picture of the larger cultural issue. The pre-war ideal of the brave, noble soldier had little relevance in the context of brutal trench warfare that characterized the war as survival depended far more upon luck than upon bravery. This is what caused the traditional notions of what it meant to be a man to be undermined by the realities of the war and it is the character of Jake that best embodies these cultural changes. The war renders his manhood (ability to reproduce) useless because of injury which causes him to experience a nagging sense of inadequacy. 

While Jake’s condition is the certainly the most straightforward example of weakened masculinity in the book, he is definitely not alone in his "loss of manliness". All of the veterans feel insecure in their manhood and while Hemingway does not state this explicitly, it is clearly seen when Jake and the others consistently mock Cohn. They only target him when they feel that he is performing "unmanly" actions and it is their need to humiliate him that reveals their deeper issues. They appear to be coping with their fears of being weak and emasculated by criticizing the weakness they see in him -- which, unfortunately, makes them appear to be even more lost than he (Cohn) is.

An additional juxtaposition to this theme in the book is the character of Brett. In many ways, she is more “manly” than the men in the book. Brett refers to herself as a “chap,” and wears a short, mannish haircut as well as possessing a masculine name. She is strong, independent and embodies all of the traditional masculine cliches that the veterans lack. 

War is damaging, and the characters in Sun Also Rises are all damaged in some way.  They do not speak explicitly about their various damages, but they are apparent nonetheless.  Jake's war injury affects his life and his perspective on the people in it.  It is clear that there is something between Jake and Brett, but their lives and pasts are heavily influential on their choices, and Brett decides to marry Mike.  It is made quite clear that she does not want to marry him, but Brett copes with the rough life she had with her former husband with alcohol and male company.

There are several common themes throughout the book.  The characters all seem to feel the need to escape.  Many of the characters go abroad for a while, looking for adventure.  They all seem mesmerized by the danger and injury they witness in Pamplona.  These escapist tendencies show the unrest they all feel to some degree.