BEDLAM IN A BOTTLE: THE DRUNKARD AS FOOL AND TRICKSTER IN F.
SCOTT FITZGERALD’S TENDER IS THE NIGHT AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S
THE SUN ALSO RISES
A Thesis
Presented to the faculty of the Department of English
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirement for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
(Literature)
by
Scott W. Weiss
FALL
2012
© 2012
Scott W. Weiss
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
BEDLAM IN A BOTTLE: THE DRUNKARD AS FOOL AND TRICKSTER IN F.
SCOTT FITZGERALD’S TENDER IS THE NIGHT AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S
THE SUN ALSO RISES
A Thesis
by
Scott W. Weiss
Approved by:
___________________________________________________, Committee Chair
Susan Wanlass, Ph.D.
___________________________________________________, Second Reader
Nancy Sweet, Ph.D.
_______________
Date
iii
Student: Scott W. Weiss
I certify that this student has met the requirement for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for this thesis.
_____________________________________, Graduate Coordinator
David Toise, Ph.D.
Department of English
iv
____________
Date
Abstract
of
BEDLAM IN A BOTTLE: THE DRUNKARD AS FOOL AND TRICKSTER IN F.
SCOTT FITZGERALD’S TENDER IS THE NIGHT AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S
THE SUN ALSO RISES
by
Scott W. Weiss
For F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, alcohol was significant in both
their work and their lives as a pervasive specter whose presence was dominant both
thematically and in a very practical sense that neither writer seems to have fully
acknowledged. In his discussion of “Madness and Society,” historian Michel Foucault
briefly talks about the historical importance of the fool, touching on the fool’s
significance in theatre and as represented in cultural events such as “the Festival of
Folly,” about which Foucault highlights the fact that “In this festival, the social and
traditional roles were completely reversed: a poor man played the role of a rich man, a
weak man that of a powerful one. The sexes were inverted, the sexual prohibitions
nullified” (340). Foucault then mentions one outcome of changes to such cultural
practices in modern society. “In our time,” says Foucault, “the politico-religious
meaning of festivals has been lost; instead, we resort to alcohol or drugs as a way of
contesting the social order, and we have thus created a kind of artificial madness.
Basically, it is an imitation of madness, and it can be seen as an attempt to set society
ablaze by creating the same state as madness” (340).
v
This thesis examines Fitzgerald’s novel Tender is the Night and Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises in exploring connections between alcohol use and Foucault’s idea of
its role in modeling a modern form of madness; moreover, this thesis seeks to identify
ways in which the drunkard manifests various characteristics of the fool and folly as
historically presented in social customs and the literary tradition. In pursuing these
objectives, this thesis engages ideas and scholarship from various sources, including the
history and traditions surrounding the role of the fool and trickster, C. G. Jung’s notions
of the trickster as an archetypal figure, Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas regarding carnival and
carnivalization of literary texts, the clinical and sociological effects of alcohol,
biographical studies of the two authors in question, and literary criticism and commentary
on the two novels under consideration.
The first chapter—after an introduction and preliminary discussion of the fool and
the trickster—analyzes the role of drunken fool in Tender is the Night among different
characters as a form of shape-shifting, then examines Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Dick
Diver, for trickster-figure characteristics. The second chapter looks at Tender is the
Night for examples of hierarchical reversal before bringing the chapter to a close by
drawing upon Jung’s ideas to discuss Dick Diver as portraying savior qualities and as a
self-perceived victim of circumstance.
Chapter 3 turns to The Sun Also Rises in discussing Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley
as alcohol-fueled trickster figures, looking at Jake’s penchant for pranks and similarities
to the mythical Winnebago Trickster before focusing on Brett’s deceptive trickery in her
affairs with various men, and then addressing traditional theatrical fool motifs in relation
vi
to Hemingway’s text. The final chapter discusses comedians in the novel as descendants
of the fool, giving special attention to Jake’s pairing with Bill Gorton as a comedy duo
and Mike Campbell’s failed attempts at drunken humor. The chapter closes with a look
The Sun Also Rises as a carnivalized text due to the profusion of alcohol and drunkenness
within its pages.
The thesis concludes by noting the seemingly great potential for further research
to develop and critique the points made in the thesis through expansion upon, or deeper
analysis of, the several avenues of research it pursues.
_________________________________________________________, Committee Chair
Susan Wanlass, Ph.D.
________________________
Date
vii
DEDICATION
To my family
To my wife, Brenda, for enduring so many years of my being gone to evening classes
throughout the week and seeing my face buried in books or lost in concentration writing
papers for much of the rest of the time. I could have done none of this without your love,
encouragement, and support—you have always inspired me to test the next highest bar.
To my son, Shaun, and my daughter, Sabrina, who, like their mother, endured evenings
with me in class or studying. I know that both of you have inherited the stubborn
determination that propelled me through this long and arduous journey—I hope you love
what drives you as much as I love studying literature.
To my eight grandchildren, who I hope will have a much more direct road to higher
education than I have had. As you grow and learn, I hope that you will find an example
in my achievement, and see it as proof of your own great potential. Whatever you set
your hearts and minds to do in life, may you push yourselves to fantastic heights.
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the faculty of the English Department at California State University,
Sacramento. To each and every member of the faculty with whom I have worked and
whom I have gotten to know over the years, thank you for your hard work, dedication,
and for your commitment to our discipline.
In particular, I would like to thank my Second Reader for this thesis, Professor Nancy
Sweet, for her exceedingly valuable feedback and advice on my drafts throughout this
process—this thesis has been greatly improved as a result of her input.
Most of all, however, I owe a tremendous debt of thanks to my Committee Chair,
Professor Susan Wanlass, for the time and attention she has given to this thesis project
and to the interests of my educational objectives in general—without her help, guidance,
and encouragement from the beginning, this thesis would never have become a reality for
me.
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ........................................................................................................................ viii
Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. ix
Chapter
1. The Fool-as-Trickster in Tender is the Night .................................................................. 1
Part I—Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
Part II—The Fool and the Trickster ........................................................................ 3
Part III—Dick Diver as Trickster Figure ................................................................ 5
Part IV—The Drunkard as Shape-shifting Trickster Figure ................................. 11
2. The Drunkard and Additional Fool Motifs in Tender is the Night ............................... 23
Part I—The Drunken Fool and Hierarchical Reversal .......................................... 23
Part II—The Drunken Fool as Savior-Figure ....................................................... 29
Part III—The Drunkard as Victim of Circumstance ............................................. 48
3. Fools and Tricksters Take to the Stage in The Sun Also Rises ..................................... 53
Part I—“He’s a fool”: Jake Barnes Plays the Trickster in Both Mind and Body . 53
Part II—Lady Brett Ashley: A Trickster’s Trickster ............................................ 66
Part III—Setting the Stage: Theatrical Fool Motifs in The Sun Also Rises .......... 72
4. From Comedy to Carnival: in The Sun Also Rises ........................................................ 77
Part I—Jake and Bill, the Comedy Duo................................................................ 77
Part II—Alcohol, Carnival, and Carnivalization in The Sun Also Rises ............... 87
x
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 104
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 110
xi
1
Chapter 1: The Fool-as-Trickster in Tender is the Night
Part I—Introduction
For F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, consumption of alcohol played a
significant role in both their work and their lives as a pervasive specter whose presence
was dominant not only thematically, but in a very practical sense which neither writer
seems to have fully acknowledged. In a telling moment in Fitzgerald’s novel, Tender is
the Night, the narrator makes a key observation, noting that “Often people display a
curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane,”
and the narrator goes on to say, “There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all
inhibitions, who will do anything” (108). This statement near the end of Book One
provides an important clue that drunkenness, and the looming suggestion of alcoholism,
will remain significant aspects as the story continues to unfold; moreover, it connects
alcoholism to another of the novel’s important themes in mental illness, and in doing so
opens up interesting possibilities of inquiry. Indeed, it is this very connection between
drunkenness and its likeness to madness that this thesis aims to explore. In his discussion
of “Madness and Society,” historian Michel Foucault briefly talks about the historical
importance of the fool, touching on the fool’s significance as represented both in theatre
and in cultural events such as “the Festival of Folly,” about which Foucault highlights the
fact that “In this festival, the social and traditional roles were completely reversed: a poor
man played the role of a rich man, a weak man that of a powerful one. The sexes were
inverted, the sexual prohibitions nullified” (340). Foucault then mentions one outcome of
these cultural practices having disappeared from modern society. “In our time,” says
2
Foucault, “the politico-religious meaning of festivals has been lost; instead, we resort to
alcohol or drugs as a way of contesting the social order, and we have thus created a kind
of artificial madness. Basically, it is an imitation of madness, and it can be seen as an
attempt to set society ablaze by creating the same state as madness” (340).
This thesis discusses the connections between drunkenness or alcoholism and
Foucault’s idea of its role in modeling a modern form of madness; moreover, this thesis
seeks to identify ways in which the drunkard manifests various characteristics of the fool
and folly as historically presented in social customs and literary tradition. The works of
Fitzgerald and Hemingway exemplify and perhaps set a standard for the prominence of
drinking and drunkenness in literature, both in terms of its presence throughout several of
these writers’ works, and in terms of its ubiquity in the lives of the authors’ characters
and the often difficult situations it creates for them. Taking a cue from Foucault’s
connection between drunkenness and folly, this thesis undertakes an examination of
Tender is the Night as well as Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises in order to
analyze the ways in which the drunkard, or alcoholic, functions to carry out the role of
the fool, or trickster, in these novels. That the connection between drunkenness and the
role of the fool is entirely natural to both stories is strongly suggested in the fact that each
story directly invokes the idea of staged foolery. In Fitzgerald’s novel, Nicole Diver
reports how, “‘On All Fools Day we had a party on the Zurichsee, and all the fools were
there, and I wanted to come dressed in a spread but they wouldn’t let me’” (Tender 112),
and in Hemingway’s novel we see evidence of Jake Barnes’s trickster tendencies when
Mrs. Braddocks tells the prostitute, Georgette, how “‘Mr. Barnes introduced you as
3
[French opera singer] Mademoiselle Georgette Leblanc,’” an announcement which,
coincidentally enough, motivates Georgette to say that Jake is “‘a fool’”—an epithet
frequently applied by the story’s characters to one another, strongly suggestive of the
term’s thematic importance throughout the novel (Sun 18). The motif of the fool is then
an acknowledged presence in both stories, and as this thesis will demonstrate, it is
revealed expansively in the way Dick Diver of Tender is the Night and Brett Ashley and
Jake Barnes of The Sun Also Rises figure as fools, tricksters, shape-shifters, and jesters—
all due to their frequent and oftentimes excessive consumption of alcohol.
Part II—The Fool and the Trickster
Since this thesis employs the terms “fool” and “trickster” at times interchangeably
and often in compound with one another through terms such as “fool-as-trickster” and
“trickster-fool,” we begin our discussion with consideration of the historical relationship
between the fool and the trickster. The fool’s identification as a trickster has its basis in
history and tradition, as Sandra Billington notes in her book, A Social History of the Fool,
when she says, “…when we look back historically at the Fool’s place in society, the
evidence shows that he survived through wit and tricks: both arts of the entertainer”
(123). It seems then that the fool’s very existence has in some ways depended upon his
ability to perform trickery. An important related development in the genealogy of the
fool would seem to be located in the medieval practice of “associating the Fool with the
devil” (Billington 46), which, it may be immediately recognized, connects the fool to the
foremost among mythological tricksters—Satan himself. To provide additional support
for this connection, it is interesting to note that C. G. Jung makes an observation similar
4
to Billington’s in commenting on “the medieval description of the devil as simia dei (the
ape of God), and in his characterization in folklore as the ‘simpleton’ who is ‘fooled’ or
‘cheated’ (“Trickster” 135). Yet, the connection between fool and trickster is not as cutand-dried as it might seem to the uninitiated. Although there seems to be an ontological
dividing line between the two personages, there exists a type of kinship as well, as Paul
V. A. Williams notes in his introduction to the book, The Fool and the Trickster: Studies
in Honour of Enid Welsford, writing, “…the fool and the trickster, far from having utterly
separate identities, resemble each other to a marked degree. Their roles in society on the
surface may appear to be different but in fact there are distinct similarities,” some of
which, Williams says, “are based mainly on appearances”; he makes note, however, of
those which “go somewhat deeper…for example, the chameleon-like mutations which
certain fool/trickster figures indulge in as part of their function in society” (1). Williams
admits that “The curious thing is that the fool figure in early and modern literature, the
fool illuminated in medieval manuscripts, the folkloric fool, and the tribal trickster, if not
exactly the same animal, all show signs of belonging to the same species” (Studies 1).
Perhaps it is as a member of this “species”—to which the fool and the trickster
both belong—that the drunkard as both fool and trickster finds his place, allied as he is to
both personages through behavioral similarities. Billington points to an additional text
“in which the Fool is again equated with the devil,” quoting Thomas Lodge in “about
1596” as listing a series of actions by a drinking fool: “‘Giue him a little wine in his
head,’” says Lodge, and “‘…he laughs intemperately…trips up his companions
heels…and hath all the feats of a Lord of Misrule in the countrie’” (Billington 46). The
5
trickster aspect of the fool’s nature is thus well established. Moreover, his devilish
behavior has in the case we have just seen been linked to his consumption of alcohol in
much the same way that we will connect the effects of alcohol abuse by Fitzgerald’s and
Hemingway’s characters to the attributes of the fool as trickster. The end result is that
this thesis will consider and develop the drunken fool-as-trickster with regard to the
traditions and history associated with both fools who “survived through wit and tricks”
(Billington 123) and tricksters with their “stupidity and grotesque scurrility” (“Trickster”
142).
Part III—Dick Diver as Trickster Figure
The drunkard as embodied in the character of Dick Diver in Tender is the Night is
revealed to be a wily trickster whose often unexplainable trickery causes hurt for those
closest to him. We see the first evidence of Dick’s tendency towards trickery when we
learn that his primary purpose in entertaining the guests at his “‘really bad party’” is to
watch the events devolve into “‘a brawl and seductions and people going home with their
feelings hurt …’” (Tender 27). For Dick, his guests have become his personal form of
entertainment, and his stated intention seems to be to ruin their evening, if not their lives
altogether. We might in fact question the degree to which Dick helps to instigate the duel
between Tommy Barban and Albert McKisco. We know that Dick is aware of the
potential for trouble in their interactions after he at one point, “with a sure
instinct…separate[s] Barban and the McKiscos” (Tender 37). Dick’s act of instinct,
however, appears to leave him unsatisfied with regard to his unfulfilled objective as he
tells Rosemary that “this part of the summer is over” and—noting that “to-morrow
6
Tommy Barban leaves” for the summer as will several other parties—Dick declares that
although “this particular fun is over,” he remains resolved in his desire for “it to die
violently instead of fading out sentimentally” as he confesses “that’s why I gave this
party” (Tender 37-8).
It therefore seems that at the end of the party Dick is organizing events to
facilitate the realization of his goal as “the Divers helped [their guests] all to go quickly,”
and we find the necessary ingredients for trouble to have been arranged in close
proximity as “In the Divers’ big Isotta there would be Tommy Barban…with…the
McKiscos” (Tender 39). Dick is fully aware of the scene that Violet McKisco witnessed,
since “he had found [Nicole] in her bedroom dissolved in crazy laughter telling Mrs.
McKisco she could not go into the bathroom because the key was thrown down the well”
(Tender 168); moreover, since he walked into the conflict in which Barban had warned
Violet McKisco that “‘It’s inadvisable to comment on what goes on in this house,’”
(Tender 36), Dick surely understands the potential for combustibility in combining
Barban with the McKiscos, and the arrangement of these guests in his car at the end of
the evening seems nothing short of a last-ditch attempt on Dick’s part to carry out his
trick of orchestrating “a brawl,” or, at the very least, of ensuring “hurt feelings” (Tender
27). For Dick is in full trickster mode at this point, and the lives of his guests have
become his personal playthings.
It moreover seems a certainty that Dick’s own drinking has had a role in inspiring
his efforts to play tricks on his guests. Tom Dardis notes that Fitzgerald himself, along
with his wife Zelda, demonstrated nearly identical behavior when drunk, as Dardis says,
7
“From the beginning there were two sides to the Fitzgeralds: the drunken pranksters who
combined a fierce, aggressive energy in pursuit of their fun along with a serious side
concerned with a devotion to the art of writing” (102, my emphasis). Included in the
Fitzgeralds’ catalogue of pranks was in fact—evidently in the spirit of Dick Diver the
trickster—an urge to play pranks at the expense of their party guests that included such
hijinks as “boiling all the party guests’ watches in tomato soup” (Dardis 102). That we
can easily tie Dick Diver’s trickery to his drinking—even at a point in the novel when his
problems with alcohol have not surfaced—is reinforced when we understand that
Fitzgerald’s own tendency towards trickery seems itself to have been a product of his
drinking, as is made plain in the fact that “When sober, Fitzgerald was the serious young
man of letters” with a “burgeoning career” (Dardis 102). Drunken fools-as-tricksters in
art, then, appear to imitate closely the actions of those in real life; moreover, as it turns
out, such guileful trickster behavior appears to result directly from a person’s
consumption of alcohol.
Research into the effects of alcohol seems to indicate that being in a state of
inebriation may directly contribute to a person’s ability to deceive others, as revealed in a
1984 study in the journal Psychophysiology, which undertook to examine the effects of
alcohol on “subjects …interrogated for a mock crime which they may have committed or
may be innocent of depending upon the condition to which they were assigned” with the
testing scenario providing the variable that “The crime could be carried out while [the
subjects] were under the influence of alcohol” (“Detection” 64). The study’s authors—
M. T. Bradley and D. Ainsworth—concluded that “Those who ingested alcohol prior to
8
the mock crime scored as less guilty on the Control Question Test than those who
committed the mock crime while sober” (“Detection” 69). Alcohol, it seems, increases
the ability for individuals to detach themselves in some way from the fact of their
improper drunken actions, just as Dick Diver seems to do in manipulating his party
guests into “brawl[s] and seductions” (Tender 27) while still maintaining a standing of
likeability among these same guests, as evidenced in the concern shared between Abe
North and Rosemary Hoyt—who appear to be completely unaware of Dick’s stated desire
to incite such a disagreement—that the Divers “don’t find out” that the feud between
McKisco and Barban “was about them” (Tender 44).
In commenting on their findings, although Bradley and Ainsworth admit to an
incomplete understanding as to why alcohol seems to have produced this effect on test
subjects, they suggest that it may be due to the way alcohol affects emotions:
It is not clear why intoxication would influence detectability on the
Control Question Test. If, however, this type of test depends upon the
emotional arousal of guilty subjects to crime-relevant questions, then these
results indicate that the questions were less arousing if the crime had been
committed under the influence of alcohol. Thus, it is possible that alcohol
substantially reduced the emotional impact of committing the crime.
(“Detection” 69)
Such a suggestion certainly helps us to see how becoming emotionally detached as a
result of drinking alcohol might enable both Fitzgerald and his character Dick Diver—a
psychiatrist whom one might reasonably presume to be committed to helping others
9
rather than to subjecting them to his trickery—to bring themselves to make their party
guests the butt-end of their pranks. In a book chapter entitled, “The Origins of
Drunkenness,” anthropologist Anne Fox cites the same Bradley and Ainsworth study in
assessing alcohol’s role in forming trust among groups of drinkers:
Finding out if someone is trustworthy or a cheat can be a lengthy process,
but what if there was a shortcut to trust? Alcohol has properties that can
help us overcome the flaws in language design. Warburton (1999) found
that alcohol slightly alters the way in which our brains ‘hear’ and process
words, particularly words that have threatening overtones (e.g., cancer): It
lessens the brain’s reaction to such words, thereby making conversation a
far less anxious task. Drunkenness also reduces the ability to be deceptive
and to detect deception (Bradley & Ainsworth, 1984). Added to the
simulated grooming effect of the endorphins, these features help to
facilitate the feelings of bonding and trust between drinkers. (Fox 65)
Although Fox’s point regarding a drunk person’s “reduce[d…] ability to be deceptive”
remains unclear, since the Bradley and Ainsworth study obviously concluded otherwise,
the relevant point to glean from her statements in terms of this thesis is that such a bond
of trust between Dick Diver and his drinking party guests would undoubtedly facilitate
the susceptibility of these same guests to his trickery while allowing Dick to remain
immune from blame and to retain his stature of likeability. Thus it seems that through its
properties that enable him to remain emotionally detached from the effects of his tricks
and which make him appear trustworthy in the eyes of his party guests, alcohol doubly
10
facilitates Dick Diver’s trickster ways.
Dick’s trickster nature reappears near the novel’s end when he meets Mary
Minghetti who, as a result of her experiences with her ex-husband, Abe North, has come
to realize firsthand the devastating potential of alcohol addiction and is forthright with
Dick concerning the effect that alcohol has on him as she points out to him how he
“‘say[s] awful things to people when [he has] been drinking’” (Tender 313). The
problem immediately facing Mary is that Dick, in this present situation, has been
“drinking anisette” with her, which puts him in top trickster form as he trifles with her by
saying, “‘There has always been something between you and me’”; and Mary, whose
personal feelings Dick has reduced to a matter of sport “bit eagerly,” taking Dick’s bait
just as he had hoped and expected she would (Tender 314). It is Dick’s ensuing response,
however, that seals his characterization as a trickster, as we read how “the laughter inside
of him became so loud that it seemed as if Mary must hear it,” and having had his bit of
fun with her, we read how “Dick switched off the light,” shutting Mary off from his
charms (Tender 314). In her chapter “The Mythical Buffoon,” Enid Welsford speaks of
“a curious simpleton called by the Arabs Si-Djoha or Joha…who is regarded by most
scholars as a completely unhistorical figure” (29). In discussing two episodes which
reveal Si-Djoha’s willingness “to gain food or money by trickery” (31), Welsford says,
“In these and similar anecdotes the buffoon is a shrewd enough fellow who finds naïveté
a convenient cloak for unscrupulous trickery…” (32). Such a description applies quite
neatly to Dick Diver in this scene with Mary Minghetti, as after Mary tells him, “‘Why
aren’t you nice like that always? You can be,’” we read how, “It seemed fantastic to
11
Dick to be in a position where Mary North could tell him about things” (Tender 313).
