I read The Sun Also Rises in a class last year, and I am happy to be reading it again. I loved it the first time I read it, but I felt as though there was a lot I missed in that first reading. Reading it this second time has brought my attention to several things that I missed before. The war has affected these characters in many ways, I think. The most obvious effect is in the character Jake. His injury from the war is mentioned multiple times, although, interesting, Hemingway never comes right out and says what it is. We can infer it though, based on his conversations and interactions with other characters, mainly female. I think this is interesting. Jake's injury prevents him from reproducing, which was on the minds of many people after the war. The fact that Hemingway never says clearly what had happened to his main character, and the fact that Jake never says it specifically himself, suggests to me a kind of reluctance to speak of it. I wonder if this would have been the case with any injury that wasn't immedietely visable. Perhaps speaking around it and avoiding the topic would have been a way of dealing with it. 

When Jake does speak of it, he makes light of the situation almost. In his conversation with Brett, he says, "What happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it" (34). But we see in other points that Jake thinks about it quite a lot, and that he doesn't find it funny at all. This seems to me to have been a way of coping. There were countless people in the war who suffered injuries like Jake's, as well as much more serious ones. People would have dealt with it in whatever way they could. Jake outwardly tries to make light of it, but thinks about it a great deal by himself. "Perhaps I would be able to sleep... 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" (38). In Jake's case, the war has injured him, as well as emasculated him and made a joke of him. He continues on with his life as best he can, although it is clear that he is still struggling with it.