The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 1
The Sun Also Rises
By Ernest Hemingway
[ study guide ]
Book Summary
Chapter I of The Sun Also Rises introduces us to the novelist Robert Cohn, a graduate of Princeton
University who married a wealthy woman and founded a literary journal soon after college. When
Cohn's wife left him, he became involved with a woman named Frances Clyne, and they traveled
together to Paris, where they are living at the start of the novel's action. It is the mid-1920's.
Cohn visits the story's narrator and main character, Jake Barnes, in the Paris offices of the newspaper
for which Jake works. Later, Jake picks up a prostitute named Georgette, and the two of them join a
group including Cohn, Frances, and some others. The group goes dancing at a nightclub, where a
woman named Brett (also known as Lady Ashley, because she is, by marriage, a titled British
aristocrat) appears. Cohn is attracted to Brett, but she leaves the club with Jake.
Jake tries to kiss Brett, but she withdraws, telling him that although she loves him, she "can't stand
it." (Apparently, Jake has been castrated in combat during the Great War and cannot consummate
his love for Brett.) They rejoin their friends and are joined in turn by a Greek Count named
Mippipopolous before Jake returns to his apartment, where he lies in bed, drunk and miserable. The
next day, Cohn speculates that he may be in love with Brett, and Frances tells Jake that she believes
Cohn plans to break up with her.
When Brett and the Count visit Jake's apartment, Jake tells Brett he loves her and asks if they can live
together. She replies that doing so is impossible because she would be tempted to cheat on him. She
also tells him that she is about to travel to San Sebastian, a coastal town in the Basque region of
Spain. Later, Brett admits to Jake that she feels miserable, apparently due to her unfulfilled love for
him.
Jake receives a postcard from Brett in San Sebastian, as well as a note from Cohn saying that he's
leaving the country for a while; it is rumored that Frances has gone to England. Jake's friend Bill
Gorton visits Paris, severely intoxicated. They are joined by Brett, back from San Sebastian, and Mike
Campbell, her fiancé. Mike, too, is falling-down drunk.
Jake writes to Robert Cohn in Spain to say that he and Bill will meet Cohn at Bayonne (near the
French-Spanish border) to go fishing together near the Spanish village of Burguete. Mike invites
himself and Brett along, and they arrange to rendezvous in the nearby town of Pamplona. Then Brett
reveals to Jake that Cohn was with her in San Sebastian. Jake and Bill depart Paris via rail and arrive
in Bayonne in the evening. The next morning, Jake, Bill, and Cohn travel to Pamplona; however, Brett
and Mike are not on the train they were scheduled to take. The following day, Jake and Bill go fishing
as planned. Cohn has announced his decision to remain in Pamplona. For five days, Jake and Bill hear
nothing from Cohn, Brett, or Mike. While fishing, they befriend an Englishman named Harris.
After receiving telegrams from both Mike and Cohn, however, Jake and Bill return to Pamplona.
There they meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn before walking to the corrals outside of town to see
the unloading of the bulls for the coming bullfights. At a café afterward, Mike browbeats Cohn for
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 2
tagging after Brett. Apparently, Cohn returned to San Sebastian while Jake and Bill were fishing in
Burguete.
Pamplona's yearly fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days, begins. Musicians and dancers
fill the streets and shops — including the wine store, where Brett is placed on a cask so the Basque
peasants can dance around her as if she were a pagan idol. Jake sleeps while his friends stay out all
night and then attend the running of the bulls from the corrals to the bullring, through the streets of
town. Jake meets the 19-year-old matador Pedro Romero, and the next day, after Romero performs
admirably in the ring, Brett cannot help talking about her attraction to him.
The hotelier Montoya visits Jake to express his concern that mixing with rich tourists will corrupt
Romero. Later, at dinner, Brett invites the bullfighter to her table. Montoya looks on with
disapproval. Once again, Mike picks on Cohn. Brett too lashes out at him, then tells Jake that she
feels guilty for having slept with Cohn while engaged to Mike. She asks Jake if he loves her, and when
Jake says that he does, Brett says she is in love with Romero. So Jake helps Brett find the matador in
a café, where they flirt openly. Jake leaves; when he returns, the two are gone. Later, Cohn calls Jake
a pimp, and in the ensuing fistfight, Jake is beaten up. The next day, Mike reports that Cohn found
Brett in Romero's room and beat the bullfighter up, too, after which Cohn cried. Mike admits that he
is upset by his fiancée's promiscuity.