Dick—in a manner very similar to that which Welsford identifies in the legendary
buffoon Si-Djoha—cloaks his “unscrupulous” actions through Mary’s naïve belief that he
himself is naïve concerning his drunken behavior towards others, thus facilitating his
deceiving her in the way that he does. For it seems clear that Mary Minghetti is in fact
completely unaware that Dick is toying with her, and she fails to realize how Dick’s final
words to her have merely added to the lexicon of “‘awful things’” he has said while under
the influence of alcohol. In this way Fitzgerald’s narrative demonstrates the applicability
of Welsford’s identification of “naïveté” as a useful cover for trickery in both the naivety
of the unsuspecting individual who is tricked and that same duped individual’s
misapprehension of the naivety of the trickster himself.
Part IV—The Drunkard as Shape-shifting Trickster Figure
Next this thesis will discuss ways in which Fitzgerald’s drunken fools manifest
the trickster’s “powers as a shape-shifter,” which Jung names among what he calls
“typical trickster motifs” (“Trickster” 135). There appears to be a long-standing
connection between consumption of alcohol and the notion of the shape-shifter—one
whose roots are recalled in our every use of the word “alcohol.” Anne Fox notes this
connection, saying, “According to Hajar…the etymology of the word alcohol most
probably derives from the Arabic word al-kol or al-ghol (from which we derive our
English word ghoul), which translates simultaneously as either a shape-changing genie
(or spirit) or a substance that can take away or cloud the mind” (Fox 77-8). Certainly we
can see how both of these manifestations of the word’s origins come into play, not only
12
in the way alcohol itself changes form by way of the multitudinous varieties of alcoholic
beverages, but also in its many and various effects on those who consume it in excess—
phenomena that are especially evident in the drunken figures that Fitzgerald presents in
Tender is the Night, wherein we see how the consequences of alcohol abuse can affect a
variety of individuals in unique ways. As we will see, the drunken fool in Tender is the
Night manifests himself as a shape-shifter whose form changes throughout the novel, as
one drunken character after another assumes the lead role of drunken fool, so that the
effects of his drunkenness invariably include a transformation in the life of the drunkard
himself.
Albert McKisco is the first character to openly and obviously embody the figure
of the drunken trickster-fool in Tender is the Night when he “being drunk rashly forg[ets]
that he [is] in awe of [Tommy Barban]” (Tender 36) and winds up in an ill-advised duel
with Barban. The text provides a clue that links the cause of McKisco’s troubles to his
drinking when it tells us that after the fact of his argument with Barban, McKisco’s
“alcoholic combativeness [has] vanished” although we are told that this is “in spite of the
glass of champagne in his hand” (Tender 45). It could easily be said that McKisco’s
most impressive trick is somehow managing to survive his duel with Barban, for we find
that he escapes from the dangerous encounter virtually unscathed although he is reported
to have been “‘pretty drunk’” at the time of the duel (Tender 50). It is, moreover, directly
as a result of his foolish drunken actions that we as readers become witnesses to another
facet of the shape-shifting nature of the drunkard in Tender is the Night in the way that
the drunkard himself undergoes transformation, which is at length revealed when we
13
learn that McKisco’s very personality becomes manifestly changed. Indeed, Albert
McKisco’s drunken adventure seems to have had—at least in the eyes of Fitzgerald’s
protagonist—the effect of removing his “annoying sense of inferiority” (Tender 206), as
McKisco rides the tide of his self-perceived victory in surviving the duel to a new level of
self-confidence, his recent “success” having been “founded psychologically upon his duel
with Tommy Barban” (Tender 205). This transformation of McKisco’s character is only
the starting point in our demonstration of the ways of the shape-shifting trickster, as, by
providing a range of characters who struggle with drinking and drunkenness in
individually unique ways that alter them personally, Fitzgerald allows us to see how
alcohol use not only makes a type of shape-shifting personality of the individual
drunkard, but in emphasizing a transition of the role of the drunken fool among several
characters in the novel, the author demonstrates the pervasive shape-shifting nature of the
role itself, as Albert McKisco’s reign as the novel’s drunken fool proves to be short-lived
while another of Fitzgerald’s characters stands in the wings, poised to assume the title of
drunkard-as-fool.
Soon after McKisco survives his foolish encounter with Barban, we see the shape
of the drunken fool shift to Abe North, with our first clue that Abe has a drinking
problem coming when Rosemary notices that “Abe North…was always stopping in
places to get a drink” (Tender 60). Only one chapter removed from McKisco’s duel
scene, Fitzgerald goes out of his way to single out another of his characters as displaying
an obviously troubling pattern of drinking behavior—granting that even the intervening
chapter mentions how “the men (presumably Abe North ‘Dick Diver and two young
14
French musicians’ [51]) consume “three bottles of wine”’ (53). At least one critic has
observed how the role of the drunkard changes hands in Tender is the Night. Although
John W. Crowley does not note the transition of the role of drunkard from McKisco to
North, he does state of the earlier part of the narrative that, “Abe North is Fitzgerald’s
designated drunkard at this stage of the novel” (78). Picking up where Albert McKisco
left off, Abe North as drunkard once again reflects a case in which the drunkard’s
personality is transformed. We read, for example, how Nicole Diver recognizes a
manifest change in Abe during a personal moment between the two in which we learn
that “up to this morning Nicole had liked Abe better than any one except Dick” (Tender
81). This revelation of Nicole’s deteriorating friendship with Abe does more than show
that a change has come over Abe. It also reveals how relationships can deteriorate as the
effects of alcoholism can materially change one’s personality and alter an individual’s
ability to relate to others.
To build upon this point, we can look beyond Nicole Diver’s perceptions to see
how the signs of Abe’s deterioration are there for us to observe for ourselves. We see,
for example, how during the aforementioned duel scene in which McKisco is the drunken
fool, Abe remains a calming and controlling influence. It is Abe who, after the duelists
fire their shots, declares “‘Now, that’s enough!’” and who, when Barban claims to be
“‘unsatisfied’” with the outcome, assertively tells the combative Barban, “‘Sure you’re
satisfied’…‘You just don’t know it’”; moreover, after Barban’s further objections, Abe
“parlayed briskly” with him before “Barban nodded” as evidence of Abe’s having
defused the explosive Barban’s emotions (Tender 49). By the time of Abe’s meeting
15
with Nicole we see how he “made a gloomy figure with dark circles…under his eyes”
(Tender 80), and Nicole points out Abe’s folly, telling him, “‘When you get drunk you
don’t tear anything apart except yourself” (Tender 82). Moreover, Nicole, seeing that
Abe has nodded off during their meeting (undoubtedly due to his state of drunkenness),
rouses him in a manner that connects Abe thematically to the objectives of this thesis, as
she calls out to him saying, “‘Abe. Abe, wake up! You fool!’” (Tender 82, my emphasis).
Gone from “parlay[ing] briskly” with Tommy Barban to being unable to remain
conscious in the middle of a conversation with a good friend, Abe North has indeed by
this point in the novel proved himself to be both a drunken fool and a shape-shifter. It is
significant both in terms of the novel’s plot and the argument of this thesis that the
seriousness of Abe’s decline into alcoholism has become evident even to Dick, who at
one point tells Rosemary that in the case of Abe’s repeated drunkenness “‘Now there’s
nothing to do’” (Tender 78). We note how at the point in the narrative that Dick speaks
these words, there seems to be little evidence that his own drinking is the serious problem
that we soon discover it to be. Dick’s words about his troubled friend Abe North serve,
however, as an ominous foreboding of his own sad decline into drunkenness, as the
unstable nature of the shape-shifting drunkard prepares to undergo yet another
transformation in Tender is the Night.
While the narrative ramps up its revelation of Abe’s alcoholism, we find that Dick
gives the reader an impression of moderation as, even at the same time that Abe seems to
be unable to satiate his desire for alcohol, we read how Dick “drank, not too much, but he
drank” (Tender 61). The belief that Dick’s drinking is moderate and under control
16
throughout much of the novel has led Thomas B. Gilmore, who is unabashedly critical of
the portrayal of alcoholism in Tender is the Night, to cite “flaws in Fitzgerald’s portrayal
of Diver” in which he sees problems in the fact of Fitzgerald’s delay in exposing Dick’s
difficulties with alcohol to the point that “Diver’s alcoholism surfaces so long after any
characteristics that it might help to explain that it is never properly attached to them”
(103). On its surface Gilmore’s statement may seem to be correct in that for a good
portion of the novel Dick appears to be a character in full possession of self-control who
maintains complete command of his situation; John W. Crowley, however, points to
indications that, even in the early stages of the novel, Dick’s drinking is headed for
trouble, noting how “During Book One…the future course of [Dick’s] alcoholism is
nevertheless foreshadowed by his loss of emotional and moral control” (Crowley 79).
Moreover, as Crowley suggests, it is easy to understand how Dick’s difficulties with
alcohol are so easily concealed from us at this point in the novel when we consider how,
Crowley notes, our view of Dick is in part masked by the fact that we are “largely
confined in Book One to Rosemary’s innocent point of view” (Crowley 77). The fact is
that much like Rosemary, we as readers of Book One may far too easily overlook the
signs that Dick has a problem with alcohol.
Indeed, throughout Book One Dick Diver never seems to be far removed from an
instance of drinking alcohol, as is subtly evident even in the opening chapter in which we
find Dick described as “the man in the jockey cap…giving a quiet little performance”
(Tender 6) only to learn a few pages later how “The man with the jockey cap was now
going from umbrella to umbrella carrying a bottle and little glasses,” from which
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Rosemary “gather[s]…that this was a last drink on the beach” (Tender 11)—a strong
suggestion that it was unlikely to have been the first drink had on the beach that day.
Book One is replete with such minor indications of Dick’s continual drinking. These
occasions of drinking are striking when we contrast Dick’s Book One actions with his
sober attitude towards both his career and alcohol in Book Two—the retrospective
chapters showing the developments of a youthful Dick’s early relationship with Nicole—
wherein we find Dick Diver, younger by eight years than he is in Book One, scarcely
touching alcohol. This younger version of Dick in fact seems quite alert to the potential
dangers in alcohol abuse as he tells his friend Franz Gregorovius, “‘I don’t want to let my
current ideas slide away with a few dozen glasses of beer,’” and, when Franz calls to his
wife to bring Dick another glass of beer, Dick intervenes with cautionary reason and tells
Franz, “‘I don’t want any more if I’ve got to go see [Professor] Dohmler’” whom he is
meeting to discuss the situation surrounding his relationship to Nicole (Tender 138). This
younger and far more serious and sober Dr. Diver is a far cry from the ever-drinking,
trickster version of Dick that we encounter in Book One.
These observations, coupled with Crowley’s points, help bring into focus an
ironic example early in the novel of Dick’s impending downfall when, seated at a
restaurant with a group of friends “waiting for Nicole,” the group questions as to whether
any man present besides Dick has “‘repose’” (Tender 51), and Dick claims “smugly” that
he is in fact “‘the only one’” (Tender 52). Dick’s overt display of self-assured behavior
can, it will soon be shown, be tied directly to his purposes in drinking for the benefit of
Rosemary as his audience. First, however, we make note that his assertions of superiority
18
take place in the absence of his wife, Nicole, while Rosemary is herself said to be “quite
sure” that Dick is right about his uniqueness, as she seems to have bought wholeheartedly
into the Dick Diver self-promotion campaign, signaling to both Dick and the reader that
his apparent attempts to impress the young actress have succeeded (Tender 52). Such
behavior as Dick’s, as we are about to see, is not merely connected to his consumption of
alcohol, but as a result, it also provides more support for our claim that Dick Diver’s
character is a type of trickster-figure.
It is interesting to consider in connection with Dick’s apparently paramour-ish
objectives in this “repose” scene—the same scene in which, as we previously mentioned,
Dick is evidently one of “the men [who] drank three bottles of wine” (Tender 53)—that
his behavior may be viewed as an alcohol-based performance of the type identified by
Anne Fox when she says that “among males of many cultures, drinking to drunkenness is
taken as a sign of strength and manliness,” such that it may serve as a way of
“intentionally and obviously handicapping oneself” with the result that drinking to excess
may create the impression among “rivals and predators that one is actually more powerful
than appearances would suggest” (Fox 66). Such performances, says Fox, amount to
“self-destructive signals” that “serve as indicators of fitness to females of the same
species” in the same way that among certain species of birds the males’ “Bright plumage,
long tails and extremely risky behavior all signal…that the male has survived…and must
therefore be genuinely strong” (Fox 66-7). Behavior of this type is quite obviously
trickster-like in its intent to convey an impression of strength while in reality it is, as Fox
puts it, “self-destructive” (Fox 67), and seems very much an indication of the trickster’s
19
own awareness of his vulnerability and a consequent need to project an impressive image
of himself that would not stand up to scrutiny if the truth were to be known. The
evidence then points to the fact that Dick Diver, even in these early stages of the novel, is
already a drunken trickster-fool who does his best to project an image of personal
strength—to Rosemary, in particular—while in reality he is only masking what will
ultimately be exposed as his greatest weakness, as the shifting shape of the drunkard in
Tender is the Night will finally reveal the extent of Dick Diver’s struggles with alcohol.
By the point in Book Two where Dick finds out that Abe North has been “‘beaten
to death in a speakeasy in New York’” (Tender 199), Dick’s own drinking has already
been on the increase; but when we read how, in a very short span of time he “drank four
helles of Pilsener” (Tender 200), and “a bottle of heavy local wine in [a] deserted dining
room” (Tender 202), there is little room to question the narrator’s intent when we read
that Dick “had lost himself” at about this same time (Tender 201). The drunken fool as
shape-shifter is undergoing a metamorphosis for one last time in Tender is the Night as
Dick Diver has taken the role to himself at last. Crowley observes Abe’s shape-shifting
hand-off of the role of drunken fool to Dick, saying, “Diver’s drinking soon picks up
where North’s leaves off…. The warning signs of Dick’s alcoholism begin to appear just
after Abe disappears from the novel,” and Crowley even goes so far as to say that “Dick
becomes Abe” (Crowley 80). Even the skeptical Gilmore sees the role of drunkard
transferring from Abe to Dick, saying how “One oddity of the novel is that Fitzgerald
divides the alcoholism between the hero, Diver, and Abe North”; however, in keeping
with his criticism of the novel’s portrayal of alcoholism, Gilmore states that it is “with
20
most of the stereotypically crude or obnoxious traits of the alcoholic going to North” as
he goes on to assert that “This division exempts Diver from any strongly objectionable
behavior; in spite of his alcoholism, he remains an attractive though somewhat puzzling
and lifeless figure” (Gilmore 102).
Ironically enough, Gilmore’s very next sentence highlights what is arguably the
most flagrant behavior by any character in the novel when he says that Dick’s
“alcoholism becomes clear only when the novel is nearly two-thirds finished, erupting in
a scene of violence” in Rome in which Dick “strikes a policeman and lands in jail”
(Gilmore 103). It is moreover worth taking the time here to note that in Gilmore’s
criticism of Fitzgerald’s portrayal of Dick’s alcoholism, he seems himself to have failed
to fully consider two points that this thesis has already made, the first being the fact that,
as has already been pointed out by Crowley, “Book One” comes mainly from
“Rosemary’s innocent point of view” (Crowley 77), and the second point being that Book
Two opens “In the spring of 1917” (Tender 115) as a retrospective on the past of a
younger Dick Diver whose life has not yet degenerated into alcoholism, so that by the
time we reach the two-thirds mark of the novel there has to that point been little
opportunity or reason for the narrative to have gone to lengths to reveal Dick’s problems
with alcohol at their worst. Thus it is unfair to say as Gilmore does that “Dick Diver is
essentially and incredibly untouched by alcoholism” (Gilmore 104). Dick Diver, after
all, by the end of the novel has lost his marriage and his family and has done sufficient
damage to his professional reputation as a psychiatrist that he is relegated in the novel’s
closing paragraphs to “practising in Geneva, New York” in apparent obscurity (Tender
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315), and is unquestionably a shape-shifting drunkard whose life is on the decline.
In changing form throughout the novel from McKisco’s alcohol-inspired
confidence to Abe‘s debased personality and finally to the point that Dick’s previously
well-concealed troubles with alcohol are finally revealed, the role of the drunkard in
Tender is the Night is shaped and reshaped throughout the course of the narrative,
manifesting a fool-as-trickster-figure whose most insidious trick is to confirm that
Fitzgerald’s protagonist is a drunken fool whose unfortunate addiction ultimately
destroys both his career and his family. Dardis observes with regard to “Dick’s
alcoholism” that “Fitzgerald apparently could not (or would not) ascribe [‘the disease’] to
his protagonist until the very end of the book,” but Dardis also points out that the author
“permits us to observe that nearly all of Dick’s troubles—professional and marital—have
alcohol behind them” (124). Indeed, as we have seen, the writing has been on the wall
for a good portion of the novel with regard to Dick’s troubles with drinking, even if early
on the signs are subtle. Dick’s alcoholism not only completes our cycle of shape-shifting
from one drunkard to another in Tender is the Night, but the transformation of Dick’s life
shows once again that his encounters with alcohol make a shape-shifter of the drunkard
himself, which in Dick’s case leaves him unable to balance the responsibilities of career
and family with the fact that drinking has become an extremely serious problem with
incredibly destructive potential. Gilmore—critical of Fitzgerald’s portrayal of Dick
Diver to the end—says that Fitzgerald had “periods of denial, times when he tended to
soften or romanticize drinking in his fiction” and concludes that “Some of the evasions
and equivocations seem implausible, but they testify to the sorrows and pains of
22
alcoholism perhaps better than Fitzgerald could have known” (Gilmore 118). Gilmore’s
assessment leads to the conclusion of our own discussion of the drunken fool as a shapeshifting trickster, as we consider Klauss-Peter Koepping’s assessment of the trickster
when he says, “Lévi-Strauss shows that the trickster is of an ambiguous and equivocal
character since any mediator has to retain something of both sides of that duality that he
mediates” (Koepping 198-9). We can easily see Dick Diver as one such “ambiguous and
equivocal character”—one, however, with a demonstrated inability to mediate between
the responsibilities in his life and his problems with alcohol. Considering Dick in this
light alongside the equivocation that Gilmore sees operating in Fitzgerald as an author
would seem then to bring us full circle, rounding out our portrayal of the drunkard as a
confounded trickster-fool whose addiction shapes his life in ways that are oftentimes
beyond his control. Although we now leave the subject of the drunkard as shape-shifter,
we will hold onto our thoughts about the decline of Dick Diver as we move forward to
the next chapter in which we will discuss additional ways in which the role of the
drunkard manifests the motif of the fool-as-trickster in Tender is the Night—beginning
with the hierarchical reversal in which Dick finds himself playing another key role.
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Chapter 2: The Drunkard and Additional Fool Motifs in Tender is the Night
Part I—The Drunken Fool and Hierarchical Reversal
We begin this chapter with a return to Foucault’s mention of “the Festival of
Folly” of “the Middle Ages,” wherein he says that “In this festival, the social and
traditional roles were completely reversed: a poor man played the role of a rich man, a
weak man that of a powerful one. The sexes were inverted, the sexual prohibitions
nullified” (340). Similarly, Sandra Billington talks of a play in which “Herod presumes
Christ to be the local Fool-entertainer or magician,” wherein Christ ultimately figures as
“a professional or artificial Fool…who, theologically, is the most condemned,” a
condition that satisfies “Herod [who is] a trickster himself” (19). A key feature of this
presentation was that “The audience would also have known that the true roles were the
reverse of those presented in the play” (19). Since folly is a key component in these
expressions of reversal, and since, as we have demonstrated, alcohol abuse facilitates the
characterization of foolishness and fool-like attributes in the abuser of alcohol, it should
not surprise us to find in the experiences of the drunkard-as-fool a similar form of
hierarchical reversal. C. G. Jung, too, near the beginning of his discussion on “the figure
of the trickster in American Indian mythology” mentions his reading of an earlier text “on
this subject” and his having at the time been “struck by the European analogy of the
carnival in the medieval Church, with its reversal of the hierarchic order” (“Trickster”
135). Hierarchical reversal is then another phenomenon associated with the tradition of
both the fool and the trickster, and one which, as this thesis will show, demonstrates the
deep personal cost often associated with alcohol abuse as we discuss how Dick Diver in
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Tender is the Night experiences a complete overturning of his position in the social
hierarchy as a direct result of his abusive drinking.
At the beginning of the novel everything we read about Dick and Nicole Diver
seems to portray a perfect life and marriage as we read how “to be included in Dick
Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience” (27). However, we soon enough
learn that not all is perfect and that in fact a very serious problem exists having to do with
Nicole as the author entices us, trickling information to us about her breakdown in the
bathroom scene at the Divers’ party. Indeed, we discover at length that Nicole is
struggling to overcome psychological scarring as a result of sexual abuse inflicted upon
her by her father while she was young. A main focus for Dick Diver as a psychiatrist is
to treat Nicole for the psychological devastation she has experienced due to this abuse.
