The Sun Also Rises features various places which are imbued with specific tones or emotions. The text moves from the numerous ex-patriot hotspots of Paris—in which protagonist Jake seems to feel generally crummy—, to rural Spanish landscapes, and eventually to the frantic and active city of Pamplona. Despite the attention given to describing and characterizing these physical spaces, protagonist Jake argues against the importance of location. Depicting a conversation between Jake and Robert Cohen, Hemingway writes:
     “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.”
    “But you’ve never been to South America.”
    “South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?”
    “I’m sick of Paris, and I’m sick of the Quarter.” (19)

Despite Jake’s protest that a change in location does not result in a change in his life, experiences, or attitude, he later describes his trip into a rural Spanish town, and its beautiful landscapes, with such detail that he hints at the location’s healing potential for him. As he describes the country's lush landscape, Jake seems to become soothed by his surroundings. As he travels into rural Burguete, Jake describes the scenery, “We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heated-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them” (114). Jake’s description of the scenery surrounding Burguete—marked with green, lushness—suggests the beauty Jake associates with the place. Jake describes the mountains as better and richer than the ones he’d “left behind,” even invoking heavenly imagery as he describes the clouds coming down from the mountains— reminiscent of light-soaked clouds coming down from on high in religious pictures. In these descriptions, Jake suggests a hope that the town will provide him with a sort of rejuvenation as he tries to move past recent wounds involving Brett and Robert Cohen.

Throughout his experience in the town and its surrounding wilderness, Jake appears to be at his happiest. He narrates about reading and smoking in bed in the Burguete inn, “It felt good to be warm and in bed” (116). He elsewhere describes the trip’s various simplicities with joy and appreciation, ranging from the bounty of wine at dinner and the girl who was “nice about bringing it” (116), to the “wonderful story” he reads (125), and of course the “good fishing” itself (129). In Burguete, even his impotency seems less dreary. After Bill makes an awkward joke about the condition, Jake notes, “He had been going splendidly, but he stopped. I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with that crack about being impotent. I wanted him to start again” (120). It is as if in the rural Spanish town, and in the surrounding forest and fishing at the Irati River, Jake is momentarily able to achieve distance from his war-ravaged Parisian life and a bit of peace in his hopeless romantic situation. Jake most often focuses on nature in these pages, which hints at the power of greenery, woods, and rivers to offer healing as a natural form of resistance towards the very human forces of war and violence. However, it is also interesting to consider how Jake describes his fishing trip as an incredibly homosocial zone. In depicting his escapades in Burguete, Jake gives little focus to any female characters (other than a few workers at the inn). Instead, Jake spends most of this time in Burguete with another man, his buddy Bill, involved in the traditionally masculine sport of fishing. Thus, Jake seems to associate both all-male space and nature with a happier, hopeful attitude.