On the last day of the fiesta, Cohn has left town, presumably to return to Frances. Jake and Brett
pray at the Pamplona cathedral before she visits Romero. Then Jake, Brett, and Bill attend the
bullfight, in which Romero, beloved of the crowd, performs spectacularly. Brett leaves town also, in
the company of the matador.
The rest of the group splits up. Jake travels to San Sebastian, where he relaxes alone in cafés and on
the beach. Soon, however, a telegram from Brett arrives, begging him to join her in Madrid. Jake
finds Brett in her hotel room there, devastated by the end of her affair with Romero. Brett reveals
that it was she who ended the relationship, and that she intends to return to Mike.
Plot Overview
The Sun Also Rises opens with the narrator, Jake Barnes, delivering a brief biographical sketch of his
friend, Robert Cohn. Jake is a veteran of World War I who now works as a journalist in Paris. Cohn is
also an American expatriate, although not a war veteran. He is a rich Jewish writer who lives in Paris
with his forceful and controlling girlfriend, Frances Clyne. Cohn has become restless of late, and he
comes to Jake’s office one afternoon to try to convince Jake to go with him to South America. Jake
refuses, and he takes pains to get rid of Cohn. That night at a dance club, Jake runs into Lady Brett
Ashley, a divorced socialite and the love of Jake’s life. Brett is a free-spirited and independent
woman, but she can be very selfish at times. She and Jake met in England during World War I, when
Brett treated Jake for a war wound. During Jake and Brett’s conversation, it is subtly implied that
Jake’s injury rendered him impotent. Although Brett loves Jake, she hints that she is unwilling to give
up sex, and that for this reason she will not commit to a relationship with him.
The next morning, Jake and Cohn have lunch. Cohn is quite taken with Brett, and he gets angry when
Jake tells him that Brett plans to marry Mike Campbell, a heavy-drinking Scottish war veteran. That
afternoon, Brett stands Jake up. That night, however, she arrives unexpectedly at his apartment with
Count Mippipopolous, a rich Greek expatriate. After sending the count out for champagne, Brett tells
Jake that she is leaving for San Sebastian, in Spain, saying it will be easier on both of them to be
apart.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 3
Several weeks later, while Brett and Cohn are both traveling outside of Paris, one of Jake’s friends, a
fellow American war veteran named Bill Gorton, arrives in Paris. Bill and Jake make plans to leave for
Spain to do some fishing and later attend the fiesta at Pamplona. Jake makes plans to meet Cohn on
the way to Pamplona. Jake runs into Brett, who has returned from San Sebastian; with her is Mike,
her fiancé. They ask if they may join Jake in Spain, and he politely responds that they may. When
Mike leaves for a moment, Brett reveals to Jake that she and Cohn were in San Sebastian together.
Bill and Jake take a train from Paris to Bayonne, in the south of France, where they meet Cohn. The
three men travel together into Spain, to Pamplona. They plan on meeting Brett and Mike that night,
but the couple does not show up. Bill and Jake decide to leave for a small town called Burguete to
fish, but Cohn chooses to stay and wait for Brett. Bill and Jake travel to the Spanish countryside and
check into a small, rural inn. They spend five pleasant days fishing, drinking, and playing cards.
Eventually, Jake receives a letter from Mike. He writes that he and Brett will be arriving in Pamplona
shortly. Jake and Bill leave on a bus that afternoon to meet the couple. After arriving in Pamplona,
Jake and Bill check into a hotel owned by Montoya, a Spanish bullfighting expert who likes Jake for
his earnest interest in the sport. Jake and Bill meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn, and the whole
group goes to watch the bulls being unloaded in preparation for the bullfights during the fiesta. Mike
mocks Cohn harshly for following Brett around when he is not wanted.
After a few more days of preparation, the fiesta begins. The city is consumed with dancing, drinking,
and general debauchery. The highlight of the first day is the first bullfight, at which Pedro Romero, a
nineteen-year-old prodigy, distinguishes himself above all the other bullfighters. Despite its violence,
Brett cannot take her eyes off the bullfight, or Romero. A few days later, Jake and his friends are at
the hotel dining room, and Brett notices Romero at a nearby table. She persuades Jake to introduce
her to him. Mike again verbally abuses Cohn, and they almost come to blows before Jake defuses the
situation. Later that night, Brett asks Jake to help her find Romero, with whom she says she has fallen
in love. Jake agrees to help, and Brett and Romero spend the night together.