As a result of their doctor-patient relationship, throughout much of the novel Dick is
portrayed as having the upper hand, while Nicole is the weaker character struggling to
overcome the lingering effects of her traumatic past. By the novel’s end, however, a
near-complete hierarchical-reversal is in place. We read how Nicole now feels “sorry
for” Dick (300), and she tells him how he has “‘made a failure of [his] life, and [how he]
want[s] to blame it on [her]’” (301). Roger Forseth describes this transfer of position in
both psychological and mythological terms, saying, “Brilliantly employing Freud’s
notion of ‘transference,’ Fitzgerald traces the gradual replacement of Nicole’s illness with
Dick’s strength. Through an intricate interplay of ‘transference-love,’ Nicole, in some
respects taking on the function of the ancient Succubus, slowly un-mans the psychiatrist”
(18). It is extremely unfair to frame Nicole’s role in Dick’s downfall in terms so
25
derogatory of Nicole, since textual evidence would seem lacking to support either a
conscious or unconscious assault by Nicole upon Dick’s strength and masculinity in the
manner of a succubus. Forseth, however, does identify the real source of Dick’s
problems (once again by way of comparison with the mythological), saying, “The crucial
instrument of Dick’s ‘disintegration’ is alcohol, the deus ex machina if you will, that runs
through the novel like a Eumenides. He imperceptibly changes from a normal, careful
drinker to a careless, often secret, abuser” (18). While issues of masculinity, which we
will touch on later, almost certainly do have a role in Dick’s downfall, it is clear that,
more than anything, a consistent pattern of alcohol abuse makes his fall inevitable.
Consumption of alcohol, it seems, does indeed affect people in such a way that it
can facilitate the breaking down of hierarchies. Noting that “We are a hierarchical and
competitive species” and how “Even in the smallest, most intimate groups, we compete
for mates, status, resources, territory, and power,” Anne Fox says that “Any substance
that can ‘magically’ dissolve this structure will undoubtedly be viewed as both desirable
and dangerous. Its use must be carefully regulated lest things fall apart” (82). Fox goes
on to point out how “we are driven, at least periodically, to dissolve the structure and feel
unified and homogenous, as one people. We have numerous ways of doing this, as
previously described, but, when other outlets become unavailable, group drinking serves
as a perfect substitute” (82). It is interesting to note in this context the peculiar dynamics
of Dick and Nicole Diver’s relationship. In terms of social class, Dick does not approach
Nicole’s standing, as Baby Warren makes clear when she meets with Dick to discuss his
relationship to Nicole and tells him that their marriage is “‘ill advised’” and points out
26
that “‘Nicole’s rich’” while we learn that Dick’s “father is a clergyman” before the
narrator admits that “Baby was right and she knew it. Face to face, her father would have
it on almost any clergyman” (Tender 158). It is then almost solely on the basis of
Nicole’s struggles with mental illness that Dick finds himself in a position as her
psychiatrist to be in a relationship with her at all. The specter of social status and
financial inequality looms as a concern between them from the first. It seems therefore
entirely plausible to suggest that consumption of alcohol early in the Divers’ marriage
may serve the function of leveling the class differences between the two of them. That
drinking has a place of prominence from the very beginning of their marriage becomes
apparent when the text—by way of a shifting stream of narrative through Nicole’s
consciousness that reveals a series of ideas, phenomena, and events through snippets of
conversation with no quotation marks—replays an apparent conversation between Nicole
and Dick that gets at the heart of these issues. She asks him, “‘Why should we penalize
ourselves just because there’s more Warren money than Diver money?” and soon says to
a waiter, “‘This English clergyman tells us that your wine here in Orvieto is excellent. It
doesn’t travel well? That must be why we have never heard of it, because we love wine”
(Tender 159-60). With the revelation of alcohol’s importance in their young marriage
added to the stated concerns over their financial inequality, the potential exists early on
for dangerous drinking patterns to emerge from marital discontent.
Mikhail Bakhtin explains the function of hierarchical reversals in his discussion
“of the carnival and the carnivalization of literature” (100). Speaking of times of
carnival—upon which we will place greater emphasis in The Sun Also Rises chapters of
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this thesis—Bakhtin says:
The laws, prohibitions and restrictions which determine the system and
order of normal, i.e. non-carnival, life are for the period of carnival
suspended; above all, the hierarchical system and all the connected forms
of fear, awe, piety, etiquette, etc. are suspended, i.e. everything that is
determined by social-hierarchical inequality among people, or any other
form of inequality, including age.” (Bakhtin 101)
In the case of the relationship between Dick and Nicole Diver, Dick’s drinking goes from
serving as a coping device in a marriage of unequals to bringing about such a degree of
erosion in his character that it overturns the playing field of rational behavior between
him and Nicole. The outcome of Dick’s drunken behavior is then to “suspend” what has
been portrayed as the “order of normal […] life” in which Dick’s psychological and
behavioral superiority over Nicole figures early in their marriage. Gone by the novel’s
end is any sense of the “repose” to which he had earlier laid such an exclusive claim
(Tender 51). We are witness to another occurrence of this leveling of the doctor-patient
relationship as a result of Dick’s drinking during his treatment of Von Cohn Morris, as
the young patient’s father confronts Dick, telling him how “‘We hand Von Cohn to you
to be cured, and within a month he twice smells liquor on your breath! What kind of cure
is that there?’” (Tender 253). Here Dick’s inability to abstain from drinking on the job
not only discredits him professionally, it neutralizes the patient-doctor hierarchy, bringing
him down to the level of his patient, whom Dick had earlier advised “‘to begin [his
treatment] by controlling [his] sensuality—and, first of all, the drinking that provokes it’”
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(Tender 245). It would seem a difficult task to argue against the likelihood that Nicole
(surely aware of the role that alcohol has played in her own father’s decline and possibly
in his immoral actions with her) is all this time taking stock of Dick’s persistent problems
with drinking and of the wreckage that alcohol is creating in her husband’s life, even if
Dick deprives her of certain sordid details, as when he tells her “an expurgated version of
[his] catastrophe in Rome,” one in which Dick “had gone philanthropically to the rescue
of a drunken friend” (Tender 242). There is no question that Dick’s troubles with alcohol
contribute greatly to the revised opinion that Nicole forms of her husband by the latter
part of the novel.
The bottom line is that at the point when Nicole identifies Dick as “a failure”
(Tender 301) both Nicole and the reader have gathered enough information about Dick’s
drinking patterns to know that he is a drunken fool who is rapidly losing ground in a
battle with his addiction to alcohol, and that, moreover, it is by way of Dick’s resultant
decline that Nicole has gained the advantage in their relationship. This is the same
Nicole who at one time clearly revered Dick and his intellectual capabilities, as we
discover earlier in the novel through the same shifting stream of narrative cited earlier as
she tells Dick, “‘When I get well I want to be a fine person like you, Dick,’” revealing
her aspirations of finding a subject to study so that she can “really know about it” and she
envisions how “‘You’ll help me, Dick, so I won’t feel guilty’” (Tender 161). Dick’s
drinking, however, would seem to be the proverbial wrench in the works of Nicole’s
dreams of the future, as we find his faculties having deteriorated along with their
marriage before her hopeful vision can be realized. Indeed, the narrative goes so far as to
29
neatly juxtapose the pair near the novel’s end, comparing Nicole’s “quick guile against
[Dick’s] wine-ing and dine-ing slowness, her health and beauty against his physical
deterioration” (Tender 301-2). The result is that at the conclusion of Tender is the Night
we find Nicole looking down upon Dick from the heights of her elevated position, able
now to view him as “‘ruined,’” while she, by Dick’s own admission, is “‘stronger every
day’” (Tender 267). Nicole is not the only one who has observed this change in Dick.
Rosemary, who, in the earlier part of the novel seen from her point of view had found in
Dick “something fixed and Godlike” (Tender 104), learns toward the end that Dick has
become known as “a dissipated doctor” who is “‘not received anywhere any more’”
(Tender 287). This turnabout is a neat fit to Sandra Billington’s statement that in the
logic of the fool’s world “the greatest and least are equal, and, by extension, the Fool can
represent God” (24). For Dick Diver, who was once equated with deity in the mind of
the young actress, is now revealed to have been a mere fool all along, and alcohol has
fueled his acceleration into decline.
Part II—The Drunken Fool as Savior-Figure
“[L]ast but not least,” says Jung, concerning the “typical trickster motifs” that he
finds “in the alchemical figure of Mercurius” is an “approximation to the figure of a
saviour” (“Trickster” 135), which as Dick Diver embodies the fool-as-trickster, provides
a redemptive, if ironic, twist to the drunkard’s downfall, as he supplies salvation to those
in need throughout the novel. The parallels Jung makes between Mercurius as trickster
and the savior appear in another of his writings on “The Spirit Mercurius,” wherein Jung
calls Mercurius “a real trickster who drove the alchemists to despair” (“Spirit” 203) and
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says “that Mercurius corresponds not only to Christ, but to the triune divinity in general”
(“Spirit” 222), and later calls Mercurius “the analogue of Christ” and says that “He is the
‘healer [salvator] of all imperfect bodies’ and the ‘image of Christ’s incarnation’...”
(“Spirit” 235). It is first interesting to note briefly before discussing Dick Diver’s
manifestation as a savior-figure that Fitzgerald himself seems to have had some
experience serving in a savior-like capacity, as he relates in the 1936 Esquire article “The
Crack-Up” how he “was always saving or being saved” (41). Fitzgerald’s statement
suggests his own level of interest in manifesting a savior’s role so that it seems not a
stretch to imagine how the concept of a savior-figure may have been near to Fitzgerald’s
mind—whether consciously or unconsciously—as he developed Tender is the Night by
repeatedly putting his protagonist in the position of rescuing others. This point seems to
be reinforced by the fact that Fitzgerald chose psychiatry as his protagonist’s profession,
making Dick Diver a healer by way of his career choice.
A key example of Dick’s appearance as a savior-figure occurs in the culminating
scene at the end of Book One in which we see that, in spite of his steady decline into
alcohol addiction, we nonetheless find in him a substantial capacity for saving others as
our trickster-hero comes to the rescue of Rosemary Hoyt. Moreover, as we will see, Dick
draws on his trickster faculties in making the save. As the scene begins to unfold, we
find Dick engaged in an innocuous “trick of his own” in which he evidently places the
shirt he has already worn that day “on another hanger” to be worn again when suddenly
Rosemary, having just discovered the body of Jules Peterson, bursts into Dick and
Nicole’s room crying out, “‘Dick! Dick! Come and see!’” (Tender 110). What we
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observe next reveals a great deal about the character of Dick Diver as a trickster-figure
engaged in rather daring, if not foolish, activity for purposes of acting in the role of a
savior. Dick’s actions in this scene are nothing short of heroic and potentially selfsacrificial, since Dick realizes “that if the situation [had been] allowed to develop
naturally, no power on earth could keep the smear off Rosemary” (Tender 110).
Although “By French law Dick [has] no right to touch the body” (Tender 110), he goes
through the extraordinary—and undoubtedly illegal—measures of rearranging Peterson’s
body “in the corridor” (Tender 111) before contacting “Mr. McBeth”—a hotel official
with whom Dick previously “had made the extra effort,” allowing him to become “firmly
entrenched” in his graces—who assures Dick that “‘the name of any guest will be
protected’” (Tender 111). The payoff to Dick for his actions comes in the form of
affection from Rosemary, who “adored him for saving her,” as she has “listened, in wild
worship to his strong, sure, polite voice making [the situation] all right” (Tender 112).
Trickery seems to have its benefits for Dick, and with his rescue of Rosemary complete,
he reaps the rewards of further augmenting his stature in the eyes of the young actress.
Dick’s victorious moment is short-lived, however, as he soon finds Nicole “in the
bathroom” where she is “[kneeling] beside the tub swaying sidewise and sidewise”; and
in a dialogue that brings Book One to a troubled close that resonates with the themes of
this thesis, Nicole recalls events from an “‘All Fools Day [when] we had a party on the
Zurichsee, and all the fools were there,’” as Dick—seeing his wife become ungovernable
as he himself later will as a result of his drinking—repeatedly demands that Nicole
“‘Control [her]self!’” (Tender 112). The effect of these last few paragraphs is to provide
32
an abrupt transition that unravels the sense of calm and assured heroism that Dick has
worked so hard at crafting, as Rosemary witnesses his futile attempts to steady Nicole’s
behavior in this situation, and we see this section of the novel end with Rosemary leaving
with Collis Clay “because she was afraid to go into her room alone” (Tender 112).
Rosemary, so lately sure of Dick’s incorruptible abilities as her savior, has quickly
replaced him with another rescuer. Thus Book One closes by raising new and valid
questions—for the reader as well as for Rosemary Hoyt—regarding the idea of Dick
Diver that we have perceived throughout these early chapters of the novel. There is no
doubt that Dick performs savior-like actions for Rosemary in these closing pages, but we
as readers understand that he has done so through a kind of trickery and sleight of hand
designed to conceal the trickster mentality of an alcoholic whose real need is to conceal
his problem in order to maintain an image of himself as a man in full control of himself
and his surroundings.
Additional evidence for Dick’s role as savior-figure appears just before the
novel’s close, as he must come to the rescue of Mary North and Lady Caroline, who have
been hauled before authorities after they on “‘a lark’” evidently got out of hand while
“‘pretending to be sailors on leave’” (Tender 303). Dick by this point in the narrative has
demonstrated himself to be a drunken fool and has nearly reached rock bottom as the
story reaches its conclusion, but he is once again called upon to perform his savior duties
in order to get the two women out of trouble. Moreover, just as we have seen in the Jules
Peterson situation, Dick similarly accomplishes this last savior’s task by falling again into
his familiar role of trickster. Dick deceives the authorities by announcing Mary North to
33
be an “‘Italian Countess’” who “‘is the grand-daughter’…‘of John D. Rockefeller
Mellon,’” and claiming that Lady Caroline “‘is affianced to the brother of the Prince of
Wales—the Duke of Buckingham’” (Tender 305). In the end, his trickery proves an
effective course of salvation, and we can rest assured that the case of the two women will
reach a satisfactory conclusion as Dick himself becomes comfortably aware “that it
would be all right” (Tender 305).
According to John W. Crowley, the Mary Minghetti and Lady Caroline rescue
scene was important to Fitzgerald himself, as Crowley reports how for Fitzgerald, “the
purpose of Dick’s midnight rescue…was to ‘bolster [Dick] up’ in an ‘inevitably
undignified cuckold situation’” (84). Fitzgerald’s determination to provide Dick Diver
with redeeming qualities might help to explain why Dick so readily accepts the savior’s
role in this and other situations. Bruccoli reports how “Fitzgerald had a compulsion to
help people,” and although he goes on to say that “It could be argued that his generosity
was a form of ego gratification” Bruccoli nonetheless concludes that Fitzgerald’s
“benefactions were real” (12). Being likable seems to have been as important to
Fitzgerald as it was to Dick Diver. Taking action as a savior-helper may then be seen as
Fitzgerald’s way of boosting the likability of both himself and of his protagonist, with the
goal of ennobling both of their characters. To see evidence of this assertion we need only
to read how in this episode Dick “would have to go fix this thing that he didn’t care a
damn about, because it had early become a habit to be loved” (Tender 302). Dick goes
on to count his marriage to Nicole among the outcomes of his “habit,” as he recalls at the
beginnings of his relationship with her how “On an almost parallel occasion, back in
34
Dohmler’s clinic on the Zurichsee, realizing this power, he had made his choice, chosen
Ophelia, chosen the sweet poison and drunk it. Wanting above all to be brave and kind,
he had wanted, even more than that, to be loved” (Tender 302). Indeed, the conflicts
associated with this entanglement of love with work prove to be another source of
difficulty for Dick Diver—one that challenged his sense of masculinity and fueled his
drinking habit.
Calling Fitzgerald’s protagonist, “Dick Diver the psychiatrist-savior” whose
“mission” is “to redeem the character of paternal authority in the American-fueled
consumer paradise that succeeded the Great War” (59), Michael Nowlin examines Dick
Diver with relation to concerns about masculinity and points to “contradictory aspects of
modernism inseparable from specifically masculine anxieties about vocation and
identity” (59). Nowlin argues that “...Tender is the Night both grounds and then critiques
the opposition between commercial success and aesthetic integrity in terms of the sexual
difference essential to the maintenance of a fictional masculinity,” going on to add that
“‘masculinity’ signifies and assumes value against the other’s ‘feminine’ shortcomings,
conceived of primarily as emotional needs and economic dependency” (62). If “the
other’s” economic dependency is necessary to assure a man of his masculinity, Dick
Diver finds himself on shaky ground indeed in his marriage to Nicole, even as for much
of the novel her “emotional needs” may provide a boost to him in this sense. Nowlin
makes a point of how, with regard to his service as Nicole’s psychiatrist, Dick “dares to
make his own emotional vulnerability a component of his professional ‘role’”; moreover,
after noting how Dick’s marriage “makes ‘the personal professional and the professional
35
personal, love the condition for continued work and work the condition for continued
love,’” Nowlin further says that “Diver’s masculinity inheres tenuously in his vocation
insofar as that vocation figures as a vehicle for gaining recognition from a woman and
thus assuming the phallic position” (67-8). But when Nowlin goes on to comment that
“For [Nicole’s] adoration, [Dick] compromises his dream of being ‘the greatest
[psychologist] that ever lived,’” he seems to be getting closer to unraveling the knot of
circumstances in which Dick finds himself entwined, and says that although Dick “may
resist the imputation of being ‘bought’ by the Warrens to care for her, with Nicole comes
the Warren fortune that places him in the specular position Rosemary Hoyt finds him so
irresistible in at the novel’s outset” (68).
As Nowlin’s points suggest, not only is Dick’s financial and professional wellbeing tied to his marriage, but because it places him in position to be seen by Rosemary
on the Riviera in the first place, Dick may owe even Rosemary’s adoration of him to
Nicole and the Warren fortune. Dick’s doctor-husband position—surely entailing
ceaseless pressures and expectations in and of itself, as his visibility in both roles would
subject him to the non-stop scrutiny of friends and family—leaves him lacking in
masculine self-reliance due to his own “economic dependency” upon Nicole and the
Warren money. Such knowledge it seems must also bring with it a constant erosion of
his self-image as a modern man—all of which makes his willingness to risk his marriage
to Nicole by attempting to assert his masculinity through his flirtations with Rosemary
Hoyt much more understandable. Whether, however, by the novel’s end Dick’s issues
with his masculinity are due to his having sold himself out for “the Warren fortune” or
36
caused by regret over his recognition of a diminished sense of his masculinity tied to the
loss of his vocation, we as readers now understand that Dick is, and has long been,
struggling with “masculine anxieties” that he has attempted to hide beneath the surface,
and it seems abundantly evident that one way in which he has chosen to respond to these
problems has been to turn to alcohol.
In an article in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, Jean Knox reports how one
of the properties of alcohol is its “particular ability...to dull consciousness, so suppressing
for a while the pain of living which T. S. Eliot describes so memorably, and from which
the ‘drug of dreams’ provides a refuge” (164), in reference to T. S. Eliot’s poem,
“Animula.” If, as now seems reasonable to assume, Dick at some point increased his use
of alcohol as a means of dealing with his personal “pain of living”—due at least in part to
a weakening of his masculine self-image—he may have been drawn into continued use
through alcohol’s “quality of immediate gratification” in which emotional suppression is
overcome by simply having a few drinks and the whole range of emotions, and
unconscious desires, fears and phantasies become more readily accessible,” with the
outcome of this effect apparently being that “while consciousness is dulled, the
unconscious, the shadow, emerges, and is given expression, and normally repressed
libidinal needs are allowed gratification” (Knox 164). One complication that
accompanies this approach to alcohol use, and one that seems likely to have impacted
Dick Diver over his years of drinking, is that while under the influence of alcohol
“unconscious processes are given expression without integration by the ego,” and as
Knox says:
37
...to return to Jung, it is not ‘part of the development of consciousness out
of the original state of identity’. Integration of the powerful libidinal
needs and archetypal processes which have emerged under the influence
of alcohol involves conscious awareness of the guilt and shame which the
re-established ego defences have produced. (165)
Knox’s assertions about the effects of alcohol use begin to tie the points of this thesis
together in connecting alcohol to the manifestation of “archetypal processes” and their
impact in terms of Jungian psychology. Moreover, it seems that for a regular and heavy
drinker such as we see Dick Diver become, the conscious reckoning involved in coming
to terms with one’s actions while drunk may prove difficult after recovering from an
occasion of drunkenness, and it is this very difficulty that can lead to more problem
drinking and alcoholism.
To help explain the long-term effects of these processes on a drinker like Dick
Diver, Knox states that although “alcohol damages short-term memory” so that “the
problem drinker may forget much of what he or she thought, felt and did while drunk,”
the problem is that “feelings of guilt and shame usually remain and it is easy for a cycle
to be established in which these are increasingly repressed by further alcohol use, reemerging with greater force each time...” (165). For our purposes, Knox’s statements
help bring clarity to Dick Diver’s situation, as they aid in explaining how a decision to
turn to alcohol in reckoning with disappointment over his own life, choices, and actions
may have led him to adopt a cyclical pattern of abuse, which in turn would have furthered
his acting out of unconscious “archetypal processes.” This patterning of alcohol abuse
38
should go far in explaining the emergence of the archetypal, trickster-fool behavior that,
as this thesis demonstrates, becomes a defining characteristic for Fitzgerald’s alcoholic
protagonist. In returning then to Dick’s claim of having “chosen Ophelia, chosen the
sweet poison” (Tender 302), it seems not a stretch—if Nicole must fill the role of
Ophelia—to place alcohol in the role of “the sweet poison” and thereby conclude that on
some level Dick has used the difficulties he perceives as resulting from his choice to
marry Nicole Warren—whether in the diminishment of his masculinity, the coming to
terms with his drunken actions, or both—to justify a long-term habit of debilitating
alcohol abuse. Nonetheless as we approach the end of the novel, Dick Diver, having
reassured himself of his motives through reminders of the sacrifices he has made because
of his love for Nicole and his desire to be loved, is once again ready to come to the rescue
of Mary Minghetti and Lady Caroline. We as readers, on the other hand, are better armed
for our analysis, having gleaned evidence from Dick’s brief retrospective of the forces
driving him to perform as a savior.
