The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway follows American expatriates in post-World War I Paris, struggling to reconcile traditional values with modernity. Protagonist Jake Barnes, a war victim, is in love with Brett Ashley, who has affairs with other men. The novel explores themes of disillusionment and the lost generation, with symbolism and characters embodying cultural themes of the time. The young bullfighter Pedro Romero represents courage and integrity, while Brett seeks to possess his spirit for herself. The novel ends with a sense of hopelessness and cynicism towards a society detached from traditional culture.
Set in Paris in the wake of World War I, Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, is a book that captures the mood and mindset of what the famous literary figure, Gertrude Stein, dubbed “The Lost Generation ”. Born in the late nineteenth century, when society as a whole was transitioning from an older agrarian culture, to a new paradigm centered on industrialization and urban life, the characters in The Sun Also Rises struggle to reconcile a simpler and more traditional way of thinking, with the new, impersonal realities of modern existence.
The Sun Also Rises centers on a group of American expatriates who find themselves in the middle of a Paris filled with romance, excess, and rampant hedonism. The novel’s protagonist, Jake Barnes, is a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper, reporting on life and events in post-war France.
An unfortunate victim of a war wound that permanently damaged his sexual ability, Jake finds himself helpless in the wildest of times, in a city that is exploding in sensuality and promiscuity. This frustrating set of circumstances is compounded by the fact that he is in love with a beautiful British woman, Brett Ashley, who reciprocates his feelings for him, but shares his anguish at the hopelessness of their situation. Tension arises when Jake’s tennis partner Robert Cohn, a naïve American who has just arrived from the United States, falls head over heels in love with Brett.
The incarnation of the “Flapper” of the “Roaring Twenties,” Brett is beyond Cohn’s league. Sexually liberated and blatantly ambivalent about the traditional female roles of the Victorian era, Brett, like all Flappers, believed that sexual freedom was not gender specific. Regardless, Brett hooks up with Cohn, much to Jake’s consternation, and decides to have an affair with him. While Jake, along with the rest of their crowd, including Brett herself, acknowledge that the affair is nothing more than fun, Cohn takes it seriously and is devastated when Brett dumps him for a young bullfighter named Pedro Romero, during the festival of Pamplona Spain.
A seminal work in the genre of modernist literature, The Sun Also Rises employs symbolism to express Hemingway’s perspective on society during this period. Each of the main characters in the story embodies a specific cultural theme prevalent at the time. In Cohn’s aggravating innocence are expressed the prewar expectations and beliefs of Americans. Thrust into a wickedly sophisticated and morally bankrupt Paris of the 1920s, Cohn, like the bright-eyed soldiers who set off to war in the trenches of World War I, ends up abused and broken by the callous, impersonal realities of the new world order. Brett, a poster girl for the new liberated woman, finds herself mired in paradox. Though stimulating and euphoric, postwar culture makes her feel hauntingly empty and unsatisfied. Like many of her peers, she struggled to reconcile the emotional security of traditional marriage with the ephemeral nature of open relationships.
Common to all of Hemingway’s works is the author’s belief that courage, honor, and integrity are ultimately the highest expression of human endeavour. All of these traits are exemplified in the young bullfighter Pedro Romero. It’s when Brett dismisses Cohn for the purity of Pedro Romero that the irony is revealed. Like all the damaged and debauched characters in The Sun Also Rises, Brett too seeks the spiritual redemption represented by the pristine nobility of the exquisite bullfighter. Yet while most of the novel’s characters are content to bask in the glory of Pedro’s spirit, Brett seeks to possess it for herself, to restore the lost sense of purpose and security that has fled not only from her, but from all generation of her.
The disgust and sadness expressed by the old innkeeper, Montoya, after witnessing Brett’s affair with Romero, reflects the general sense of hopelessness and melancholy prevalent among many members of the Lost Generation. For instead of recapturing the lost sense of innocence and hope he seeks, Brett’s relationship with Romero corrupts the young man, tainting and detracting from the admirable qualities he possesses. The closing scene of The Sun Also Rises sums up the cynical realities of a society detached from the secure conventions of traditional culture and forced to acknowledge the irony and hard truths of its time.
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