Jake then meets up with Mike and Bill, who are both extremely drunk. Cohn soon arrives, demanding
to know where Brett is. After an exchange of insults, Cohn attacks Mike and Jake, knocking them
both out. When Jake returns to the hotel, he finds Cohn lying face down on his bed and crying. Cohn
begs Jake’s forgiveness, and Jake reluctantly grants it. The next day, Jake learns from Bill and Mike
that the night before Cohn also beat up Romero when he discovered the bullfighter with Brett; Cohn
later begged Romero to shake hands with him, but Romero refused.
At the bullfight that afternoon, Romero fights brilliantly, dazzling the crowd by killing a bull that had
gored a man to death in the streets. Afterward, he cuts the bull’s ear off and gives it to Brett. After
this final bullfight, Romero and Brett leave for Madrid together. Cohn has left that morning, so only
Bill, Mike, and Jake remain as the fiesta draws to a close.
The next day, the three remaining men rent a car and drive out of Spain to Bayonne and then go
their separate ways. Jake heads back into Spain to San Sebastian, where he plans to spend several
quiet days relaxing. He receives a telegram from Brett, however, asking him to come meet her in
Madrid. He complies, and boards an overnight train that same day. Jake finds Brett alone in a Madrid
hotel room. She has broken with Romero, fearing that she would ruin him and his career. She
announces that she now wants to return to Mike. Jake books tickets for them to leave Madrid. As
they ride in a taxi through the Spanish capital, Brett laments that she and Jake could have had a
wonderful time together. Jake responds, “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 4
About The Sun Also Rises
Like Hemingway's later novel A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises offers the reader two stories in
one: a war story and a love story. What's remarkable about this book — truly radical, really — is the
fact that it features no scenes of battle whatsoever (not even in flashback) and no love scenes.
Hemingway took on an enormous challenge when he wrote this, his first full-length novel. Most
readers would agree that he rose to that challenge and perhaps surpassed it.
Some necessary historical background: World War I (or the Great War, as it was known at the time)
began in August 1914 with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The war pitted
the Central Powers (Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) against the allied forces of Great
Britain, France, Russia, and Italy, who were joined in 1917 by the United States. Largely as a result of
the entry of the U.S. into the conflict (by which time Russia had withdrawn and Italy was effectively
defeated), the Great War ended in victory for the Allies. Both sides agreed to an armistice on
November 11, 1918.
Other nicknames for World War I were "the War to End All Wars" and "the War to Save Democracy."
There was a feeling on the part of many Americans who were drafted in 1917 and 1918 (as well as
those like Hemingway himself who enlisted for service in the armed forces of other allied nations
before the U.S. entered the fighting) that they were involved in a conflict that would change the
world in fundamental ways. Additionally, most returned home after the armistice far more worldly
and sophisticated than when they left. And yet, the Americans who hadn't served were as provincial
and isolationist as they'd been before the war — more so, in fact, as a new mood of conservatism
swept the country.
This reactionary period manifested itself in a number of ways:





Rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations proposed
therein.
Ratification in January 1920 of the Eighteenth Amendment, which forbade the manufacture
and sale of all intoxicating beverages.
The so-called Great Red Scare, set off by the spread of communism in Europe following the
1917 Russian Revolution, and by labor unrest in the States. Like the McCarthy Era of the late
1940s, the Red Scare period involved widespread suspicion and denunciation of Americans as
communists and/or socialists.
The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1915 and dedicated to attacking African-Americans,
Jews, Roman Catholics, and others. The Klan's membership had grown to five million by 1924,
the year before The Sun Also Rises takes place.
Legislative restrictions on immigration, especially from southern and eastern Europe, in the
Immigration Act of 1921 and the Johnson Act (1924).
One result of the ugly postwar mood was a series of novels by U.S. writers critical of American
provincialism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and racism. These include Sherwood Anderson's
Winesburg, Ohio (1919); Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922); and An American
Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser. The journalist H.L. Mencken was the unofficial leader of this
movement to satirize, criticize, and thereby strike blows against what many saw as a moral failure on
the part of American society at large.
A second, related response on the part of American writers involved leaving the country altogether,
and many — best-selling novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Modernist poet Ezra Pound, among others —
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 5
did just that. They joined disaffected English- and Irishmen like Ford Maddox Ford and James Joyce in
Paris, in a social and artistic circle that formed around the writer Gertrude Stein, herself an American
expatriate. Stein is responsible for one of the epigraphs that introduce The Sun Also Rises ("You are
all a lost generation") and it was she who served as a creative writing teacher to Ernest Hemingway,
who left the States in 1921.