It is easy to see how Fitzgerald, who was dealing with his own problems with
alcohol, may have found it necessary to enact something of an authorial savior’s role in
coming to the rescue of his protagonist’s (and, perhaps by extension, his own) reputation
by bolstering his character with redeeming qualities. As careful readers, however, we are
able to see through the character and actions of Dick Diver to find a trickster-figure who
becomes manifested fully as “a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man, and
animal at once” seeming to be “both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine
being whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness” (“Trickster”
39
143). Certainly each of these terms may be used to characterize Dick Diver at various
times during Tender is the Night, as we recall how Rosemary at one point “[sees] him as
something fixed and Godlike” (Tender 104). Jung’s mention of “forerunner” is in
reference to how the Winnebago Trickster cycle precedes the Hare cycle, in which Hare,
as savior, brings the Medicine Rite to the Winnebago. As Joseph L. Henderson says,
Hare, “in giving [the Winnebago] their famous Medicine Rite...became their savior as
well as their culture-hero” (104). Moreover, Hare “represents a distinct advance on
Trickster...correcting the instinctual and infantile urges found in the Trickster cycle”
(105). In the case of Dick Diver, with his steady decline as a result of his drinking, we
seem witnesses to yet another reversal as Dick’s own “Medicine Rite” as a professional
psychiatrist and his status as a “culture-hero” early in the novel degrade into the “infantile
urges” of the trickster-figure. Later in Tender is the Night as his drinking accelerates we
see Dick carry out “bestial” behavior as he is described as “panting and furious” (225)
and displaying “savage triumph” (226) during his drunken run-in with the taxi drivers
and police in Rome, and later still we read how “Dick came in and helped himself from
the decanter, chewing a biscuit savagely” (261). In these descriptions as well as in his
actions and in the fact of his ultimate downfall we see Dick Diver come full circle as a
trickster-fool who not only suffers hierarchical reversal, but who shifts shapes and carries
out the functions of a savior, all the while struggling to portray an image of himself that
he wants others, and quite possibly himself, to be able to believe in.
There is one other aspect of the trickster-as-savior that applies uniquely to Dick
Diver in his role as psychiatrist and physician. Jung talks of “the ‘making of a medicine-
40
man,’” which he says, “involves, in many parts of the world, so much agony of body and
soul that permanent psychic injuries may result” (“Trickster” 136). With regard to this
“‘medicine man,’” Jung notes how “His ‘approximation to the saviour’ is an obvious
consequence of” the “psychic injuries” he may have endured, and makes reference to “the
mythological truth that the wounded wounder is the agent of healing, and that the sufferer
takes away suffering” (“Trickster” 136). We have already discussed the great
improvement in Nicole’s condition by the novel’s end, and she herself acknowledges that
Dick “led her back to the world she had forfeited” (Tender 300). Likewise, we have
demonstrated the decline of Dick Diver the drunkard-trickster who has suffered
hierarchical reversal at the end of Tender is the Night. We may now extend this
discussion to see how Dick Diver comes to embody the “wounded wounder” that Jung
describes, who has been—as is surely the case in Nicole Diver’s recovery from mental
illness—“the agent of healing…the sufferer who takes away suffering.” In order to delve
into this issue of Dick Diver’s role as a medicine man with “permanent psychic injuries,”
we turn to contemporary research on the subject that draws upon Jung’s writings in the
area.
In his book chapter “The wounded healer,” John Merchant notes instances in
which “Within the helping professions the concept of the ‘wounded healer’ has become a
particularly popular notion,” and goes on to point out how “all persons working in the
helping professions are vulnerable human beings who carry their own individual wounds
and that these can be brought to bear on their healing work in a positive way” (5). Since
it must be acknowledged, as this thesis has repeatedly pointed out, that Dick Diver hardly
41
“‘cope[s] with himself and his own problems’” related to alcoholism (with such coping
being necessary if the healer is, according to Jung, “‘to teach the patient to do the same’”
[Merchant 5]), how can this concept of the wounded healer apply to Fitzgerald’s
protagonist? After introducing the topic of the wounded healer by discussing related
concepts such as “countertransferential reactions” between patient and therapist (9), and
the proposed existence of “an actual wounded healer archetype” (13), Merchant explains
the phenomenon of the wounded healer by saying, “Presumably for the wounded healer,
the natural tendency to heal and help the other is facilitated by one’s own wounds, which
drive an empathic resonance with the sufferings of others” (14). We have already
mentioned how the text of Tender is the Night draws its own parallels between the states
of drunkenness and mental illness in its mention of “a curious respect for a man drunk,”
which the novel says is “rather like the respect of simple races for the insane” (108). I
wish to assert that, as tragic as his alcoholism is, by bringing himself to ruin as a problem
drinker, the resulting wounds of Dick Diver’s disease of alcoholism seem somehow to
enable him—to return to Foucault’s words—to “[create] a kind of artificial madness. ...an
imitation of madness” (340). Thus the wounds of Dick Diver’s drunkenness—possibly
those “feelings of guilt and shame” that Knox mentions (165)—would somehow facilitate
his relating more closely to those psychic wounds of his most significant patient, Nicole,
helping to fulfill his role as the wounded healer. Moreover, Dick’s wounds could in fact
be seen to be the direct result of his treatment of his wife.
While his book chapter is far too complex, with a great many complicated and
nuanced features, to elaborate or integrate fully within our discussion, Merchant’s
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discussion reveals various possibilities regarding how the transferential dynamic between
doctor and patient might function, as he asserts, for example, that “embodied
countertransference phenomena are not chosen, they just happen in one’s body” (12),
leading to questions of what forces might be operating in the therapist’s work, including
the possibility of “‘fate’” (13). In discussing “the wounded healer archetype,” however,
Merchant cites a line of thinking that says, “‘The analyst “takes on” the patient’s illness
or wounds, and also begins to experience more fully the wounded aspect of the
archetypal image. This in turn activates his own wounds or vulnerability to illness on a
personal level...’” (15-16). In light of these statements, I propose that in undertaking the
up-close and intensely personal treatment of his wife, Nicole, Dick Diver may have found
himself to be susceptible to illness, and, further, that this very susceptibility—perhaps
owing to the ceaseless stress of living with his patient or a even a counter-transferential
adoption of Nicole’s pain—could have left Dick prone to an increased alcohol intake,
leading ultimately to his status as a problem drinker and an alcoholic.
Quoting Jung’s writings on the trickster-figure and talking of “Jung’s...connection
of Shamanism to the wounded healer idea,” Merchant says that Jung “is aware that ‘the
shamanic vocation is manifested by a crisis, a temporary derangement,’” which he then
goes on to describe as a “‘pre-initiatory illness’ experience of personal derangement
followed by its self-cure which indicates to their sociocultural others that a person has
been chosen by the spirits to be a shaman”; Merchant then summarizes, saying that “their
capacity to heal is underpinned by their own experience of suffering. In other words,
they are wounded healers” (19). Unlike these traditional Shamans—in another of those
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reversals with which we are by now becoming familiar—Dick Diver’s choice of vocation
certainly seems to precede the disease of alcoholism that wounds him so severely. If,
however, alcohol’s addictive forces forestall any hope of a “self-cure” for Dr. Diver that
would signal his shamanic vocation to others (Merchant even notes that “having lost
control over himself, [a shaman] would no longer be a shaman,” which fits with Dick’s
emerging career struggles later in the novel [20]), his drinking certainly does derange him
to such a degree that his “capacity to heal”—particularly in the case of Nicole—could be
seen to find its “underpinn[ing]” in the suffering that results. Within this very concept,
the entanglement of the terms “wounded wounder” and “wounded healer”—as
oxymoronic and contradictory as they seem—apply so well to Dick Diver as an alcoholic
psychiatrist that it seems as though they had been custom-fitted to his character.
Before concluding our discussion of Dick Diver as a shamanic trickster-figure of
a medicine-man, there are very interesting connections to make between this concept of
the “wounded wounder” or “wounded healer” and alcoholism and Fitzgerald’s creation of
his protagonist. Merchant states that “the most significant wounded healers are those
whose difficulties arise out of early infant trauma” and speaks of how “the underlying
psychological constitution of this wounded healer is ‘contradictory’ in nature, being of a
split/joined kind and suggesting something more ‘borderline’” (19). Merchant here is
responding to the mythological “Chiron [who] was born a centaur” with a “division
between Apollonian consciousness and the unconscious life of the body with its instincts”
(17), which Merchant ties to “traumatic events associated with [Chiron’s] conception and
birth” (18). Certainly the terms “‘contradictory’” and “split/joined...‘borderline’”
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character describe Dick Diver, and may even have connections to his shamanic taking-on
of the wounds of his schizophrenic patient. What is interesting to consider with regard to
the mention of an “early infant trauma,” however, is whether Fitzgerald himself may
have had such an experience as a result of his father’s drinking, but denied the same to
his protagonist. Dardis mentions how Fitzgerald’s father Edward who “People
said...drank ‘more than was good for him’...once embarrassed the nine-year-old Scott by
attempting to play baseball with him in the backyard of their home while under the
influence,” and suggests that when Edward lost his job “Three years later...it is quite
possible that his drinking had something, if not everything to do with his being let go”
when Fitzgerald would have been about twelve years of age (100). Although it is merely
conjecture to suggest that a very young Fitzgerald may have experienced an “early infant
trauma” as a result of his father’s drinking, it is nonetheless interesting to note that no
similar experiences are associated with Dick Diver’s clergyman father in Tender is the
Night, suggesting that the writer could have insisted upon protecting the reputation of his
own father, whom he cared for a great deal.
George D. Murphy notes striking similarities in Fitzgerald’s stated practice of
“‘referr[ing] judgments back to’” his father and the way the author “used essentially the
same words” when referring to “the death of Dick Diver’s clergyman father” (314-5).
Murphy’s connection is clear when we read how Dick “referred judgments to what his
father would probably have thought or done” (Tender 203). To emphasize the
importance of Dick Diver’s father, Murphy states his belief “that the disintegration of
Dick’s personality...accelerate[s] at the point where he learns of his father’s death” (318).
45
Certainly, Dick’s father’s death does have a severe impact upon his frame of mind, but
one must not overlook the fact that such an increase in his drinking would not seem to
follow from Dick’s “referr[ing] judgments to” the actions of his clergyman father.
Moreover, in the pages of Tender is the Night leading up to his father’s death, Dick’s
drinking is already showing signs of spinning out of control as he “drank four helles of
Pilsener” (200) only to find that he “had lost himself” (201), but soon enough goes on to
drink “a bottle of heavy local wine” (202) before receiving the “cablegram from Buffalo”
informing him of his father’s death (203). Whether it is before or after his father’s death,
Dick’s drinking does not seem to reflect his father’s influence. Dick’s behavior all along
makes sense, however, if it is “referred” to the “judgments” of Fitzgerald’s own father
who, Murphy acknowledges, “was in fact a gentlemanly and occasionally drunken
failure” (316). The point here is not to suggest that children of alcoholic parents must
follow the actions of their parents. Rather, the point to be made here is that in creating a
character whose relationship to alcohol seems so closely tied to his own, Fitzgerald
evades the circumstance of his father’s drinking altogether. This evasion denies his
protagonist a logical experiential reference to a possible “early infant trauma” (Merchant
19) whose unconscious presence could help to explain Dick’s difficulties with alcohol.
Hemingway called Fitzgerald out for inconsistencies between his fictional
characters and their presumed real-life models in a letter he wrote to Fitzgerald shortly
after the publication of Tender is the Night in 1934. Citing Fitzgerald’s “marvelous
description of Sara and Gerald [Murphy],” Hemingway tells Fitzgerald, “Then you
started fooling with them, making them comes [sic] from things they didn’t come from....
46
If you take real people and write about them you cannot give them other parents than they
have (they are made by their parents and what happens to them) you cannot make them
do anything they would not do” (Bruccoli 170). Perhaps Hemingway saw more of Sara
and Gerald Murphy than of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Tender is the Night, but the
resemblance between Fitzgerald and Dick Diver is unmistakable, and the difference
between Fitzgerald’s father and Dick’s seems significant in this regard.
Bruccoli writes of Fitzgerald’s revision of Tender is the Night that “After
replacing the matricide plot with the story of Dick Diver, [Fitzgerald] had material that
was close to him and made steady progress. The deterioration of the brilliant psychiatrist
drew upon Fitzgerald’s guilt about his own betrayal of his talent,” which deterioration, it
seems clear, Fitzgerald understood on some level to result from his own heavy drinking
(161-2). In fact, Fitzgerald would later acknowledge the impact of his drinking on his
talent in commenting on the composition of Tender is the Night, saying “‘If I had one
more crack at it cold sober I believe it might have made a great difference’” (Bruccoli
177). In the case of Fitzgerald himself we may then point to a possible preexisting
wound of his childhood through his father’s drinking, but because, as Fitzgerald says, “‘I
loved my father’” (Murphy 314)—it seems he may have gone to lengths to protect his
father’s image in sanitizing the character of the father of his fictional counterpart, Dick
Diver. Even without sharing his creator’s childhood connection to drunkenness, it
remains inarguable that Dick’s most severe wounds are brought about as a result of his
own drinking in the same way that the bulk of Fitzgerald’s pain was due to his own
struggles with alcohol.
47
In the role of wounded healer then we find that the character of Dick Diver
occupies a unique place among the drunken fools in Tender is the Night. However, none
of Dick’s healing agency is sufficient to empower him to remove the burden of his own
disease of alcoholism—a burden that ultimately strips Dick of much of the promise and
hope he may otherwise have enjoyed in his life. Having wounded his “brilliant
psychiatrist” as he does through alcoholism, Fitzgerald—however knowingly or not—
sets up his protagonist to succeed with his patient, Nicole. Merchant quotes Jung as
saying, “‘The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. “Only the wounded
physician heals”’” (6). Noting Jung’s “view of countertransference as the analyst ‘taking
over’ the sufferings of the patient, of the ‘illness being transferred to the doctor’”
Merchant mentions “the ‘old idea of the demon of sickness’ according to which ‘a
sufferer can transmit his disease to a healthy person whose powers then subdue the
demon,’” which he calls “reminiscent of a shamanic way of working” (20).
Unquestionably, alcohol occupies the role of such a demon in the case of Dick Diver,
clearly leading to the sickness that drives him downward at the same time that his patient
experiences recovery. Then again, in the same way that we earlier saw in the case of Abe
North, it may be more broadly generalized that personal decline is merely the standard
form of shape-shifting, making hierarchical reversal a probable outcome for the drunken
trickster-fool. In any case, as a direct result of Dick Diver’s drunkenness in Tender is the
Night, the drunken doctor figures as a savior who, while being brought low, effects
recovery in his patient, although the doctor himself becomes badly in need of healing.
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Part III—The Drunkard as Victim of Circumstance
A final manifestation of the trickster with which we conclude our discussion of
Fitzgerald’s novel is the drunkard-as-fool who feels himself to be a victim of
circumstance. As Jung says, “…the trickster motif…appears just as naïvely and
authentically in the unsuspecting modern man—whenever, in fact, he feels himself at the
mercy of annoying ‘accidents’ which thwart his will and his actions with apparently
malicious intent” (“Trickster” 142). Jung goes on to say that “Here the trickster is
represented…in the unconscious…by a sort of second personality, of a puerile and
inferior character” that Jung has termed “the shadow” (“Trickster” 142). We see
evidence of this phenomenon in the case of Dick Diver when, after his drunken fight with
the taxi drivers ends with Baby Warren’s efforts to free him from jail, Dick ultimately
refuses to pin the blame for his debacle in Rome on his drinking, as he finally disowns—
or at the very least minimizes—his responsibility in the matter saying, “‘But what did I
do, except get into a fight with some taxi-men?’” (Tender 235). Dick’s denial of his own
actions here is both in keeping with Knox’s statement of how a “drinker may forget” his
drunken actions when sober (165), and representative of our inability to acknowledge the
deep archetypal roots of unconsciousness in which the trickster-figure exists. “The socalled civilized man,” says Jung, “has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only
figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate
playing tricks on him or of things being bewitched” (“Trickster” 147). Although he
seems at times to be humbled by his experiences, even acknowledging himself as
“hopeless,” we nonetheless learn that Dick sees his circumstance as having “had about it
49
the impersonal quality of an act of God” (Tender 233). For Fitzgerald’s protagonist,
calling out God as the source of his troubles substitutes for accepting responsibility for
his own drunken acts. God, he thinks, is his trickster.
In the case of Dick Diver we are faced with an alcoholic looking for the cause of
his difficulties in some uncontrollable source outside of himself rather than in his own
drunken actions. For Dr. Diver, the “inferior character” and “shadow” that Jung
mentions further exposes Fitzgerald’s protagonist as a trickster who feels himself to be a
victim of circumstance but whose “thwart[ed] will” has, in reality, been the result of his
own ongoing troubles with alcohol (“Trickster” 142). The problem is that alcohol
actually seems to foster in its abusers an environment in which archetypal figures such as
the trickster-figure can emerge and have their way. Noting how “Alcohol dependent
patients do present a major problem for analysis,” Knox says that “alcohol can always be
used as a total defence,” and she goes on to mention “infantile omnipotent and
destructive phantasies” and talks of how “In a well-established alcohol misuser, even one
who has been abstinent for some time, these phantasies can be evoked by the symbolic
act of taking one drink...because it has released the full force of infantile and archetypal
destructiveness” (167-8). We see then the power that alcohol has to produce these
archetypal characteristics, and in Dick’s actions in Rome we seem to have a complete
picture of an alcoholic trickster whose drunkenness releases “puerile and inferior
character” traits (“Trickster” 142), but who when sober quite conveniently “has forgotten
the trickster” and is convinced of “fate [having] play[ed] tricks on him” (“Trickster”
147). We may say then that the final shape the trickster takes is the one the alcoholic
50
faces in reckoning with himself in the revelation of the trickster within, whom the
alcoholic as modern “civilized man,” as Jung puts it—or more to our point, the sober
man—“conveniently ‘has forgotten.’”
After all is said and done, at stake for anyone struggling with alcohol abuse is
whether he can see that he is fooling himself in his destructive behavior and can admit to
himself that he has become his own trickster and is a victim of his own wiles and
misconduct. As Billington points out, “it is only the self-acknowledged Fool who is
guaranteed salvation” (24). Billington is speaking of salvation in the spiritual sense,
through one’s humility before God; however, the same principle is widely acknowledged
to apply in the need for alcoholics to admit that they have a drinking problem before there
can be any hope of recovering from their addiction. For Dick Diver, although we see
hints that he recognizes the potential for a problem in his drinking, he seems to remain
unconvinced of its seriousness. At one point Dick evaluates his liquor consumption and
self-prescribes “a régime that would cut his liquor in half” (Tender 254); however, when
soon thereafter his business partner, Franz Gregorovius, confronts him over his drinking
and Dick claims to be “‘the last man to abuse liquor’” (Tender 255), we know that he has
not honestly come to terms with himself about his drinking. Dick Diver is ultimately and
most tragically a trickster to himself. The cause of Dick’s denial seems to be due as
much to his author’s inability to identify and acknowledge a drinking problem as it is his
own. Crowley says that Fitzgerald himself “did not imagine Dick to be an alcoholic—at
least not yet” and goes on to interpret Fitzgerald’s assessment of Dick by saying that
“Dick may eventually slide into alcoholism,” but “he has not yet reached that low by the
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end of the novel” (82). Clearly, with Fitzgerald, as much as with Dick Diver, there was a
failure, if not a flat-out refusal, to recognize the warning signs of alcoholism. One can
well say then that a trickster of an alcoholic like Dick Diver survives as an alcoholic
through the very tricks he plays on himself.
Finally, to have examined the problems of drunkenness and alcoholism in Tender
is the Night—as well as in the life of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald—is to have
considered a portrayal of modern tragedy. For an evaluation of the effects of alcoholism
in the life of Dick Diver brings us full circle again, returning to Foucault’s point that
drunkenness is indeed an “artificial madness” (340)—a madness whose effects by the
novel’s end leave the sanity of psychiatrist Dick Diver far more in question than that of
his recovered patient and (now ex-) wife, Nicole Diver. Moreover, we see how the
drunkard himself embodies many elements of the fool, culminating in his role as a
trickster whose trickery and deceit prove damaging both to himself and to those around
him. Not of least concern in this tragedy is the drunkard who, through continually
denying his drinking problem, remains very much the fool for it. As Billington points
out, “The fool who thinks he is not a fool is an even greater fool” (17), and in the case of
the alcoholic who, in one way or another cannot come to terms with his self-inflicted
madness, he is a fool who has tragically tricked himself. Dick Diver and F. Scott
Fitzgerald are hardly alone in showing themselves to be fools for alcohol’s sake. Nor, as
we shall soon see, is alcohol’s trickster-inducing behavior theirs alone to exhibit, as we
now move on from Dick Diver and from F. Scott Fitzgerald to the world of Ernest
Hemingway’s character, Jake Barnes, whose actions and experiences along with those of
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his friends and companions—although entirely different from those of Dick Diver—
nonetheless provide us with a wealth of opportunity to analyze additional ways in which
alcohol makes fools of those who are unable to recognize its damaging effects upon their
lives and their characters.
