Jimmy

            Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is no mere novel. No, it cannot be categorized as a novel because never before has a novel embodied such an intimate essence of a generation. The Sun Also Rises captivates not only the atmosphere of the setting (Europe amidst the aftermath of World War I) but also captivates the ideals and changes brought to society during this time period. Hemingway is able to cultivate these ideals and changes through the protagonist, Jake Barnes, and his hodge-podge group of friends.

            Barnes is able to represent a lot of major themes that many men felt following the Great War. He is a veteran of the war who saw the indescribable horrors that many witnessed on the battlefield and even sustained an injury as a result of the war. He became impotent. Hemingway unravels this injury as a way to reveal the theme of male insecurity that was often felt by many at the time. Barnes is not the only character who feels this but his impotency is the most direct reference to the theme. This male insecurity is paralleled by Barnes’ love interest, Lady Brett Ashley. Brett is easily the most manly character out of Barnes’ group of friends. Not only does she have a masculine name, but she also has shorter hair and is very decisive. The men in the book all seem to be attracted to her which brings about the anti-romantic movement felt by many in post World War I Europe. Brett embodies this movement through her destructive sexual ways. Brett is able to attach herself to several men throughout the book who all begin to adore her, although she never feels the same. She denies Jake even though she loves him due to her needs which Jake cannot satisfy due to his injury. This unfaithfulness to her heart is a major display of this anti-romantic feeling. Brett also denies romantic approaches of men. This is best seen when Pedro Romero gives her a bull’s ear as a token and she buries it in a drawer.

            The most identifiable theme presented by Jake Barnes and his friends is the feeling of disillusionment following World War I. The group of friends is constantly drinking throughout the course of this book. Whether they are in Paris or Pamplona they resort to going out all night long moving from bar to bar and drinking aimlessly. This schedule repeats day in and day out. This sense of disillusionment and utter hopelessness gives great insight to the attitudes felt by men and women of the time period who experienced the war first hand. These people were greatly affected morally and psychologically by the war and they chose to escape reality by drinking themselves to oblivion. This is exactly what Jake and his companions chose to do throughout the novel.

            Hemingway’s rough, masculine, right-to-the-point, style of writing combined with his cunning character descriptions help this piece perfectly mimic the essence of the time. His characters are able to develop in the readers’ head into a perfect image of a member of the lost generation and the anticlimactic storyline reiterates the disillusionment of the time. No book has ever or will ever be able to do what The Sun Also Rises has done. No book will ever be able to capture an entire generation of people so perfectly or create such a mirror image of a time period. So kudos to you Ernest Hemingway. You have not written a great novel but rather you have composed a symphony of a generation, captured into a story, binded by time.