Hemingway himself had fought, and was wounded, in the Great War, and as his short story "Soldier's
Home" illustrates, the writer-to-be felt profoundly alienated upon his return to the U.S. He moved to
Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and in addition to making the acquaintance of Stein and her cohorts,
he befriended many others (Hemingway was famously gregarious as well as remarkably handsome)
from different countries and social classes, all of whom the war had affected profoundly. While
employed as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway traveled around Europe,
worked at improving his storytelling skills, and socialized tirelessly with fellow veterans and others in
Paris and elsewhere. It is these experiences that provided him with the then-unique and foreverunforgettable milieu of The Sun Also Rises: the so-called Lost Generation and their exploits in the
cafés and nightclubs of Paris, as well as on fishing trips and at the bullfights in Spain.
Though this is easy to lose sight of amidst the frenzy of Parisian nights and the Spanish fiesta, bear in
mind that the novel's central characters are both veterans: Jake Barnes flew an airplane in the Great
War, while Brett Ashley served in a wartime hospital. In fact, one of the novel's primary dichotomies
is between those characters who are war veterans (Jake; Brett; Brett's fiancé, Mike Campbell; Count
Mippipopolous) and those, like Robert Cohn, who are not. (Bill Gorton's status is unclear; perhaps he
was a war correspondent.) Nearly everything that goes on in The Sun Also Rises is a reaction to the
trauma of the war, both physical and psychic, from the almost unbelievable consumption of alcohol
by the veterans and their compulsive traveling from place to place, to Brett's sexual promiscuity and
the healing fishing trip taken by Jake and Bill. If the Great War hadn't happened, we are meant to
understand, these characters would be doing very different things.
Which brings us to The Sun Also Rises as a love story. Even the most casual reader recognizes that
Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley share a profound mutual attraction. They love one another deeply, and
their carnal desire for each other is fierce. The problem: Jake has been wounded in the war in such a
way that sexual intercourse is now impossible for him. Significantly, the particular nature of his
wound has not ruled out desire, just its satisfaction. (It seems that he has lost his penis but not his
testicles.) Therefore, being near Brett is agony for Jake. He could probably satisfy her sexually, and he
may have done so during the period referred to when they attempted a relationship. But Jake
himself exists in a kind of erotic limbo, like Greek mythology's Tantalus, who keeps bending over to
drink the water he stands in, only to have it drain away immediately.
Note that the cause of Jake's agony was an airplane that crashed. The early Moderns believed that
industrialization, with its laborsaving and communication-enhancing devices, was wholly good, and
that an increase in the mechanization of life could only make living easier, happier, better. The
combatants in World War I discovered that the opposite was true: mass-produced, mechanized tools
of destruction — tanks, planes, submarines, mines and machine guns, not to mention deadly
mustard gas — made life on earth more terrible than ever before. Moreover, in this war, a soldier
might kill and be killed without ever seeing the enemy. The Great War was the first truly anonymous
war; in this conflict, the individual was entirely dispensable.
Thus, Jake is not merely a casualty of war in general, like the characters of Homer, Tolstoy, and
others before him. Bayonets were still in use at this time; Hemingway could have made Jake a victim
of one. Instead, Jake is injured specifically by the Great War's modern aspect — by modernity itself,
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 6
one might say. Hemingway expanded upon this theme in A Farewell to Arms, the hero of which is
famously wounded by an enemy bomb while eating a bowl of spaghetti.
As a result, we have a love story in which it is clear from the start that the lovers will never be
together. At least, they will never be happy together. In the vast majority of stories ever told, there is
at least some possibility that the protagonist, or main character, will get what he or she wants by the
end. In The Sun Also Rises, it becomes quickly evident that Jake will not — cannot — "get" Brett.
How, then, will Hemingway retain our interest in the goings-on he describes? Because we know the
conclusion of the story at its outset, why read on? (The short answer: Hemingway's characterization
of Jake, Brett, and the rest, who are portrayed with such originality and believability that they seem
like real people to us.)