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Chapter 3: Fools and Tricksters Take to the Stage in The Sun Also Rises
Part I—“He’s a fool”: Jake Barnes Plays the Trickster in Both Mind and Body
In this first chapter on The Sun Also Rises we will return to familiar ground in
discussing some of the same fool motifs identified in our analysis of Tender is the Night
as we look at trickster tendencies in the behavior of drunkards Jake Barnes and Lady
Brett Ashley. In Jake’s case we will observe these patterns in the mischievous tricks and
pranks he plays, particularly as these are directed at Robert Cohn, as well as the bodily
similarities he shares with the Winnebago Trickster, Wakdjunkaga. Brett’s trickster
behavior takes a more serious turn in the tricks of the heart she plays on men, toying with
them emotionally, as demonstrated in her treatment of Jake, Cohn, and Mike Campbell.
We will then have the opportunity to consider ways in which Hemingway’s novel lends
itself to other unique areas of study as we examine how the actions of Jake Barnes as
both narrator and character are reflective of the mediating role that the fool traditionally
played in theater. If in the case of Dick Diver it seemed necessary at times to point out
the sometimes subtle indications of his troubles with alcohol, with Hemingway’s Jake
Barnes and company the excesses of alcohol require little in the way of disclosure.
Indeed it is obvious to the reader from the beginning of the novel that, as Crowley points
out, “Some form of alcohol is consumed on nearly every page of The Sun Also Rises”
(44). Moreover, for our purposes, Hemingway seems to go out of his way to connect the
excesses of alcohol with the themes of this thesis, since in The Sun Also Rises the
consumption of alcohol—oftentimes to the point of obscene drunkenness—is so
interwoven with the novel’s oft-repeated application of the epithet “fool” by several
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characters towards one another that we can hardly separate the drunkard from an
acknowledgment by the text of his foolishness.
The two drunkards most responsible for driving the plot and action of the novel—
Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley—both manifest trickster tendencies in their behavior. Jake
shows his hand as a trickster early in the novel as he attempts to trick Robert Cohn into
leaving him alone to work in a scene that also prefigures the important place that alcohol
will have throughout the remainder of the narrative. After the opening chapter introduces
us to Robert Cohn, the second chapter describes Cohn’s interruption of Jake’s workday.
This intrusion bothers Jake to such a degree that he invites Cohn to “‘have a drink’” at
“the café on the ground floor” in order “to get rid of” him as Jake plans to tell Cohn that
he needs to get back upstairs to work (Sun 11). Significantly, Jake chooses alcohol—his
most constant companion throughout the narrative—as the vehicle to carry off his trick
on Cohn. However, Jake’s attempt at trickery is a failure: when Jake tells Cohn that he
needs to go back to work, Cohn does not depart in line with his plans, but instead asks to
“‘come up and sit around the office’”—a request to which Jake consents with no
resistance (Sun 12), foiling his plan to rid himself of Cohn. It is moreover telling that
during this scene at the café both Jake and Cohn signal just how important the availability
of alcohol is to their evaluation of the establishment as we read how “Cohn looked at the
bottles in bins around the wall” before providing his assessment that “‘This is a good
place,’” and Jake narrates his response: “‘There’s a lot of liquor,’ I agreed” (Sun 11).
Thus it seems practically out of necessity that Jake’s attempt at trickery in this early
scene with Robert Cohn is connected to the prominence of alcohol as well as to the
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tendency of Jake and his friends to consume it.
Jake later plays trickster to Cohn again, with his actions motivated by the fact of
Cohn’s physical relationship with Brett, which greatly complicates matters between the
two men. Jake’s recently acquired knowledge of Cohn’s sexual encounter with Brett
leads him to turn trickster on Cohn in roguish ways. Fallen madly in love with Brett
himself, Cohn eagerly anticipates her arrival on the train in Pamplona. When Cohn
announces that “he would go to the station,” Jake tells us, “I said I would go with him,
just to devil him,” and soon confesses to us how much he is “enjoying Cohn’s
nervousness” over the situation (Sun 97-8). Both Jake’s tacit enjoyment of Cohn’s
predicament and Hemingway’s use of the term “to devil him” clue us in as to the
trickster-like nature of Jake’s actions, which are reminiscent of Jung’s inclusion among
trickster motifs of a “fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks” (“Trickster” 135), so
that in admitting “to devil[ing]” Cohn as he does, not only does Jake’s delight in his
impish behavior correlate directly to the brand of “fondness” that Jung mentions, but
Jake’s language invokes Biblical themes surrounding the figure of the devil, or Satan,
whose own reputation for trickery is as ancient as the story of the Garden of Eden. We
can, of course, say with nearly perfect certainty that Jake has been drinking in this
situation since the activities occur “At dinner that night” (Sun 97) and, upon returning
from the train station after the discovery that Brett was not on the train, Jake and Cohn
find “Bill...finishing a bottle of wine” (Sun 98).
Given Jake’s already established drinking patterns to this point in the novel, it
would be implausible to suggest that he had not already joined with Bill in drinking at
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this dinner. Soon thereafter, we see that Jake persists in his trickster mentality as he
receives the cable from Brett and Mike Campbell saying that they had “‘Stopped night
San Sebastian,’” Jake pockets the letter, telling us that “Ordinarily I should have handed
it over” to Cohn, and relays the message of the stopover in San Sebastian to Cohn telling
him that Brett and Mike “‘Send their regards to you’” (Sun 99). As narrator, Jake
confides in us, saying, “Why I felt the impulse to devil [Cohn] I do not know. Of course
I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him” with Brett
(Sun 99). Jake’s pranks here and above are minor; nonetheless, they show the enjoyment
he takes in playing tricks on the love-stricken and anxious Cohn by withholding
information about Brett’s arrival in Pamplona and thereby extending his anxiety until the
time of her arrival. It is also interesting to consider Jake’s use of the term “blind” in
describing his state of mind, since in one sense we may see Jake as confessing to being
blind to his actions due to his extreme jealousy; however, the term is repeatedly used
throughout the novel when describing a state of extreme drunkenness and its use here
may also be seen here as an admission by Jake that his actions in this case were due to his
being very drunk. In any case, the consumption of alcohol seems to exacerbate Jake’s
jealousy to the point that his trickster tendencies emerge to reveal “a sort of second
personality, of a puerile and inferior character,” as Jung describes (“Trickster” 142).
Even before this episode with Cohn in Pamplona, additional evidence of Jake’s
“fondness for sly jokes” (“Trickster” 135) has come to light in Jake’s earlier interactions
with the prostitute Georgette, who after “another bottle of wine...made a joke” of her own
(Sun 16), providing a link between alcohol and the appearance of humor in the novel—a
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subject to which we will return with greater emphasis in the final chapter of this thesis.
In this present scene, when Jake brings Georgette into the company of his friends the
Braddockses he introduces Georgette as his “‘fiancée’” using the name of French opera
singer “‘Mademoiselle Georgette Leblanc,’” an announcement which, coincidentally
enough, motivates Georgette to say that Jake is “‘a fool,’” to which statement Mrs.
Braddocks replies with belated understanding, “‘Oh, it was a joke, then’” before
Georgette confirms for her that its purpose was “‘To laugh at’” (Sun 18). Jake’s joke is
of course pulled off in the heart of an alcohol-fueled night out. As Jake’s evening goes
on, he continues to consume rather staggering quantities of alcohol, so that in response to
Jake’s announcement that “I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just
enough to be careless” (Sun 21), Crowley is able to provide us with a recap in which he
lists Jake’s alcohol consumption on this evening as “at least one whiskey, one pernod,
half of two bottles of wine, some liqueur, two beers, and two brandies within a space of
three or four hours” (Crowley 48). With such an incredible intake we already have a
revealing look into how much of a problem Jake Barnes has with alcohol. We may,
however, find Jake’s heavy drinking to be understandable given its potential to ease the
suffering he experiences as a result of his war wound, which prevents him from
experiencing a sexual relationship with Brett or any other woman. Jake’s predicament in
this regard would seem to provide ample motivation for his abuse of alcohol, which in
turn—as we have mentioned in the case of Dick Diver—can help to explain the presence
of archetypal trickster tendencies. Indeed, to even a greater degree than with Dick Diver,
in Jake Barnes we can observe (to recall the words of Jean Knox from the previous
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chapter) alcohol’s “particular ability, shared to varying degrees by other drugs...to dull
consciousness, so suppressing for a while the pain of living” and we can see how Jake’s
drinking serves as a mechanism to help him deal with the dismal realities surrounding his
war wound (164).
In addition to providing a rationale for his problem drinking, Jake’s wound
connects him in a unique way to the mythical Winnebago Trickster figure, Wakdjunkaga.
Although research for this thesis did not reveal evidence that Hemingway was familiar
with the Winnebago Trickster myth, the similarities between the myth and Jake’s story
are, if altogether coincidental, sufficiently striking in some cases as to compel further
discussion. Additionally, as representative of the archetypal trickster behaviors that Jung
outlines in his book chapter, the characteristics of the Winnebago Trickster are pertinent
to the pursuit of the stated objectives of this thesis.
Near the end of the Winnebago Trickster cycle, Trickster loses much of his penis
while pursuing a chipmunk. In the Winnebago myth, a chipmunk engages Trickster by
making overt observations about his genitalia, saying, “‘Trickster, what is it you are
packing? ...your testicles underneath!’” and a short while later in response to the same
question the chipmunk says, “‘Your penis you are packing! The head of your penis you
have placed on top...’” (Radin 38). Trickster, annoyed at the chipmunk’s forwardness,
threatens “‘to kill [him] for this contemptible thing’” and authorizes his penis to take
action, saying, “‘Now then, my younger brother, you may go after him for he has been
annoying you for a long time’” (Radin 38-9). What takes place next in the Winnebago
Trickster myth is noteworthy in our discussion of Jake Barnes, whose wound resulted
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from his own undertaking of the challenges that have historically burdened the masculine
in times of war. We read about Trickster:
So he took out his penis and probed the hollow tree with it. He could not,
however, reach the end of the hole. So he took some more of his penis
and probed again, but again he was unable to reach the end of the hole. So
he unwound more and more of his penis and probed still deeper, yet all to
no avail. Finally, he took what still remained, emptying the entire box,
and probed and probed but still he could not reach the end of the hole. At
last he sat up on a log and probed as far as he could, but still he was
unable to reach the end. ‘Ho!’ said he impatiently, and suddenly withdrew
his penis. Much to his horror, only a small piece of it was left. ‘My, what
a great injury he had done to me! You contemptible thing I will repay you
for this!’ (Radin 39)
Much as with Jake Barnes, Trickster in this instance must come to terms with the fragility
of his masculinity. Moreover, the message in both cases is that there is a price to be paid
when the very icon of masculinity is sacrificed in an aggressive demonstration of
masculinity. Trickster’s somewhat comical “great injury” is due to a desire to carry out
violence simply because he deems the chipmunk’s attention to his masculinity
inappropriate. Jake—an American who voluntarily served in the Italian army—received
his wound as the result of his going to war “on a joke front like the Italian,” and he recalls
how a “funny thing” happened when “the liaison colonel came to visit” and tells Jake that
in receiving his injury he “‘[has] given more than [his] life’” (Sun 31). Both Jake’s and
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Trickster’s wounds come off as absurd outcomes of an attempt to prove oneself via one’s
masculinity. In both Jake’s and Trickster’s cases, the wounds seem entirely unnecessary.
Moreover, their efforts to assert their masculinity in this regard associate them
ironically—particularly in Jake’s case—with the Freudian idea of castration anxiety, in
which, as Lois Tyson says, young males worry “that they will lose their penis,” and as a
result they experience “fear of demotion to the powerless position occupied by females”
(26).
Thus Trickster’s chipmunk-induced awareness of his masculinity becomes the
impetus and the means of attempting violence whose only reward is the violence returned
upon the very representation of masculinity itself in Trickster’s penis. Trickster’s
violence is hardly complete, as in the next episode we read how “he kicked the log to
pieces. There he found the chipmunk and flattened him out, and there, too, to his horror
he discovered his penis all gnawed up” (Radin 39). The myth tells us that “What was left
of [Trickster’s] penis was not very long,” so that “he left behind him the box in which he
had until then kept his penis coiled up” (Radin 39). Unlike Jake Barnes, Trickster retains
a functional portion of his penis, so that the myth tells us, “And this is the reason our
penis has its present shape. It is because of these happenings that the penis is short”
(Radin 39). Trickster’s response to his loss is entirely unlike that of Jake Barnes, whose
reaction to his loss of manhood seems to be further self-destruction through his abuse of
alcohol. Instead, Trickster reckons with his loss by putting the remnants of his penis to
good use, saying, “‘I will make objects out of the pieces for human beings to use,’” so
that from the pieces Trickster produces “‘the lily-of-the-lake ... potatoes ... artichokes ...
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ground-beans ... dog-teeth ... sharp-claws ... rice ... the pond-lily’” (Radin 39). Koepping
calls him “the laughable fool who is also the culture hero” (207), and notes how the
Winnebago Trickster whose name is “Wakdjunkaga grows from...a purely
‘undifferentiated and instinctual’ being to maturity,” resulting in “his gaining of selfawareness” so that “he becomes the bringer of culture” (208). In another context, the
creation of such images from his sexual material would call for an interesting analysis, à
la Freud, of the “female or yonic” symbols and the “male or phallic symbols” (Handbook
159. For our purposes, however, it is interesting to note that Trickster’s efforts seem to
achieve a useful outcome from his injury have indeed helped to preserve his reputation.
We may also see Jake as a bringer of culture, in that he unites his various friends
in their discovery of one another, in his demonstration of the benefits to be found in the
joys of fishing, and in the cultural revelation of Spain and in particular the festivities at
Pamplona. While we may certainly appreciate Jake’s role as a culture hero to us as
readers, Jake’s efforts result in as much strife as appreciation among his friends, leaving
his status as a culture hero among them in question. Moreover, for Jake himself, no
positive outcomes of his efforts appear sufficient to compensate for the consequences of
his loss. We find Jake attempting a somewhat stoic attitude towards his war wound and
seeming to be resolved to the bitter realities entrained in its wake when he tells us how
“Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror,” while needing to distract himself
momentarily from his reflection by focusing on the details of the furniture in his room
before he finally is able to say that “Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was
funny” (Sun 30). Funny, that is, to those not dealing with the physical and psychic
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debilitations so present to the man with personal ownership of the wound, as Jake earlier
admits when he says “that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment
while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them” (Sun 27). Jake’s wound
also connects him to various trickster traditions by representing one of “the two forms of
action and thought that seem to designate the trickster across all cultural variations,”
which Koepping calls, “the grotesqueness of body imagery used to indicate the inversion
of order” (194). In its deformity of emasculation, Jake’s body is incapable of carrying
out society’s expectations of him as a male, making him a grotesque variation on
accepted standards of masculinity, upsetting the traditional order of sex relations. The
safest approach for Jake with regard to social expectations is to minimize society’s
exposure to the complications surrounding his very personal problem.
With regard to the attitudes of others, Jake tells how he will “try and play it along
and just not make trouble for people” and points out how “The Catholic Church”
provided him with the “Good advice.... Not to think about it” before he goes on to mock
the advice by saying, “Try and take it sometime” (Sun 31). However, “think about” his
wound is exactly what Jake does at night as he “lay awake thinking,” unable to “keep
away from it” until his thoughts settle on the more calming subject of Brett, which
focuses him to the point that he “started to cry” (Sun 31). In Jake’s case his loss is so
complete and the reality of his desire for Brett is so readily present to him that we as
readers can see how, by consuming copious amounts of alcohol, Jake does in fact seem to
be “suppressing for a while the pain of living” (Knox 164). This assessment is consistent
with Dardis’s point about “Hemingway’s early perception of alcohol: that it could dispel
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pain with no ill effects on the drinker” (159). Moreover, Jake may be using his drinking
as a means of somehow recovering a measure of his manhood. Crowley notes how
Hemingway once said, “‘I like to see a man drunk. A man does not exist until he is
drunk,’” and goes on to suggest that “drinking” may have been “a litmus test of manhood
for Hemingway” (44). Bruccoli similarly observes that “Hemingway...had developed
drinking conduct as a test of manhood” (12). Whether or not one’s drinking ability is a
reasonable measure of manliness, it seems that in Hemingway’s mind it was, so that
when Crowley writes, “In his drinking, as in the rest of his life, Jake tries to display
manly courage without ever becoming ‘messy’” (51), we find it well within our reach to
claim that Jake is at least in some ways attempting to replace the loss of his manhood
with a masculinity based in consumption of alcohol.
Years after the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway himself seems to
have employed alcohol intake as a way to demonstrate his manliness. Dardis talks about
how Hemingway, taking parts of Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to be
“a direct impugning of his manhood,” sought “to escalate his all-out machismo,” and
notes that “Alcohol became a cause and effect of that machismo, making it easier for him
to take changes and strike poses that the relatively sober Hemingway would have resisted
in the 1920s” (172-3). For Jake Barnes, whose manhood has been damaged far beyond a
mere “impugning,” alcohol may be a final attempt to regain a semblance of manliness in
his own mind, even if that attempt rings hollow for us as readers. In her study of the
“Origins of Drunkenness,” Anne Fox notes that “Young men will always need outlets for
aggression, especially within cultures where machismo is ingrained in the values” and
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she goes on to say that “Where no socially sanctioned outlets exist, raw aggression and
violence will likely erupt under the guise of some form of madness, drunkenness being
the most common form” (Fox 88). Fox’s point again brings us back with suddenness to
what has become the oft-repeated refrain of this thesis in Foucault’s mention of using
“alcohol or drugs as a way of contesting the social order” to the point that “we have thus
created a kind of artificial madness” (Foucault 340). The message becomes particularly
poignant in the case of Jake Barnes and the image of masculinity on which he seeks to
retain a hold, as we consider the importance of what Fox goes on to say: “In huntergatherer tribes, the wild-man rituals referred to earlier also allowed low-status, stressed,
or frustrated males to engage in a ‘temporary insanity,’ which served as a ‘dramatic
performance in which individuals may manipulate the public image of themselves’” (Fox
90). We see these points hit home with particular force in the case of the alcohol abuse
by “frustrated male” Jake Barnes, whose injury effectively erases his identification as a
man among the society of men in which he would otherwise naturally participate. Fox
goes on to say that “It may be argued that the high rates of drunkenness among males of
certain displaced and colonized hunter-gatherer groups today are a widespread enactment
of such rituals” (Fox 90). It seems to be unquestionable in light of these statements that
in his repeatedly excessive intake of alcohol we may find Jake Barnes to be seeking a
way to soften the hard realities of his wound and somehow repair the devastation done to
his self-image as a man, and in some way allow his participation in society as a man.
Crowley brings the cause of Jake’s “steady intake of alcohol” to a still sharper
focus, saying that “he drinks deliberately, evidently to blunt the pain of his (forever-to-
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be) unconsummated desire for Brett” (Crowley 49). Certainly Jake’s relationship to Brett
is the element of the narrative that keeps his conflict ever before us in our reading of the
novel. Linda Wagner-Martin points this out when she says that “Brett’s amours” help to
ensure that “Jake’s injury is omnipresent” throughout the book (Essays 5); however, the
reality for Jake is that the impact of his war wound extends far beyond his attachment to
Brett. As Wagner-Martin says, Jake “manages to feel sexual desire” but must reckon
with the reality that “intercourse is physically impossible” (Essays 5). Although Brett is
at the center of Jake’s dilemma for the duration of the narrative, the most brutal fact that
Jake must face with regard to his circumstance is that his sexual incapacitation is a
lifelong and all-encompassing ordeal. In fact, because Brett comes to the narrative
equipped with pre-existing knowledge and understanding of Jake’s wound as well as an
already developed emotional attachment to him, we may say that as a love interest she
signifies a last, best chance for Jake to experience and sustain a long-term emotional
relationship with any woman. For in order for Jake to realize any such hope with another
woman he must at some point reveal the fact of his wound to that woman—a revelation
which would bring with it the potential for rejection and a great risk of unwanted
publicity, humiliation, and the emotional damage entailed therein. We see a sampling of
Jake’s predicament in this regard in his interactions with the prostitute Georgette as he
dances around the fact of his injury, at first letting her believe that his lack of interest in
her advances is the result of an illness, but as she presses him on the nature of his illness,
Jake acknowledges that he “‘got hurt in the war’” (Sun 17). Jake’s predicament adds
tremendous weight to the importance of the hope that he places in his relationship with
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Brett. It is, however, in Brett’s own honest admission of her position towards Jake and
his wound that we see the first indications that she—as much a drunkard as Jake
himself—is like him a trickster whose actions call for further discussion and deeper
analysis.
Part II—Lady Brett Ashley: A Trickster’s Trickster
Unable to perform sexually in the ways customarily expected of a man, Jake seeks
intimacy with Brett by way of their emotional bonds as he puts the potentially lifechanging question to her, “‘Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live
together?’” (Sun 56). A relationship of the sort Jake proposes, based primarily on
emotional attachment and fulfillment, is out of the question for Brett, however. Her
answer to Jake’s plea amounts to an open admission to her pattern of trickery by way of
deception in her relationships, as she responds by saying, “‘I don’t think so. I’d just
tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it’” (Sun 56). The complexity of their
relationship cannot be dismissed. In one sense, Brett may be seen to be protecting her
friend from the heartbreak she sees as inevitable. And yet Brett admits that she is in fact
a trickster, invoking the French verb “tromper,” one of whose meanings in English is to
“deceive, mislead” (French 290). In an earlier moment of intimacy between the two in
the back of a taxi, Brett tells Jake, “‘Please don’t touch me’” because, she says, “‘I can’t
stand it’”; after Jake states that “‘there’s not a damn thing we could do’”—which leaves
unstated and lurking beneath the surface any suggestion of an alternative means of sexual
fulfillment—Brett brings the topic to a close, saying, “‘I don’t want to go through that
hell again’” (Sun 26). In that her response seems focused only on her own reaction to the
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situation, Lady Ashley comes off as oblivious to what is at stake for Jake in their
relationship. For Brett, the idea of being forced to find sexual fulfillment without
penetration appears to be unthinkable, and it is evident that her need to have sexual
relations with a man with a penis decisively outweighs whatever emotional fulfillment
may be possible in making a permanent commitment to her obviously very close
friendship with Jake. Brett is so certain of her sexual needs that she knows she will
ultimately “‘tromper’” Jake with men who retain possession of the penetrative ability.
