Having read this novel a couple of years ago, I decided that I would look try to find a specific theme to address in my blog post for this week.  While I kind of remembered the plot, it has been very beneficial for me to reread this novel after our long discussions over the mental aspects of WWI, and the social, cultural, and especially, psychological trauma that it caused.  Ernest Hemingway’s writing is characteristically (and intentionally) simplistic and repetitive at the sentence level, but he also very effectively reuses simple—but powerful—symbols.  One such symbol I noticed is the use of sports as representing the male characters’ competitive natures.

Looking at Cohn, we definitely see a very competitive nature.  He likes to point out how good he is at bridge which he believes he could always make a good living at if he needed to.  Also, in the first sentence of the novel, we are told that “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton” (11).  Jake tells us that he wasn’t impressed by the title, but it was very important to Cohn.  This fact makes a lot of sense to us as the readers, since it is the very first thing we read about in the entire novel.  Displaying this fact in the first sentence tells us right from the beginning that Cohn is both a fierce competitor and that he wants to be seen as such by the other characters.  However, Jake quickly tells us that he was “overmatched” by his trainer/coach, Spider Kelly, and got “his nose permanently flattened” which Jake believes “improved his nose” (11).  The fact that he “was really very fast” got “promptly overmatched” makes me feel like he got a little too big of an ego against his coach during the sparring match, and Spider Kelly checked his ego by hitting him even harder.    

Cohn also enjoys tennis, which is how Jake knows him.  While Cohn considers himself a writer, he considers Jake his tennis friend rather than as a literary friend.  While Jake works at a newspaper, he doesn’t image that Cohn considers him a friend who is “literary” or a good writer.  I believe, however, Jake understands writing much better than Cohn, but he isn’t competitive enough to correct him in this.  Jake’s impotence as a character is seen very thoroughly in this aspect.  He seems to enjoy tennis to some extent, but later in the start of Book II, he states that “he rather enjoyed not having to play tennis” (75).  He gets tired of this athletic competition and sees playing tennis as kind of a chore.  He enjoys not having to compete with Cohn and others, because it takes time away from his work, his “dining with friends,” and his going to the races.  Jake really enjoys tranquility and leisurely activites, and through this, we see his impotency.  He is happy to be on the sidelines and gets tired of the competition that Cohn and a lot of the other male characters get wrapped up in.  Obviously, this includes sexual competition.  It makes a lot of sense that Jake enjoys going to the Spanish bull-fighting, since it is a sport in which most can only spectate.