The Sun Also Rises is probably Ernest Hemingway's greatest novel, largely because it is more
inventive in its treatment of love and war than the other work that vies for this distinction, A
Farewell to Arms, published four years later. Both are less propagandistic than Hemingway's third
great war story, For Whom the Bell Tolls — which relies partly on flashback for its effect and also
descends at times into the stylistic mannerism that marred Hemingway's later work. Certainly The
Sun Also Rises is vastly superior to the remaining Hemingway novels (To Have and Have Not and
Across the River and Into the Trees, and the posthumously published Islands in the Stream and The
Garden of Eden) as well as the novellas The Torrents of Spring (which preceded The Sun Also Rises)
and The Old Man and the Sea. In fact, the only other volume in the Hemingway oeuvre that stands
up to a comparison with The Sun Also Rises is the writer's debut story collection, In Our Time. That
book's postwar tales, "Soldier's Home" and "Big Two-Hearted River," both share a subject with The
Sun Also Rises. "Big Two-Hearted River" was perhaps a kind of rehearsal for this novel; it is a story
about war's destructiveness that never even mentions war — not once.
The action of The Sun Also Rises takes place during the mid-1920s in three locations:



Paris, mainly the city's Latin Quarter and Montparnasse districts, on the Left Bank south of
the River Seine. Because the University of Paris is located in the Latin Quarter, intellectuals
and artists have frequented this neighborhood for centuries.
The Basque region of France and Spain. For hundreds if not thousands of years, a distinct
people known as the Basques have occupied three provinces in the southwest of France and
four in northern Spain. The Basque country straddles the Pyrenees mountains, and it faces
the Atlantic Ocean on one side. (The resort town of San Sebastian is located here.) The town
of Pamplona, the setting of much of The Sun Also Rises, is in the Spanish province of Navarra,
in the Basque region's rural interior. The Basques speak a language that is entirely unrelated
to either Spanish or French, and they are credited with inventing the beret (worn by Brett and
Mike in the novel), the espadrille (a rope-soled shoe), and the game of jai alai. The Basques
are fiercely independent, which may partially explain the attraction of the region to Jake,
Brett, and the others; it is a place apart from the rest of Europe and, thus, to some degree,
apart from European history, including the Great War.
Madrid, capital of Spain.
Character List

Jake Barnes An American veteran of World War I who lives and works as a journalist in Paris
during the 1920s.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 7












Robert Cohn A young American novelist living in Paris at the same time. Unlike Jake, Cohn did
not fight in the war.
Brett, Lady Ashley An Englishwoman loved by Jake who loves him in turn. She worked in a
military hospital during World War I.
Bill Gorton Jake's good friend, a writer who did not serve in the war but may have covered it
as a correspondent.
Mike Campbell Brett's fiancé, an alcoholic Scotsman and war veteran.
Pedro Romero An attractive young matador who shows great promise in the bullring.
Frances Clyne Robert Cohn's American fiancée.
Count Mippipopolous A wealthy, older Greek nobleman who escorts Brett around Paris.
Harris An Englishman who joins Jake and Bill for games of bridge during their fishing vacation.
Georgette Hobin A Parisian prostitute picked up by Jake, who joins him for dinner and
dancing afterward.
Harvey Stone A writer and a friend of Jake in Paris.
Montoya A hotelier in the town of Pamplona, in Spain's Basque country.
Edna A young American woman picked up by Bill during the fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona.
Summary and Analysis of Full Chapters
Summary and Analysis Chapter I
Summary
Chapter I introduces us to Robert Cohn, who will serve as a foil to the novel's narrator and
protagonist, Jake Barnes. Cohn is descended from two prominent New York Jewish families. He
encountered anti-Semitism in college, at Princeton, and learned to box as a response to it. Soon
after college, Cohn married a wealthy woman with whom he had three children, but his wife left
him for a painter. Cohn founded a journal and then became involved with a jealous and
controlling woman named Frances who was determined to marry him. He traveled with her to
Europe, settling in Paris after a year. They have stayed for two years. Financially supported by his
mother, Cohn wrote a novel that was not well-received by critics.
Analysis
Rather than a series of scenes, the first chapter of The Sun Also Rises consists mainly of
exposition, or background — information we need to know in order to understand and
appreciate the story to come. Most of this background takes the form of characterization.
Strangely, however, the character described is not the novel's hero but his foil, the man who will
serve to highlight the protagonist's strengths and weaknesses by contrast.
Thus, we learn almost nothing explicit about Jake Barnes himself. Instead, Jake tells us about his
tennis partner, Robert Cohn. Apparently, Cohn is insecure, self-conscious, perpetually broke, and
a dabbler in the arts. He allows himself to be controlled by the women in his life — his mother,
his wife, and his lover.