For Jake, however, the fact of Brett’s closeness as a friend means that he is ever subject
to emotional distress as a result of Brett’s tricks of the heart.
The text toys with the potential consequences of this trickster dynamic in Brett
and Jake’s relationship, as suggested in an exchange between Brett and Count
Mippipopolous at Jake’s apartment in Paris. In the larger picture, Brett’s responses in
this scene border on the absurdly ironic when, in reply to the count’s assertion, “‘Joke
people and you make enemies,’” Brett concedes the point by saying, “‘I always joke
people and I haven’t a friend in the world. Except Jake here’” (Sun 59). The count
probes deeper for insight with his follow-up question, “‘Do you joke [Jake]?’” and Jake
as narrator tells us, “Brett looked at me and wrinkled the corners of her eyes. ‘No,’ she
said. ‘I wouldn’t joke him.’” (Sun 59). Scott Donaldson says that “This early
conversation [between Brett and the count] delineates Brett’s rather wry manner and the
count’s serious attention (he never ‘jokes’ anyone, he insists) to enjoying the best things
in life” (Essays 25). Brett’s “rather wry manner” is indeed hard to miss. As we have
noted, in one sense Brett is forthcoming with Jake regarding her desires. In another
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sense, however, her toying with Jake’s feelings torments him and twists him into knots—
particularly as she pursues such exploits with Jake’s friend, Robert Cohn. In reality,
Brett‘s “joke” on Jake runs the duration of the novel, using his wounded sexuality as the
basis for shunning his suggestions of living together in a relationship while engaging in
relations with the men that Jake introduces to her. The cruelest aspect of Jake’s
relationship to Brett lies in the fact that in this way she holds his sexual limitations before
him, saying in essence that if only he hadn’t lost his manhood in the war they might not
only have enjoyed sex, but a long life of love together. However, such a hope seems
inexplicably impossible with the Brett we come to know in The Sun Also Rises, as during
the span of a few weeks’ time in the novel she not only plays trickster to Jake, but makes
a joke of several men by trading Mike Campbell for Robert Cohn for Mike Campbell
again for Pedro Romero before finally appearing ready in the end to go back to Mike
Campbell. In some ways, the ease with which Brett is able to translate herself from one
sexual partner to another is also reminiscent of the trickster’s characteristic “powers as a
shape-shifter,” taking the form of one man’s lover in one instant before her feelings
morph for the pursuit of another man in the next (“Trickster” 135).
James Hinkle points to that earlier exchange between Brett and Jake in the taxi
when he identifies a subtle joke by Brett. After bemoaning the fact of Jake’s war wound
with him, Brett says, “‘A friend of my brother’s came home that way from Mons. It
seemed like a hell of a joke’” (Sun 27). Hinkle reminds us that “‘mons’ is also the ‘mons
veneris’ which, as anyone who has had a high school course in sex education knows, is
the polite term for a woman’s pubic mound” (40). He then connects the term to the
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dangers men generally face in undertaking a sexual relationship with Brett by saying,
“For a man to have an encounter at ‘mons’ and come away with damaged sexual
apparatus does indeed act out the ancient female threat of ‘vagina dentata’—vagina with
teeth” (Hinkle 40). Of course, just moments earlier in the back of that taxi Brett has
admitted to “‘the hell I’ve put chaps through’” and says that as a result she is “‘paying for
it all now’” (Sun 26). If we interpret Brett’s words in light of Hinkle’s observation, we
can see that she has made a career of making a joke of men, playing trickster to them in a
deleterious manner that leaves them emasculated in psychological and emotional rather
than physical terms.
Indeed, Brett comes off as something of a careerist as a trickster of men when
critic Matts Djos paints her as “the generic female alcoholic with a remarkable prejudice
for manipulation and orchestration” who “targets the emotions of any man who will have
anything to do with her,” going on to add that “If seduction can lead to a trophy, she will
seduce; if abandonment can lead to an assurance of her skill at breaking hearts, she will
abandon; if sheer mind-boggling mental torture will do the job, then tempt and attack she
will” (Djos 68). At best, these descriptions of Brett would be embarrassingly unflattering
to any woman or man; at worst, they uncover the portrait of a drunken trickster whose
treatment of others can only be described as flagrantly sinister. Wendy Martin ascribes
rationale to Brett’s behavior in her essay, “Brett Ashley as New Woman in The Sun Also
Rises,” telling us that “by retaining multiple suitors, Brett keeps her options open,
diversifies her investment of social and sexual energy, and thereby maximizes her
opportunities” (Essays 70). Regardless of her motivation for doing so, Brett’s claim that
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she is “‘paying for it all now’” seems finally to ring true by the end of the novel as, in her
tear-filled reunion with Jake in Madrid after her breakup with Pedro Romero, she may be
seen to embody “the paradigmatic delineation of the eternal trickster and his mind” who
has become “a deceived deceiver, a cunning person shown up for what [s]he really is,
namely a fool who should have known better than to try to outwit the gods (or the rules of
the game for that matter)” (Koepping 206). It seems that in her final rejection of Pedro
Romero’s desire for marriage and her return to Mike Campbell, in the end Brett may at
last come to reckon with the personal and emotional damage associated with her multiple
affairs.
“[P]aradigmatic” is also the word Martin uses as she assesses Brett and Jake’s
relationship, saying that they “emerge as a paradigmatic couple who represent the shift in
the perception of gender following World War I,” identifying a “redefinition of
masculinity and femininity” to be “not an abrupt rift in the cultural landscape but rather a
gradual shifting of the ground on which the edifice of Victorian sexual identity was built”
(Essays 65). Certainly, there was nothing “gradual” about the changes to Jake’s
masculine identity, as he must have been stripped of his manhood with the stunning
abruptness of a battlefield instant. Brett does, however, set her own seal on Jake’s
emasculation through a “gradual” and torturous teasing out of the impact that his
unmanning has on any hopes he may harbor for a relationship with her. As she winds up
her argument, Martin asserts that the novel’s ending underscores Hemingway’s
“conviction that there was no going back for him...no turning back the tide of history for
the new woman and the new man” (Essays 80). While Hemingway’s reckoning with the
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irresistible emergence of a new dynamic between men and women in the post-war era in
which The Sun Also Rises was written is beyond doubt, Martin concludes her essay with
what seems a tenuously positive assessment of the direction Jake and Brett will take in
their relationship, saying that the novel “concludes with an abatement of tensions
between Brett and Jake that is the beginning of genuine friendship (Essays 80).
However, Martin’s somewhat rosy assessment seems to ignore the language that drives
the tone of the passage to a far less optimistic conclusion.
In fact, the subjunctive mood is dominant in Brett’s last words in the novel, which
linger on the unrealizable contingency of their relationship as she says, “‘Oh, Jake,’...‘we
could have had such a damned good time together’” (Sun 247, my emphasis). Jake,
seeming to resolve himself at last to the permanence of Brett’s rejection, responds by
wrenching the painful fact into place as he tells her with a tone of bitter resignation,
“‘Yes,’... ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (Sun 247). Jake’s closing words to Brett echo the
pain we saw earlier when he “lay awake thinking” unable to “keep away from” the fact of
his injury, before seeming to improve while “thinking about Brett” until “all of a sudden
[he] started to cry” (Sun 31). For Jake, it does indeed seem “‘pretty to think’” about Brett
until at length he must always circle back to a lachrymose dissolution of hope in realizing
not only that she rejects him, but why she does so. If Jake’s final words bring us closer to
understanding the all-encompassing nature of his pain, they also resonate with the fact
that in having surrendered our attention to him throughout the course of his narrative we
have formed our own close bonds with him. In doing so, Jake Barnes comes to fulfill for
us yet another function in the tradition of the fool in serving as an intermediary between
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the reader of the text and the people and events he describes.
Part III—Setting the Stage: Theatrical Fool Motifs in The Sun Also Rises
In his role as narrator of the story, drink-loving Jake Barnes fulfills “the medieval
theme of the fool,” which Klaus-Peter Koepping says, “revolves around the position of
the figure as an outsider…who mediates between the happening of the play and the
audience,” being the one “who on the one hand stands apart from the unfolding story but
on the other hand is a part with which the audience identifies most closely,” resulting in
“a joke on the alter ego of the listener or viewer” (Koepping 195). As narrator-Jake
recounts the novel’s events, we as readers make identification with him and with the
profundity of his pain. In revealing instances such as those we have already described,
Jake probes beyond his physical wounds to reveal raw emotional damage. At length we
learn that the key to understanding Jake’s pain is in seeing just how far he “stands apart
from the unfolding story” whenever the action of the story involves the possibility of
sex—in particular as that sexual activity concerns Lady Brett Ashley. For the reader
whose “alter ego” follows along with Jake, building emotional bonds with him, we also
have our share in bearing the brunt of the “joke” played on him as he becomes our “alter
ego,” as Koepping suggests. If we as readers can find some measure of relief from the
problem of Jake’s physical reality by taking refuge in the story’s lighter distractions as it
celebrates the intake of alcohol, how much more can we then understand why Jake
himself goes to such measures to assuage his pain through drinking? In this way, we too
experience the grief and disappointment of the challenges inherent in reconciling the fact
of Jake’s wound with his relationship to Brett, as we engage in hope along with Jake
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that—even as impossible as his wound makes a physical relationship between him and
Brett—an emotional and psychological union may at length somehow be possible.
Indeed the joke is on us if we find it difficult to understand why Lady Brett Ashley seems
to lack imagination enough to conceive of a satisfying sexual relationship with Jake
simply due to his physical inability to perform the penetrative act. Since Brett is already
the object of Jake’s desire, their dilemma would seem to be that his bodily pleasure rather
than hers would remain unfulfilled (or perhaps necessitate more creative, alternative
means of fulfillment), so that our attachment to Jake leaves us scratching our heads,
perplexed at the trick of the heart that leaves them both looking like fools due to Brett’s
sacrifice of a potentially durable and mutually rewarding emotional bond with Jake.
Not all of our experiences in reading The Sun Also Rises are filled with somber
perplexity, however, as the moments of comedy that Jake narrates throughout the book
help to allay the strain of the narrative burden we take up on Jake’s behalf due to the
persistence of his conflict. As with the novel’s events in general, many of these lighterhearted events take place through and by indulgence in alcohol, as the narrating fool Jake
provides us with insight into the novel’s other imbibing fool and trickster characters.
One such example occurs on the bus ride from Pamplona for the fishing trip as the group
of travelers passes around and shares the wineskin and Jake is repeatedly “tricked” by the
klaxon-sounding Basque who, as Donaldson puts it, first “imitates the sound of a klaxon
motor horn so suddenly and surprisingly that Jake spills some of the wine” and then
shortly thereafter “fools Jake with the klaxon again, and everyone laughs” (Essays 30).
Here Jake the trickster is himself tricked by the clownish behavior of the Basque,
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showing us how, as Charles Boyce points out in Shakespeare, A to Z, “A fool can also
prove useful in tragedy, providing comic relief as well as his customary objectivity”
(Boyce 198). Surely we do read Jake’s physical loss as a tragedy—certainly as we
become witness to a measure of the heartbreak he suffers in his relationship with Brett.
With such serious losses to consider, the lighter moments of “comic relief” throughout
the novel, such as we see with the Basques on the bus ride, do indeed buoy our spirits
amid the rolling swells of emotional pain that Jake experiences.
What more can we point to in connecting Jake to the fool in the traditions of
literature and theater? Boyce quotes Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It when he
says that “The fool’s critique is seen as powerful enough to ‘cleanse the foul body of
th’infected world’” (Boyce 198). With this in mind we may see how Jake as both
character and narrator enables a critique of the modern, post-war culture through which
we can further connect him to the fool. One such instance occurs when Jake is relating
the fact of his injury to the prostitute Georgette and she follows his disclosure with the
comment, “‘Oh, that dirty war’” (Sun 17). Here both the fact of Jake’s injury and the
critique by the prostitute—who herself has already been drinking—serve to drain any
notion of glamour from the fact of the war. Soon the foulness of “‘th’infected world’” is
further exposed as Jake narrates Georgette’s continued critique, this time of 1920s Paris,
as she knowingly engages Frances Clyne’s query to her on her taste for the city of Paris,
calling it “‘expensive and dirty’” (Sun 19). Georgette’s tacit understanding of the city’s
seedier aspects lingers as unspoken satire for the reader who realizes along with her, Jake,
and Hemingway that the bulk of the commentary resides beneath the surface, as so often
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can be the case with Hemingway’s style of writing. Although according to Scott
Donaldson, Hemingway “was keenly aware of the affected and the pretentious in all their
forms,” the critic says that Hemingway “subordinated the wise guy, satiric vein in [The
Sun Also Rises],” and “In its place Hemingway achieved in Sun ‘a delicate balance of
ridicule and affection’ that contributes to character development and underscores the
theme” (Essays 23). No doubt we see that “‘balance of ridicule and affection’” among
Jake and his friends throughout the novel. Nonetheless, even if Hemingway
“subordinated” satire in his novel, we see in these scenes with Georgette how “…the
fool’s intellectual wit and trenchant observation are deliberate,” as Boyce says (199).
This is true even when Jake as character remains silent on an issue while the narrator Jake
is able to relate the keen responses of Georgette. As the prostitute provides her critique
of the filthiness of both the war and of postwar Paris, we see in Jake’s retelling that if we
read this novel in the right light we can indeed at times catch a glint of “the fool’s
satirical edge” (Boyce 199).
As demonstrated in the cases of Brett Ashley and Georgette Hobin, in a book full
of drunken fools, Jake himself does not fulfill all of the fools’ roles, theatrical or
otherwise. Citing Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream “as a jester to
Oberon,” Boyce describes “an important attribute of the fool” as being “a cool
detachment from the problems of the plot and a somewhat self-centred focus on his own
notions of humour” (198). Jake as both narrator and actor within the narrative remains
very much attached to and central to the plot’s dramatic turns, and is in fact oftentimes
unable to convey any semblance of “a cool detachment” as he relates his own past and
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sometimes quite painful experiences. Such a characteristic may however be ascribed to
Jake’s friend, fishing partner, and drinking buddy Bill Gorton who, as a verifiable
drunkard, is the only one of the story’s main male characters not overtaken by a romantic
interest in Brett Ashley. In fact, Bill shows his “detachment” from Jake’s personal
concerns when, on their fishing trip, he broaches the subject of Brett with Jake: “‘Say,’
Bill said, ‘what about this Brett business?’ ... ‘Were you ever in love with her?’” (Sun
123). Clearly, Bill has not approached the subject with concern for Jake’s feelings or the
impact that his war wound may have had on his romantic interests. In the next chapter
we will look more closely at Bill Gorton and “his own notions of humour” (Boyce 198)
to see how he and Jake team up to form a sort of comedy duo. From there we will
examine the events in Pamplona—both in terms of the role that alcohol plays in the novel
and in the larger history of the fool— as revelatory expressions of carnival.
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Chapter 4: From Comedy to Carnival: in The Sun Also Rises
Part I—Jake and Bill, the Comedy Duo
Comic ability has been an important characteristic of the fool for centuries.
Sandra Billington mentions, for instance, how one court fool, Will Somers, “could joke
Henry VIII out of most of his difficult moods” (33). Certainly, the comic vein that runs
throughout much of The Sun Also Rises has been noted by critics. In at least a couple of
instances, these critics connect the presence of comedy to the influence of alcohol upon
the novel’s characters. Crowley, for instance, notes of Bill and Jake’s interactions that
“Whenever they are alone together, whether drinking or not, Bill and Jake always
communicate in the bluff banter of alcoholic bonhomie” and goes on to say of Bill in
particular that he “has the role in this novel of the comic drunkard, whose wacky wit and
good-natured antics spread boozy jollity all around” (58). In a move that can only
strengthen our argument for a connection between the comedy in the novel and stage
traditions of the fool, Crowley then describes one bit of interaction between Bill and Jake
as “so stagy that it might have come from vaudeville—in which Jake plays straight man
to Bill’s clown” (58). Indeed, the very first interaction between Jake and Bill reveals the
seemingly natural comic play between the pair as Jake queries Bill on his travels, first
Budapest and then:
“‘How about Vienna?’
‘Not so good, Jake. Not so good. It seemed better than it was.’
‘How do you mean?’ I was getting glasses and a siphon.
‘Tight, Jake. I was tight.’
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‘That’s strange. Better have a drink.’” (Sun 70)
Although Hemingway penned Sun prior to the advent of “talkies”—The Jazz Singer,
released in October of 1927, is said to be the “First feature-length movie with audible
dialogue” (IMDb)—the dialogue between Jake and Bill seems to presage the banter of
early film comedians such as the Marx brothers. In fact it is this resemblance to the
comedians of Hemingway’s own day that helps us to join the comedic talents of Jake
Barnes and Bill Gorton to the historic fool.
Through the comedians of Hemingway’s time we can begin to connect Jake and
Bill to the heritage of the professional fool. Enid Welsford—a contemporary of
Hemingway whose book on the subject of the Fool was first published in 1935—links the
comedic writers and actors of their day to the historic fool, saying:
[Charlie] Chaplin’s genius, like that of many of the Harlequins, is
essentially pantomimic; the brothers Marx, however, have made the
‘talkies’ a vehicle for social satire conveyed by means of slapstick farce
combined with smart repartee. Harold Lloyd, Jack Hulbert, Ralph Lynn
and others use the same medium for a kind of humour which is in some
ways reminiscent of the old jest-books, but with a greatly enlarged range
and variety. (315-16)
While The Sun Also Rises lacks “slapstick farce” and few people would be likely to
confuse the jokes of Bill Gorton with those of Chaplin or the Marx brothers, he is
undeniably one of the funniest characters we find in the novel, and his gift for both
“satire” and “smart repartee” easily connect him to the traditions that Welsford is
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referring to. The commentary of Hemingway’s critics echoes Welsford’s language, as
Jeffrey A. Schwarz notes the humorous banter regarding “American politics and
particularly prohibition” that Jake and Bill engage in while on their trip to fish the Irati
River as “a satirical dialogue” (181), and Scott Donaldson identifies their roles in the
comedic action, describing “Jake as…straight man for Bill’s repartee” (Essays 36). In
fact, Bill generally engages his sharp wit and comic timing in response to a setup
comment by Jake, such as when the two are having a lunch of chicken and hard-boiled
eggs during their fishing trip and Bill tells Jake, “‘First the egg’...‘Then the chicken.
Even Bryan could see that’” (Sun 121), in reference to anti-evolution Scopes trial
attorney William Jennings Bryan. A bit later in reaction to confirmation that Jake has
brought only two bottles of wine for their lunch Bill playfully accuses Jake of being “‘in
the pay of the Anti-Saloon League,’” and when in return Jake quips that “‘the saloon
must go,’” Bill replies, “‘The saloon must go, and I will take it with me’” (Sun 123). In
Jake and Bill’s playful commentary on the events of the day we are treated to a handsome
display of quick wit and comic timing by both characters reflective of the “social satire”
and “smart repartee” that Welsford describes.
As indicated by this last exchange between Jake and Bill, alcohol figures as
prominently in their sense of humor as it does generally in their overall behavior and
activity, making ever available to them the form of “artificial madness” to which they are
accustomed and which outfits them perfectly for their roles as comic fools (Foucault
340). Scott Donaldson is one critic who identifies alcohol as a key component of Bill’s
role as a comedian, noting how “Liquor obviously plays an important role in Bill’s
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comedy” and that “Alcohol not only fuels his tomfoolery, it also provides him with a
potent source of the topical humor that runs through Chapter XII,” in reference to Bill’s
prohibition-era humor (Essays 36). Since Jake is Bill’s drinking buddy and close
companion, alcohol is as important to him in this regard as it is to Bill. Although the two
characters comprise a comedy duo, it is hard to argue with Donaldson’s assessment that
“The most consistently funny character in The Sun Also Rises is Bill Gorton” (Essays 34).
Sandra Billington says that “many comic acts use the fundamental device of two men
playing off one another—one clever, the other not. But compared with their medieval
[Fool] ancestors both are artificial, since the stooge uses the pretence of stupidity and
sometimes turns the tables on his companion” (123). It would be unfair to call Jake the
un-clever half of the comedy duo, for Jake himself is clearly quick-witted and capable of
pulling off a joke.