Note that Jake's résumé-like recitation of Cohn's experiences and accomplishments makes no
mention of service in the armed forces. Though it is not quite clear yet, the time frame of this
novel is the years just after World War I; significantly, Cohn did not participate in the fighting.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 8
Meanwhile, we are learning about Jake himself via the ways in which he describes his friend. "I
mistrust all frank and simple people," Jake tells us. The following remark about Cohn exposes
Jake almost immediately as cynical, even bitter: "As he had been thinking for months about
leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her
departure was a very healthful shock." Jake is also competitive to an unappealing degree. Note
the cattiness in the remark "He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics
later called it. . . ." Jake tells us that Cohn is self-conscious, but the fact that Jake begins his own
story by describing someone else speaks volumes about the narrator's insecurity. For reasons
that will soon become clear, Jake declines at first to tell his own tale.
Chapter I introduces the theme that love can wound a person. Cohn's lover, Frances, literally
hurts Jake by kicking him under the table in an effort to discourage him from inviting Cohn on a
trip to visit another woman. And Cohn's first wife left him for a painter of miniatures. Women are
fickle in The Sun Also Rises.
Also, by means of references to locales like Ardennes and Alsace made famous by World War I,
we sense here the first intimations that this novel will be a special kind of war story: a post-war
story. For the moment, the war plays no particular part in the novel. But that will change.
Finally, the famous Hemingway style is not as apparent in this chapter as it is later in The Sun Also
Rises and in later Hemingway stories and novels. But note the author's use throughout this
chapter of a limited vocabulary, necessitating the repetition of individual words, and short
declarative sentences ("He was Spider Kelly's star pupil") or chains of these sentences linked by
conjunctions to form long, compound sentences:
"I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always
had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and
that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or
seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had
somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly."
Also, Hemingway tends to emphasize concrete experiences rather than abstract ideas, though he
has less of a chance to do so in this exposition-rich chapter than in later chapters composed
mainly of scenes.
Glossary
middleweight a boxer between a junior middleweight and a super middleweight, with a
maximum weight of 160 pounds.
Princeton an Ivy League university located in the town of Princeton, in central New Jersey.
featherweight a boxer between a junior featherweight and a junior lightweight, with a maximum
weight of 126 pounds.
prepped attended a preparatory school.
miniature-painter a painter of very small paintings, especially portraits, done on ivory, vellum,
and so on.
the Coast the West Coast of the United States.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 9
a review of the Arts a journal, perhaps published quarterly and probably containing fiction,
poetry and criticism.
Carmel, California . . . Provincetown, Massachusetts a town on the California coast north of Los
Angeles, and a town at the tip of Cape Cod. Traditionally, both towns have welcomed artists and
writers.
L'Avenue's a Parisian restaurant.
Café de Versailles a Parisian café.
fines (French) brandies.
Strasbourg a city and port in northeastern France, on the Rhine.
Alsace a historical region of northeastern France, under German control from 1871 to 1919.
Bruges French name for a city in northwestern Belgium.
Ardennes a wooded plateau in northeastern France, southern Belgium, and Luxembourg; the
scene of heavy fighting in World War I.
Senlis a town in northern France, northeast of Paris.
Grand Cerf a hotel in or near Senlis, apparently.
courts tennis courts.
kiosque (French) a small structure open at one or more sides.
Summary and Analysis Chapter II
Summary
After his return from a trip to America, Robert Cohn visits Jake Barnes in the offices of the
newspaper where Jake works, in Paris. Cohn suggests a trip to South America, even offering to
pay Jake's way, but Jake declines, suggesting British East Africa and then encouraging Cohn to
enjoy Paris itself. The two share a drink, after which Jake returns to work and Cohn falls asleep in
a chair outside Jake's office.
Analysis
Although the events dramatized in this chapter are trivial, they offer Jake additional
opportunities to react to Robert Cohn, thereby further characterizing both Cohn and himself.