Jake’s wit may, however, seem un-clever in comparison to Bill’s, whose
cleverness arguably outstrips that of any other character in the novel. Moreover, the
demonstrated importance of alcohol as a means of attaining “artificial madness”
(Foucault 340) helps to cement the connection of Jake and Bill to the “artificial”
comedian-fools in the Billington reference cited above (Billington 123). Bill is ably
suited to carry on the comic tradition of the fool—particularly at those times when
alcohol has prepared him for the task—making him a nice fit for Charles Boyce’s
description of Shakespeare’s brand of fool character as being “a sharp-tongued comic,
usually a professional jester, who wittily insults the other characters and comments on
their actions” (198). As we have seen, with the banter between them being generally
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friendly in nature, Jake and Bill’s “sharp-tongued” and satirical comedy is aimed more at
the political and social figures and situations of their homeland than at one another or at
other characters, with one notable exception being Jake’s reply to Bill’s challenge to
“‘Say something pitiful,’” to which Jake answers, “‘Robert Cohn’” (Sun 114). We will
soon discuss how Robert Cohn receives the majority of the “insults” in the novel—most
of these coming from Mike Campbell, whose remarks are seldom very witty in nature—
and the interpersonal tensions that provide the motivation for these insults contribute
greatly to a dramatic buildup in the latter half of Hemingway’s tale. The relaxing
moments in Burguete, however, leave us as readers far removed from the drama of these
later episodes as Jake and Bill allow their alcohol-assisted outlooks to focus on
friendship, fishing, and fun, making this central section of the novel as much of a
vacation for the reader as it is for Jake and Bill.
In this regard, it is worth recalling again our mention in the previous chapter of
how humor in this novel serves the function of comic relief to ease our minds, along with
Jake’s, of the burden of the difficulties he faces with regard to both his wounded
masculinity and his unfulfilled longing for a union with Brett. With its position midway
through the narrative and directly in the heart of The Sun Also Rises, the easy flow of
comedy between Jake and Bill while on their fishing trip provides us as readers with a
break from the revelation of Jake’s dilemma in Paris, allowing us to relax before our
exposure to the oftentimes tense interactions between the members of their group while
in Pamplona. For Jake, too, his time apart with another man, Bill, in a natural setting and
with no sexual expectations to live up to would seem a relief from the stress of his
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inability to perform sexually with Brett. As Donaldson points out, “…the interlude at
Burguete stands in idyllic counterpoint to the sophisticated pretentiousness of Paris and
the destructive passions of Pamplona” (Essays 37). It is not that the Pamplona chapters
lack humor, as we read how at one point “Bill was very funny. So was Michael. They
were good together” (Sun 146). However, it is rare that the comedic efforts that dominate
the Pamplona scenes come off as humorous for the reader. Jake’s narration characterizes
the generally less-than-jovial atmosphere the reader experiences in this section when he
compares his feeling to times “from the war” when “There was much wine, an ignored
tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening” (Sun 146).
A key reason for the “tension” Jake describes is Mike Campbell’s jealousy-fueled jesting,
as he takes aim at Robert Cohn in retaliation for Cohn’s persistent pursuit of Brett.
His abuse of alcohol, of course, seems to provide a key to the brand of comedy
Mike attempts, which stands in stark contrast to the jests of Bill Gorton, whose bantering
wits command our attention from the moment Jake introduces him in chapter eight and
Bill jokes with Jake about how “‘Just one stuffed dog’” would “‘Mean everything in the
world to you after you bought it’” (Sun 72). We have already affirmed Bill’s status as the
most successful comedian in the novel. However, Bill is also, as Jake describes him, a
“good drunk,” and accordingly can manage his role as a comic jester in a positive
manner. When Mike Campbell, however, tries his hand at humor, the character that Jake
labels as a “bad drunk” generally fails to be funny and demonstrates himself to be an
obnoxious drunken fool in the process (Sun 148). With Mike serving up the majority of
the jokes, these chapters lack the playful jocularity of Jake and Bill’s fishing trip,
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generally falling short even of the lighthearted humor found in the novel’s Paris
beginnings where, as we noted earlier, Jake and Georgette are each given to harmless
jesting. Mike is certainly not incapable of being funny. We get a glimpse of his comedic
potential right after the group has assembled in Pamplona and Bill and Jake mention their
acquaintance with Harris on the fishing trip and ask, “‘Ever know him, Mike? He was in
the war, too,’” to which Mike replies wryly, “‘Fortunate fellow’ ... ‘What times we had.
How I wish those dear days were back’” (Sun 134).
Mike’s tendency while in Pamplona, however, is toward an acrid and bilious, at
times seemingly erratic, sort of humor that Scott Donaldson describes as “Mike
Campbell’s increasingly unfunny insults at Pamplona” (Essays 31). To begin with, Mike
tries to provoke Cohn (who, Jake tells us, “was never drunk” and, perhaps by no
coincidence, seems incapable of being funny) to “Say something more. Say something
funny. Can’t you see we’re all having a good time here?” (Sun 141). Soon Cohn tells
Mike, “‘Shut up. You’re drunk,’” but Mike continues to chide Cohn saying, “‘Perhaps I
am drunk. Why aren’t you drunk? Why don’t you ever get drunk, Robert?’” (Sun 142).
Among Cohn’s faults, it seems, is his unwillingness or perhaps inability to participate in
the group’s ritual of drunkenness. Notably, when Cohn does drink, Mike points out that
Cohn “passed out on Anis Del Mono’” and missed much of the group’s fun in eating,
drinking, singing, and dancing at the fiesta (Sun 158). In one of his later failed attempts
to be funny, Mike insists that Jake tease bullfighter Pedro Romero by shouting at Jake to
“‘Tell him that bulls have no balls,’” to which Jake as narrator simply responds that Mike
“was drunk” (Sun 175). It is evident then that a likely cause of Mike’s descent into failed
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and ill humor is the tremendous excess of alcohol that he consumes but cannot handle, as
Donaldson points out that “Mike’s bantering becomes progressively more strident,
however, as the drinking increases” (Essays 33).
Mike’s obnoxious drunken behavior is reminiscent of Billington’s account—in
her chapter entitled, “The Respectability of the Fool and the rise of the clown”—of “the
most extraordinary revelations” of a diarist named “Thomas Turner” whose “personal
details” in the year “‘1757’” include the fact that “‘After supper our behaviour was far
from that of serious, harmless mirth; it was down right obstreperous, mixed with a great
deal of folly and stupidity,’” and Billington goes on to note that “His diary makes
constant reference to ‘drunk again’ and ‘sure I am a direct fool’” (84). Unfortunately for
Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell in Hemingway’s novel exhibits no similar gift of selfawareness for his drunken excesses and folly, and he fails to realize what Donaldson says
of his attacks on Cohn in noting that Mike’s “talent for repetition is used to abuse another
human being, and there is nothing funny about such scorn” (Essays 33). Certainly,
Mike’s fellow drunken comedian Bill Gorton sees the situation clearly enough to arrive at
the core of the issue when he tells Jake, “‘We’ve got to keep Mike from getting so tight.
That kind of stuff is terrible’” (Sun 145). In the world of Hemingway’s comedians then,
a “good drunk” can handle his alcohol intake and remain a successful comedian; a “bad
drunk” doesn’t know his limits or when to stop and becomes repugnant to his audience as
Mike does when his verbal abuse is so excessive that even Jake “wished Mike would not
behave so terribly to Cohn (Sun 148). Crowley’s assessment seems equally applicable to
Mike’s humor when he says that “Hemingway forgives drunkenness if, as in Jake’s case,
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it is an occasional deviation from sober self-discipline; he condemns drunkenness if, as in
Mike’s case, it reflects chronic self-indulgence” (52). To put it another way, Jake
exhibits self-control while drinking (although his level of alcohol intake hardly reflects
the “self-discipline” that Crowley ascribes to him); Mike, however, sins greatly in his
complete loss of self-control. Crowley’s assertion seems to point directly to the
deficiency in Mike that both Jake and Bill find so disagreeable.
To be fair, though, and as anyone who has read The Sun Also Rises can attest,
Mike Campbell is hardly alone in his distaste for Robert Cohn, as each of the main
characters shows his or her contempt for Cohn at one point or another. Bill admits to
Jake “‘I don’t like Cohn’” (Sun 145), and Jake also derides Cohn, particularly through his
role as narrator, as Donaldson acknowledges how “Jake artfully belittles Cohn
throughout, but especially in the opening chapter” (Essays 31). Jake even acknowledges
how he “liked to see [Mike] hurt Cohn” but that “afterward it made me disgusted with
myself” (Sun 148-9). Certainly, Mike’s relentless jesting at Cohn’s expense pushes the
boundaries of decency as the worst of the humor Mike directs at Cohn is evidently rooted
in anti-Semitic feelings. These feelings seem to surface as Mike’s drunkenness manifests
his bitter jealousy over Cohn’s fling with Brett in San Sebastian—a situation that is
further complicated by Cohn’s persistent pursuit of Brett in Pamplona after the fact. At
one point, already angered by Jake’s refusal to tell Romero that “‘Brett is dying to know
how [Romero] can get into those pants’” (Sun 176), Mike drunkenly engages Cohn,
telling him to “‘Take that sad Jewish face away’” (Sun 177) in an exchange that nearly
brings Mike and Cohn to blows. It seems that alcohol only kindles the dry tinder of
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emotional fuel that Mike has stored in dealing with Brett the trickster who, after her affair
with Cohn, now wants to pursue Romero. Brett is decidedly unapologetic for her
repeated flings with other men, a fact that we see highlighted in the midst of a
conversation in which Mike points out her multiple affairs and Brett coolly asserts to Jake
that “‘Michael and I understand each other’” (Sun 143). Mike’s true feelings about the
situation come out later on, however, when he complains to Jake in Brett’s presence how
“‘Brett’s got a bull-fighter’ .... ‘She had a Jew named Cohn, but he turned out badly’”
(Sun 206), and then goes on to insist to Brett, “‘Tell [Jake] all about your bull-fighter,’”
before we read how Mike loses control and “tipped the table so that all the beers and the
dish of shrimps went over in a crash” (Sun 207).
If Jake and Bill find much of the inspiration for their comedic interactions in the
drinking they engage in and talk about while on their fishing trip, Mike Campbell, on the
other hand, undoubtedly drinks to the point that it makes him generally unfunny and a
failure as a comedian as a result. Of course, there are no professional comedians
represented in The Sun Also Rises, but humor is a critically acknowledged presence in
Hemingway’s first novel, and we have had an opportunity to see both successful and
unsuccessful attempts at comedy. We have noted, as is the case with the rest of the
action in this narrative, how alcohol plays a prominent role as both subject matter and
causal factor in the production of the humor. Of course, alcohol is not the sole cause of
these characters’ comedic actions. In addressing the genealogical roots of more recent
comedians, Billington, writing in the 1980s, says that “To be a professional Fool today
does not depend on costume (apart from circus clowns) but on a high degree of
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individualistic talent and it would be necessary to write analytic biographies of individual
comedians to pursue their Fool inheritance” (123). In Hemingway’s novel, Jake, Bill,
and Mike seem to receive much of their portion of the “Fool inheritance” by way of
alcohol’s influence upon their “individualistic talents,” to borrow Billington’s terms. For
it would be difficult to challenge the notion that alcohol spurs them to an “artificial
madness” that alters their personalities in such a way as to influence, for better or for
worse, the delivery of their comedic attempts (Foucault 340). A key impetus for much of
the drinking that takes place in the novel is the spirit of celebration surrounding the
Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. This thesis now moves on from the subject of the
novel’s alcohol-influenced comedians to address a final aspect of the fool tradition—that
of seasonal fooling such as was done during the “Festival of Folly”—as we look not only
at the Pamplona fiesta itself, but at ways in which the drinking and drunkenness in the
novel may be reflective of this “Festival” in which Foucault says, “the social and
traditional roles were completely reversed” (Foucault 340), and at how The Sun Also
Rises may reflect notions of carnival and carnivalization outlined in the ideas of Mikhail
Bakhtin.
Part II—Alcohol, Carnival, and Carnivalization in The Sun Also Rises
“The fiesta was really started,” Jake narrates for us in describing the atmosphere
surrounding the Festival of San Fermín, “It kept up day and night for seven days. The
dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could
only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it
seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta” (Sun 154). In the
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preceding quotation, not only does Jake provide us with a timely description of what he
and his friends witness and experience during the fiesta, but he fittingly characterizes
important attributes of the notion of carnival as it relates to such festivals, which hold an
important place in the history of the fool. Moreover, and as we have already seen in the
foregoing sections of this thesis, the chapters describing the activities of Jake and his
friends during the Festival of San Fermín carry a great deal of the payload in terms of the
dramatic tension and character revelation that occurs in The Sun Also Rises. In this
section we will analyze characteristics of the fiesta in Pamplona as well as scenes that
occur throughout the course of Hemingway’s novel—particularly owing to the influence
of alcohol—which reflect the occurrence of carnival or carnivalization outside of the
activities of the fiesta itself.
We begin by connecting the fiesta in Pamplona to the tradition of the fool, turning
to Enid Welsford who provides a description that is remarkably similar to Jake’s report of
the fiesta when she says that “The Feast of Fools was an annual interruption of the
ordinary routine, marked by a temporary suspension of law and order, and a temporary
reversal of moral judgments” (205). From the uniqueness of events “that...could only”
occur “during a fiesta” to the unsuitableness of considering “consequences” at fiesta time
(Sun 154), Jake’s description of the fiesta lines up neatly with Welsford’s description of
the Feast of Fools. Noted literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin mentions “‘the festival of
fools’” in connecting “literature of comedy and parody” from “the Middle Ages” with
“celebrations of the carnival type—with carnival proper” (106). We can draw upon
Bakhtin’s descriptions of carnival and its effects upon society in further characterizing
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the fiesta as an instance of carnival, as Bakhtin says:
The laws, prohibitions and restrictions which determine the system and
order of normal, i.e., non-carnival, life are for the period of carnival
suspended… everything that is determined by social-hierarchical
inequality among people, or any other form of inequality, including age.
All distance between people is suspended…People who are in life
separated by impenetrable hierarchical barriers enter into free, familiar
contact on the carnival square. (101)
As with Welsford’s description, the Festival of San Fermín matches up to Bakhtin’s
characterization of carnival times with notable consistency. Jake reports how “People
had been coming in all day from the country” and notes the presence of “peasants” (Sun
152), the welcoming of “‘Foreigners’” (Sun 154), and a “procession” that includes
“dignitaries, civil and religious” (Sun 155), truly demonstrating Bakhtin’s criterion of
“All distance between people [being] suspended (101).
Certainly this interruption of normality by placing it in suspension for a time
contributes to our fascination with the Pamplona chapters. These descriptions of carnival
also enable us to look deeper into the effects of this suspension to see its other impacts on
the narrative. First, however, we must clarify both the term “carnivalization” and our
intentions with regard to its application to our analysis.
Having introduced the concept of carnival and declared its presence in
Hemingway’s novel, it is necessary to digress briefly in order to explain what this thesis
does and does not attempt to do in applying the ideas of carnival and carnivalization. It
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does not attempt to elaborate the many and various ways in which The Sun Also Rises can
be evaluated as an example of carnivalization in literature in the sense with which many
readers of literary criticism may be familiar. Such expectations may be encapsulated in
the model Bakhtin arrives at when he says, “We call the transposition of carnival into the
language of literature the carnivalization of literature” (100). To clarify this point, this
concept of carnivalization requires further explanation. A Handbook of Critical
Approaches to Literature explains that “As carnival concretizes the abstract in a culture,
so Bakhtin claims that the novel carnivalizes through diversities of speech and voice
reflected in its structure. Like carnival’s presence in the public square, the novel takes
place in the public sphere of the middle class” (364). With this definition in place, we
see that “carnivalization” may be identified as a characteristic of any novel without
having, as we have in the fiesta scenes in The Sun Also Rises, an identifiable presence
within the text of a literal occurrence of carnival events. Accordingly, this thesis does
not seek to discuss carnivalization, or the carnivalesque, by way of identifying “abstract”
instances in which “diversities of speech and voice [are] reflected in its structure”
(Handbook 364). Rather, as we have stated, our attempt is to identify carnivalization in
The Sun Also Rises as not only a literal presence due to the fiesta atmosphere in
Pamplona, but as a characteristic appearing throughout the novel—which characteristic is
created through consumption of alcohol, resulting in “the transposition of carnival into
the language of literature” (Bakhtin 100).
To add validation to our identification of carnivalization in a text through its
depictions of alcohol consumption, we turn to Marty Roth who notes that “Drink is a
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strong presence in almost every work of carnivalesque art cited by Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s
two great authors, Rabelais and Dostoevsky, neatly express the duality – the euphoria and
the misery – of drinking” (Roth, n. pag.). Roth’s statement certainly adds flavor to the
definition of carnivalization of literature that we introduced a short while ago. It also
provides authorization for our direction as we seek to identify alcohol’s presence within
The Sun Also Rises as reflective of carnivalization, thereby invoking the traditions
associated with the fool or the trickster.
Throughout this thesis our discussion of The Sun Also Rises has repeatedly
demonstrated alcohol’s presence and impact, which are prevalent throughout the novel;
furthermore, we have provided affirmation from critics who agree on alcohol’s
importance to the text and its characters. All that remains then, in terms of demonstrating
the carnivalization of the text, is to show how the result of alcohol’s importance to the
narrative, along with its previously demonstrated effect on character revelation and
development, results in the carnivalization of Hemingway’s text from beginning to end.
Marty Roth argues that alcohol is a key component of carnival in asserting that “Moodaltering substances are left out of the mix that produces the Bakhtinian carnival,” and
follows up this statement by noting “a far-reaching esthetic project” which he pinpoints
as “the Dionysian esthetic of Nietzsche and the carnival esthetics of Bakhtin and others,”
which he says “is unable to suppress its connection to intoxication as a remarkable fact of
social life” (Roth, n. pag.). Given the importance of alcohol in structuring social
interactions within The Sun Also Rises—not only during the fiesta with its abundance “of
drunken talking” (Sun 175), but from beginning to end of the novel—the carnivalization
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of the text in its entirety can be traced to “the euphoria and the misery” Roth sees as so
demonstrably realized through alcohol’s omnipresence. Gary Edward Holcomb, whose
intertextual study of Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem and The Sun Also Rises claims
that McKay’s text “engages trenchantly with Hemingway’s carnivalesque” (73). The
term “Dionysian” comes into play again when Holcomb points out the role that alcohol
plays in Hemingway’s novel as he says, “According to Hemingway’s Bakhtinian vision,
the Basque carnival puts in motion the vital and necessarily fleeting Dionysian release of
ekstasis...” (72). Indeed, as much as times of carnival serve to interrupt the normal
course of life in depicting a mode of living that is saturated with an uncommon profusion
drinking and intoxication, the carnivalized text of The Sun Also Rises places normal life
for most readers in suspension from its opening pages, marking “an interruption [in our]
ordinary routine” (Welsford 205), and relieving us for a while of “The laws, prohibitions
and restrictions” that comprise our everyday lives (Bakhtin 101).
The Dionysian carnivalization of Hemingway’s text would surely have been
intensified exponentially for Hemingway’s readers in America who, at the time of Sun’s
publication, were living under the restrictions of prohibition, making the pursuit of
similar experiences in America a question of violating the laws of the land. With Jake
and his companions drinking with regularity and in such abundance, the “artificial
madness” created by “alcohol” is in fact inseparable from carnival and carnivalization, a
truth that simultaneously supports our connection to “the Festival of Folly” of “the
Middle Ages” (Foucault 340). After all, “Carnival,” as Marty Roth says, “is unthinkable
without mood alteration, and no other component of the carnival mixture explains the
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quality of transformation better than drink and drugs” (Roth, n. pag.). In Hemingway’s
novel, alcohol unquestionably impacts the interactions between and among Jake and his
friends, bringing them together and driving them apart at various times. We would be
remiss in our effort if we did not now look to other elements of Jake’s account of the
fiesta itself—the Festival of San Fermín—to see how his narrative provides us with
additional examples of carnival that make the fiesta that Jake describes a type of the Feast
of Fools.
Like the medieval Feast of Fools, the Festival of San Fermín as described by
Hemingway involves “an annual interruption of the ordinary routine” (Welsford 205)
and, as Bakhtin says of times of carnival, the fiesta is an event in which “All distance
between people is suspended” and the characters in Hemingway’s novel “enter into free,
familiar contact on the carnival square” (Bakhtin 101). This is true even if at times the
“contact” makes for uncomfortable times for some of the novel’s characters as well as its
readers. As indicated by the preceding quotation from Mikhail Bakhtin, social interaction
is a key component of a carnival atmosphere. It is also one of the defining characteristics
of the Festival of San Fermín. Writing about Spain’s various festivals and how they
interrelate, Carrie B. Douglass says that “anthropologists agree that a fiesta cycle defines
a community and produces messages about the community as a set of social relations”
(130, emphasis in the original). The Festival of San Fermín is just one of several fiestas
throughout Spain that create a “cycle of festivals in Spain that offers a model where the
many disparate parts (‘cultures’) of Spain are put into relationship in a non-hierarchical
way” (126). Six fiestas in all make up the national cycle—including fiestas in Seville,
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Valencia, Madrid, Bilbao, and Zaragoza in addition to the one in San Fermín—but
Douglass reports that “San Fermín functions as the fiesta mayor of the cycle, and thus of
‘Spain’” (130, emphasis in the original). The fiesta mayor—or major fiesta—is major,
Douglass says, “because it assembles more people and implicates in greater measure the
various social entities that make up the whole” and the result is an “‘illusion of
community’” (129).
The fiesta in Hemingway’s novel—with its carnivalistic nature and suspension of
prohibitive boundaries—allows the kind of freedom of interaction that Bakhtin talks
about when he says that “Carnival brings together, unites, weds and combines the sacred
with the profane, the lofty with the lowly, the great with the insignificant, the wise with
the stupid, etc.” (101). One consequence of this freedom from boundaries for Jake
Barnes and his friends is that it leaves Robert Cohn at liberty and with the opportunity to
hover around Lady Brett Ashley as he pursues her love although he is unwelcome by all,
or at least some, members of the group, including Brett herself. For example, Jake
narrates how, with the group assembled and drinking, Mike Campbell at one point asks,
“‘Why don’t you see when you’re not wanted, Cohn? Go away. Go away, for God’s
sake’” (Sun 178). Cohn, however, backed by the liberation made possible by both the
festival and alcohol, does not have to leave. Anne Fox says that “Incapacitating oneself
with alcohol (or drugs) sends a signal of superiority to both rivals and potential mates.
Group incapacitation through drink also serves as a warning to freeloaders that the
benefits of group membership come as a price” (Fox 67). Clearly Jake and his group of
heavy-drinking friends have an established practice that would inhibit the light-drinking
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Cohn’s attempts at an intimate association with them; however, Cohn manages to
maintain his presence among them. We read that Cohn’s reaction to Mike’s abuse is that
he “seemed to be enjoying it. The childish, drunken heroics of it. It was his affair with a
lady of title” (Sun 178). The suggestion here is that Cohn is himself somehow engaged in
“drunken heroics” at the festival, indicating that alcohol, in addition to the fiesta
atmosphere, has provided him with a degree of access to the group. Perhaps Cohn has
taken his cue from Mike’s earlier objection, “‘Why don’t you ever get drunk, Robert?’”
(Sun 142), so that as Mike now challenges Cohn to “‘Go away! Go away now!’” Cohn
can reply with relative calmness, “‘But I won’t go, Mike’” (Sun 178). In fact, it is Mike
who must leave the group as Jake escorts him away to avoid, for the time being, a
fistfight between Mike and Cohn. The provisional association of Jake’s group of friends,
bound together as they are in their drunken stupor, is truly reflective of Douglass’s
assertion that the Festival of San Fermín creates merely an “‘illusion of community’”
(129).
The festival of San Fermín itself apparently lacks one key feature of both
Welsford’s discussion of the Feast of Fools and Bakhtin’s descriptions of carnival. There
seems to be no occasion in the carnival atmosphere surrounding the Festival of San
Fermín for, in Welsford’s terms, “the elected ‘King of Fools’” (Welsford 200), or what
appears to be the equivalent in Bakhtin’s discussion of carnival in what he calls, “the
mock crowning and subsequent discrowning of the king of carnival” (102). While
evidently not part of the official program for the San Fermín festival, we can demonstrate
how the text of The Sun Also Rises can be seen to portray a “mock crowning” and
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“discrowning” of Brett Ashley, who can be seen as be reflective of a mock royalty. At
the festival’s beginning the fiesta crowd adopts Brett as a figure of royalty as, having just
been turned away from the church because she “had no hat,” a group of “dancers”
receives her and we read how they “formed a circle around Brett and started to dance”
(Sun 155). Jake tells us that the group, along with Bill and Jake himself, dance around
Brett. “They were all chanting,” he says, adding that “they did not want her to” dance
too, because “They wanted her as an image to dance around” (Sun 155). Soon the group
enters a wine shop and the dancers are “sitting on the high wine-cask beside Brett” where
“They had hung a wreath of garlics around her neck” and “Some one insisted on giving
her a glass” (Sun 156). The action and imagery of these scenes show Brett as the center
of ceremony—Holcomb even calls her “the festival’s fertility goddess” (76)—and clearly
establish her in a celebrated, if entirely figurative, position at the outset of the fiesta.
To establish Brett’s carnivalized crowning within the novel as a whole, it is
interesting to note the presence of dancing in our introduction to Brett at the beginning of
the novel, as she enters the scene while Jake is with Georgette at “a dancing-club...in the
Rue de la Montague Sainte Geneviève” (Sun 19). Like the celebrants at the fiesta, Jake’s
narration figuratively encircles Brett, quickly placing her at the center of the action.
After noting the “young men” with whom she arrives, Jake tells us “With them was Brett.
She looked very lovely and she was very much with them” (Sun 20). After a moment’s
digression Jake’s focus returns her to the center of our attention with the reiterative
statement, “And with them was Brett” (Sun 20). As with the dancers at the fiesta, alcohol
is again key to Brett’s crowning as Jake’s first words to her indicate that he would prefer
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to see her with a glass in her hand when he says, “‘Hello Brett’ ... ‘Why aren’t you
tight?’” (Sun 22). In both the fiesta’s and the novel’s beginnings, not only do we quickly
find Brett elevated to the center of the action, but we see that drinking is a central feature
of her coronation. As the novel progresses, we of course learn of Brett’s formal title of
Lady and come to see her figuratively, if not nominally, crowned as Queen of Fools and,
thanks to the oftentimes contested love interests of Jake, Cohn, Mike, and Pedro Romero,
we watch as she presides symbolically as the Royal of Romance throughout the festival in
Pamplona.
The event marking Brett’s fiesta discrowning lacks the semblance of ceremony of
her position within the dance at the fiesta’s outset, but the event—subdued and seeming
to lack significance—nonetheless marks both the fiesta’s end and Brett’s simultaneous
discrowning as the figurative Queen of Fools for the fiesta and, as it seems, for the entire
novel as well. On the last day of the fiesta, Jake finds himself “very drunk,” telling us, “I
was drunker than I ever remembered having been” (Sun 223). In this condition Jake
visits Mike who tells him, “‘Brett, you know. She’s gone off with the bull-fighter chap’”
(Sun 223). Mike soon follows this up by telling Jake, “‘Bad thing to do’ ... ‘She
shouldn’t have done it’” (Sun 223). The reason for Jake’s drunkenness is that he has
recently been drinking with Bill Gorton, who said of the concluding fiesta, “‘You
wouldn’t believe it. It’s like a wonderful nightmare,’” to which Jake—tacitly yet
obviously reeling from Brett’s having departed with Romero—answers, “‘I’d believe
anything. Including nightmares’” before going on to admit to Bill without explanation,
“‘I feel like hell’” (Sun 222). When, a short while later, Jake responds to Mike’s
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assertion that Brett “‘shouldn’t have’” gone off with Romero, Jake simply yet damningly
replies, “‘No.’” (Sun 223). As Holcomb puts it, “when [Jake’s] idol, Lady Brett,
becomes the lover of the young torero Pedro Romero, Jake experiences the festival’s
paradoxically ‘wonderful nightmare,’ wake-dreaming his necessary encounter with ‘hell’
while under the effects of the third perilous absinthe” (72). For both Jake and Mike, each
of whom is surely still in love with Brett, her crown is nonetheless removed.
Hemingway’s Queen of Carnival, having so recently presided over a full court of
drunken fools, is both departed and discrowned in our eyes.
Although he drinks far less than any of the other main characters in The Sun Also
Rises, a case could be made for Robert Cohn’s position throughout the novel as a sort of
King of Fools. To begin with, Cohn’s name phonetically is a near homophone with the
French colloquialism “con”—one of whose meanings is “bloody fool” (French 63).
Given Hemingway’s intimate knowledge of the French language, Cohn’s very name
seems certain to be an intentionally slighting pun, particularly in consideration of the fact
that the other main characters are so commonly referred to by their first names, while
Cohn’s surname is employed throughout the narrative. There are additional connections
to address regarding Cohn and folly. Critic S. A. Cowan has argued that “Robert Cohn
symbolizes the concept of folly in Ecclesiastes,” the book of the Bible that provides
Hemingway’s novel with the second of its two epigraphs (104). Some of Cowan’s
arguments are much more effective than others. His claim, for example, that “too much
reading has left Cohn ‘a little nearsighted’” leads to a dubious inference that “On the
allusive level, Ecclesiastes tells us that ‘the fool walketh in darkness” and that this
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“metaphor for deprivation of the wisdom of experience...accurately describes Cohn’s
purblind state” (101). The problem with Cowan’s connection is in neglecting to account
for the fact that Cohn is only “a little nearsighted,” a condition so insignificant that Jake
tells us “I had never noticed it before,” so that Cowan here, as at other times, stretches his
logic to tenuous lengths (Sun 89, my emphasis). Although he acknowledges that “Cohn
does not exemplify every kind of folly suggested in Ecclesiastes,” Cowan does seem to
hit the nail on the head when he says that Cohn’s “naiveté is the opposite of the
disillusioned worldly wisdom of Ecclesiastes” and that “Because [Cohn] lacks social and
philosophical maturity, he does ill-timed and foolish things that alienate him from the
group of life’s initiated veterans” (105). In any case, and as we will now show, Robert
Cohn—fool though he may be as a result of his natural personality—does not fit the mold
of the fool we have sought to identify and analyze in this thesis.
Although he may be said to act foolishly, Robert Cohn truly has no place
alongside the fools that are of the most interest to us in The Sun Also Rises. For from the
outset of this thesis, we have sought to show how the texts under examination may be
analyzed to demonstrate Michel Foucault’s claim that “In our time...we resort to alcohol
or drugs as a way of contesting the social order,” and that as a result “we have thus
created a kind of artificial madness” (340). Our goal has been to show ways in which the
drunkards and episodes of drunkenness in our subject texts can be equated to the history
and traditions surrounding the fool or the trickster. As we have suggested due to his
general standoffishness with regard to alcohol use, Robert Cohn cannot be categorized as
such a fool. After all, as Cowan says, Robert Cohn “cannot even manage to get joyfully
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drunk at the height of the fiesta—instead he falls asleep in a back room” (102). If Robert
Cohn is indeed a fool, it is because folly comes naturally to him and is not a characteristic
with which he is imbued, or which is augmented, as a result of his consumption of
alcohol. It is the naturalness of his folly that distinguishes Robert Cohn from Jake Barnes
and the other main characters in this novel.
In the history of the fool, the distinction between the natural and artificial types of
fools is, as Sandra Billington points out, between the truly “witless” people who were
regarded as natural fools, and “their mimics” (20). These “mimics” were foolentertainers and actors. Such an individual was, recalling a passage from Billington
quoted in part in Chapter 2 of this thesis, “a professional or artificial Fool, who earns his
living from entertaining and who, theologically, is the most condemned” (19). For our
purposes, the division between natural and artificial fools is a useful one—particularly
since the notion of artificial fool behavior correlates to our objective in pursuing
drunkenness as “a kind of artificial madness” (Foucault 340). For the fools and tricksters
that interest us in Hemingway’s novel are not natural fools, such as Cohn may very well
be, but are rather those fool-characters whose folly is due to, or exacerbated as a result of,
their abuse of alcohol—whether or not their figuration in this way was intended by their
author. To hammer home this point of artificiality, Anne Fox says again that
“Drunkenness can be seen as an example of...an antistructure activity, which...applies to
‘all confrontative activities, especially those drawing on a refashioning of self through
masking, costuming, acting in a predictably disorderly fashion’” (Fox 83). Fox’s point
brings us full circle in more ways than one, as the idea of an “antistructure activity” can
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be related directly to the notion of carnival or the Feast of Fools as a disruption of
hierarchical normality, and we see drunkenness function as “a refashioning of self
through masking” that equates Hemingway’s characters to the entertainers and actors
who took on the role of fool and were deemed artificial for doing so. There is nothing
artificial, however, in the very real consequences Jake and his friends face in the folly of
persistently disguising themselves and restructuring their lives through consumption of
alcohol.
Tom Dardis notes of the author of The Sun Also Rises that “As Hemingway’s
drinking increased, it served to exacerbate his depressions,” and points out that
“Although alcohol can provide momentary relief from problems, the cumulative effect of
heavy drinking inexorably produces new problems that require still more alcohol” (166).
If, as seems to be the case for Jake Barnes and several of his companions, drunkenness
serves as a way of masking or undoing many unpleasant and difficult facts of life—from
joking about the inconvenience of prohibition in America, to numbing the painful reality
of Jake’s war wound, to producing the various reactions to Brett’s affairs and the
complications they cause her and the men who love her—over the course of time and
taken in sufficient quantities, consumption of alcohol brings its own set of consequences
to the drinker. The young author Hemingway failed to see this reality, and in The Sun
Also Rises he wrote a novel that very much reflects his lack of understanding in this
regard. Dardis reports that by the mid-1950s, Hemingway’s “principal physician...[told]
his patient, ‘If you keep on drinking this way you won’t even be able to write your
name’” (200). A short while later Dardis writes that Hemingway “was now rarely sober
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but his self-deception continued as before” (201).
The mask of drunkenness that Hemingway wore ultimately left him unable to
recognize his own actions for what they were. In this he is aptly foreshadowed by his
protagonist, Jake Barnes. After hearing Brett’s plea in response to his heavy drinking at
the novel’s end (he has recently drunk two martinis and “three bottles of rioja alta”
before ordering “‘two [more] bottles’”), as she tells him “‘Don’t get drunk, Jake’” (Sun
246), Jake replies with a drunkard’s overconfidence that seems characteristic of his
creator’s point of view as he tells Brett, “‘I’m not getting drunk’ ... ‘I’m just drinking a
little wine. I like to drink wine’” (Sun 246). In his mention of the historic role of the
fool, Foucault points to King Lear as “a victim of his own fantasy, but at the same time
he is someone who tells the truth. In other words, in the theater the madman is a
character who expresses with his body the truth that the other actors and spectators are
not aware of, a character through whom the truth appears” (Foucault 340). Like King
Lear, Hemingway and his protagonist, Jake Barnes, are indeed “victim[s] of” a “fantasy”
in which alcohol becomes the answer to life’s problems. Since, however, drunkenness is
merely “an imitation of madness,” their answer is merely an imitation of the “truth”
(Foucault 340). But for us as scholars of Hemingway and his work, undertaking a careful
and thoughtful examination of both Jake’s fictional account and Hemingway’s own reallife experiences can lead us as “spectators” to unmask the “artificial madness” of their
drunken behavior and identify the genuine folly inherent in their abuses of alcohol
(Foucault 340). For however Hemingway fictionalized the lives of his fellow travelers to
Pamplona in penning his first novel, in that its narrative demonstrates how closely
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drunkenness is linked to foolish behavior, The Sun Also Rises remains an enduring record
of that truth.
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Conclusion
After all is said and done, this thesis has only scratched the surface of its subject,
barely breaking ground in its attempt to unearth ways in which the heavy drinkers of
alcohol in Tender is the Night and The Sun Also Rises might be “contesting the social
order” by having “created a kind of artificial madness” or “an imitation of madness” that
“can be seen as an attempt to set society ablaze by creating the same state as madness”
and thereby be reflective of the rich and diverse traditions that surround the fool and the
trickster in history, literature, and mythology (Foucault 340). For the interested scholar
or researcher, there is far more work to be done in analyzing, advancing, and critiquing
these ideas. In that, as far as this author knows, this particular vein of research and
analysis is original in scope—though with literary studies evidently undergoing a
continuous and staggering expansion globally, complete certainty in this regard is surely
unattainable—the hope is to have initiated a direction of scholarship that can easily be
further developed in the following ways: by widening and deepening the scope of fool
studies; by pursuing a greater breadth of research into studies of the effects of alcohol; by
further considering the implications of Jungian archetypal manifestations of the tricksterfigure; by, of course, conducting a more exhaustive, or somehow varied, study of either
of the two literary works under discussion in this thesis; or finally by the application of
any of these ideas to different works of these writers or the works of another author. This
writer is greatly pleased that the potential for future scholars to build upon these initial
findings seems to be unlimited.
As has been repeatedly mentioned in this thesis and effectively demonstrated by
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numerous critics, both Fitzgerald and Hemingway lived much of their lives through an
alcoholic haze, and both created literature for their times that was reflective of this
reality. As two of the great and insightful literary geniuses of their day, these authors, in
telling their respective tales, seem to fulfill what Foucault says is one role of the historic
fool, as he points out that the fool “is an individual who reveals the truth with spirit”
(Foucault 340). Foucault here could be seen to be drawing upon the words of Enid
Welsford, who connect the poet to the fool in her own conclusion to her exceedingly
valuable book:
...one begins to discern a possibility that belief in the relationship between
the poet, the seer, and the fool may be more than an antiquated
superstition due to out-moded ideas about Djinns, Madmen’s Wisps, and
Wells of Inspiration. On the contrary, these errors may rather be mistaken
attempts to formulate the results of genuine experience as available in the
twentieth century as in the so-called Dark Ages—the experience, namely,
of two kinds of wisdom: the wisdom of the intellect, and that which for
want of a better term we may call the wisdom of the spirit. (323)
In our examination of two novels so full of examples of drunken folly, we as readers
must look beyond the failures of “the wisdom of the intellect” that lead characters to
enact foolish, drunken behavior so that we might detect “the wisdom of the spirit” that
reveals the folly of alcohol abuse. For we see in the authors’ lives and in these two works
how narrow, at times indiscernibly so, is the threshold between finding safe and healthy
pleasure in a moderate consumption of alcohol and pursuing a troubling reliance upon
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alcohol in response to life’s problems.
It becomes obvious to the reader that it is in the repetitive and frequent stepping
over the boundary into the latter approach that we find the end result to be a loss of
control to the point of alcoholism. As we consider Tender is the Night and The Sun Also
Rises, the truth of alcohol’s dangers is indeed in the spirit of both novels, as on an
intellectual level both authors allow their characters to charge ahead into self-destructive
drinking behavior, while the “wisdom of the spirit” allows us to observe the dangers
inherent in their rationalizations. We see, for example, Dick Diver “[write] out, like a
prescription, a régime that would cut his liquor in half” while believing in his own mind
that his excessive drinking is merely an “indiscretion” (Tender 254), and we read how
Jake Barnes boldly asserts, “‘I’m not getting drunk,’” in spite of the tremendous amounts
of alcohol he has consumed (Sun 246). In each case, we as readers can recognize a
failure in the wisdom of the intellect, and it is in this recognition—our awareness as
readers of a reality concerning the dangers of alcohol abuse that the characters
themselves stubbornly deny—that I believe we have access to the spirit of wisdom and
truth.
If in their drinking the characters in these works are “contesting the social order,”
as Foucault suggests (340), there would seem to be multiple ways in which we might see
them doing so. To begin with, both novels are situated in the socially volatile postwar
era. In his book Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, Frederick Lewis
Allen talks of the period as a time in which “disillusionment persisted,” and, after
mentioning the sexual escapades of Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, he goes on to say
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of stateside Americans:
...there were millions to whom in some degree came for a time the same
disillusionment and with it the same unhappiness. They could not endure
a life without values, and the only values they had been trained to
understand were being undermined. Everything seemed meaningless and
unimportant. Well, at least one could toss off a few drinks and get a kick
out of physical passion and forget the world was crumbling. (105)
In both novels we can see how the drinking of the American expatriates is surely in some
ways a reaction to the goings-on and the general attitudes present in their homeland.
Both Dick Diver and Jake Barnes, however, also bring their drinking to bear upon their
difficult personal situations—Dick’s occupation as a psychiatrist and his marriage to his
patient Nicole Diver, a woman with serious psychiatric concerns; and Jake’s physical
emasculation and his resultant inability to secure an intimate physical relationship with
any woman, in particular Brett Ashley, the woman he cares for most. Drinking in both of
these novels then is very much a means for these characters of “contesting” more than
just “the social order” that constructs the larger world in which they live, for it seems
quite clear that they are also challenging “the social order” as it impacts them on a very
individual level.
It is necessary to point out that our purpose is not to condemn all consumption of
alcohol or all instances of drunkenness. Anne Fox’s work identifies “drunkenness as an
important social communicator, used for bonding, relief of stress, and promotion of group
solidarity” (Fox 95). Alcohol clearly has an important and enduring place as an element
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of human culture, and the reader can see how alcohol pursues and at times accomplishes
these aims in both of the novels we have examined. Fox goes on to say that
“Unfortunately, the anthropological voice gets lost amid monocausal notions about the
‘inevitable’ results of drinking and the relationship between alcohol and behavior.
Alcohol encapsulates our most ancient and deep-rooted longings for safety, belonging,
praise, transformation, and joy. Drunkenness is an ancient lament” (Fox 95). Yet, for all
of alcohol’s purposes and benefits in fulfilling human needs, the dangers present in
alcohol abuse are undeniably real, as is widely known and as has been demonstrated
throughout the course of this thesis. I would modify Fox’s statement to say that if
“Drunkenness is an ancient lament” as she says, alcoholism is a cacophonic wail, echoing
its tragic outcomes ad infinitum.
This cultural catch-22 of alcohol’s benefits and dangers perhaps helps to explain
the conundrum one finds in the failure of geniuses like Fitzgerald and Hemingway to
behave wisely with regard to their personal consumption of alcohol. As Dardis points out
in commenting on Hemingway’s tribute to Fitzgerald after the latter’s passing,
“Hemingway omits any mention of alcoholism as the primary cause of his friend’s
decline. This omission is not surprising for a man with the same problem” (153).
Geniuses though they were, neither writer could see—and evidently Foucault failed to
state in making his observation—that an “imitation of madness” practiced long enough
and with sufficient devotion seems to lead to a near-perfect replica (Foucault 340), which
in turn leads to an embodiment in the drunkard of the various fool and trickster traits that
this thesis has sought to point out in making the case for the connection between
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drunkenness and the role of the fool and trickster.
Whether in our studies of these works we find “truth” in the form of a revelation
of the human character and the great personal struggles that can lead one to compromise
one’s long-held goals and values, as is the case with Fitzgerald’s declining alcoholic
trickster-doctor, Dick Diver, or whether “truth” is arrived at by way of a critique of the
society from which one is expatriated, as Hemingway manages through the humorous
insights of his oft-inebriated comedy team of Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton, the revealed
truth in either case is masterfully delivered by the hand of one of the great literary
geniuses of the first half of the twentieth century, each of whom was himself burdened
with the “imitation of madness” that alcoholism breeds in its abusers. As both Tender is
the Night and The Sun Also Rises show, alcohol abuse manifests the worst of its madness
in those drunkards who deny its dangers to the point of becoming incapable of seeing that
anything like madness exists in their behavior.
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