Now Cohn seems "not so simple" as he was before visiting his American publisher and "not so
nice," according to Jake. After an unsuccessful marriage at a young age and his rebound
relationship with Frances, Cohn is discovering that women find him attractive, and this, combined
with the publication of his novel, has given him a swelled head. Also, Jake tells us that reading a
book called The Purple Land has given Cohn unrealistic expectations about life and love; these
expectations in turn have made Cohn dissatisfied.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 10
Jake, on the other hand, knows the hard truths about the world — presumably from experience,
though we don't yet know the particular nature of that experience. Jake admires bullfighters
because they live their lives "all the way up." Although a writer, Jake knows that you can't learn
about the world from the "splendid imaginary amorous adventures" described in a book. Only
living itself — preferably "all the way up" — is truly valuable in this way. The reference in this
chapter to bullfighting also foreshadows much of the novel's second half.
Finally, the mystery of Jake's situation deepens, and our interest in him increases
correspondingly. Cohn points out that both of them will be dead in thirty-five years, and Jake's
response is that "It's one thing I don't worry about" — inspiring the reader to wonder what Jake
does worry about. In response to Cohn's suggested South America journey, Jake has this to say:
"[G]oing to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away
from yourself by moving from one place to another." Why did Jake try "all that"? Why would he
want to get away from himself? Finally, and most intriguingly, Jake tells us of his "rotten habit of
picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends." The plot thickens, so to speak.
Glossary
W.H. Hudson William Henry Hudson (1841–1922), a writer raised in Argentina by American
parents whose subjects include South America and England.
"The Purple Land" The Purple Land That England Lost by W.H. Hudson, a romance set in South
America and published in 1885.
Alger Horatio Alger (1832–1899), U.S. writer of boys' stories; his books typically deal with rags-toriches stories of young boys advancing from poverty to wealth and acclaim.
an R.G. Dun report precursor of Dun & Bradstreet, an agency furnishing subscribers with
information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses.
boat train a train scheduled to be at a port in time for the prompt transfer of passengers to or
from a ship.
a week's mail stories Jake is a foreign correspondent for a North American newspaper. He refers
here to his week's quota of articles to be mailed overseas.
British East Africa the former name of the country now known as Kenya.
get off some cables send newspaper stories overseas via telegram.
the Quarter the Latin Quarter, a section of Paris south of the River Seine where many artists and
students live.
carbons carbon copies of typewritten pages.
by-line a line identifying the writer of a newspaper or magazine article.
Gare St. Lazare railroad station located in Paris's 8th Arrondisement.
Café Napolitain a Parisian café.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 11
apéritif an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite.
Boulevard Boulevard St.-Germain, the "main drag" of Paris's Latin Quarter.
Summary and Analysis Chapter III
Summary
Sitting in an outdoor café, Jake picks up a prostitute named Georgette and they ride a horsedrawn cab into Paris's Latin Quarter. Sharing dinner at a restaurant there, Jake and Georgette are
discovered by a group of North Americans: Robert Cohn and Frances, Jake's friend Braddocks and
his wife, and some others. The group goes dancing at a nightclub, where a woman named Brett
(also known as Lady Ashley, because she is a titled British aristocrat) appears in the company of a
group of homosexual men. Cohn is obviously attracted to Brett, who seems to have been
involved with Jake at some time in the past. (Jake admits to the reader that her arrival with the
gay men makes him angry, while Brett seems jealous of Georgette.) Brett suggests to Jake that
they leave the club. They hail a cab, and Brett tells Jake she has been miserable.
Analysis
The plot gathers steam as Jake's love interest (Brett Ashley) enters the novel. And by chapter's
end it is clear (by means of each character's jealousy of the other's companions) that Jake and
Brett have a past, yet apparently they are unattached at the moment. Having introduced his
narrator/protagonist, the hero's foil (Cohn), and a mysterious woman whom both seem drawn to,
Hemingway has arranged the fundamental components of his story. The result: We read on
eagerly, somewhat confused — but definitely intrigued — by this odd love triangle.
Regarding his famous style, examine Hemingway's introduction of Brett: "Brett was damned
good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed
back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and
you missed none of it with that wool jersey." Note first of all the sparseness of the writer's
description, despite the fact that Brett will occupy the very center of the story to come.
(Generally, Hemingway was uninterested in cataloguing the physical appearance of his
characters.) Secondly, repetition ("She . . . She . . . She . . .") creates a trancelike effect.
(Hemingway learned this technique from the writer Gertrude Stein, an American expatriate in
France who is quoted in one of this novel's epigraphs.) Finally, like his response to Cohn, this
reaction characterizes Jake as much as it does the character he describes. Far from being
indifferent to Brett's allure, our narrator feels a powerful sexual attraction to her.
The irony of Jake's condition will soon become clear, though piecing it together can challenge a
reader, especially a contemporary reader accustomed to candor and explicitness in regard to
matters of sexuality. But as you read on, keep in mind Jake's rebuffing of the prostitute
Georgette's physical advances, and his explanation for his indifference to her ("I got hurt in the
war") as well as his seemingly irrational anger at the gay men who accompany Brett to the club
and then dance with the women.
Written in the early 1920s, The Sun Also Rises is as extreme an example of the Modernist
approach to art as the paintings of Picasso or Stravinsky's music. One thing that Modernist artists
often do in their work is to remind us of pre-Modern art before rejecting the old approach as
outdated, even phony, and Hemingway is no exception. The famous nineteenth-century novel
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 12
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert contains a scene of a sexual liaison in the back of a horsedrawn cab that was scandalous in its day and remained notorious thereafter. Chapter III puts Jake
Barnes in just such a potentially-erotic situation — with a prostitute, no less, who promptly tries
to initiate sex. Jake rejects her advances. By first reminding us of Madame Bovary and then foiling
the expectations that this reference inspires, Hemingway seems to be saying that the old ways of
telling stories are no longer adequate.
Finally, notice Jake and Brett's dialogue in this chapter, and how much it tells us about their
relationship. They talk in a kind of shorthand, and the fact that so much between them is left
unsaid indicates how well they know each other — how intimate they have been. Once again,
dialogue has been used to characterize. In Chapter III of The Sun Also Rises, Jake admits to us that
Brett's arrival at the dancehall makes him angry. When both Robert Prentiss ("how charmingly
you get angry") and Robert Cohn ("You seem all worked up over something?") notice Jake's
anger, however, we know just how extreme it must be.
Glossary
poules (French) literally, hen; slang for prostitute.
Pernod a particular brand of anise, a French or Spanish liqueur flavored with aniseed.
Dites garçon, un pernod (French) Tell the waiter, a pernod.
absinthe a green, bitter, toxic liqueur made with wormwood oil and anise, now illegal in most
countries.
fiacre (French) hackney-coach, cab.
Avenue de l'Opéra a boulevard running southwest from the Place de l'Opera to the Palais Royal,
on the right bank of the Seine in Paris.
New York Herald a now-defunct daily newspaper.
Rue des Pyramides a street connecting the Avenue de l'Opera with the Rue de Rivoli.
Rue de Rivoli a boulevard that parallels the Seine, on Paris's right bank.
Tuileries the Jardin des Tuileries, public gardens on the right bank of the Seine.
Seine a river in northern France, flowing northwest through France into the English Channel.
Rue des Saints Pères a street on the Left Bank, perpendicular to the Boulevard St. Germain.
Flemish of Flanders or its people, language, or culture.
Flamand (French) Flemish.
cocher (French) coachman, driver.
Foyot's a Parisian restaurant.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 13
Liège a province of eastern Belgium, or its capital, on the Meuse River.
Brussels the capital of Belgium, in the central part.
Connais pas (French) I don't know.
bal musette (French) bagpipe dance
Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève a street in the Latin Quarter.
Pantheon quarter the Left Bank district surrounding the Pantheon, a "Temple of Fame" where
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, and others are buried.
white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, talking a homosexual stereotype.
cognac a French brandy distilled from wine in the area of Cognac, France.
fine à l'eau (French) brandy and water.
tight (Slang) drunk.
his compatriot Moses, who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. A reference to Cohn's
Jewishness.
her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. Jake seems to be claiming that Brett
initiated the 1920s fashion for short, or "bobbed," hair on women.
Montmartre a district of Paris, in the northern part; noted for its cafés and as an artists' quarter.
patronne (French) proprietress.
C'est entendu, Monsieur (French) It is understood, sir.
Summary and Analysis Chapter IV
Summary
As they ride through the streets of Paris in a cab, Jake tries to kiss Brett, but she withdraws,
telling him that, although she loves him, she "can't stand it." They talk elliptically about Jake's
condition before rejoining their friends at a café in the Montparnasse section of the city. The
Count Mippipopolous joins the group, and Jake learns that Georgette has gone home after
causing a scene at the dance club. Cohn and Frances have gone home, too. Jake leaves Brett with
the Count and goes home himself, where he lies in bed, drunk and miserable. He sleeps, only to
be awakened at 4:30 by an extremely intoxicated Brett. They share a drink, she tells him that the
Count has invited her to travel with him, and Jake finally sends her home.
Analysis
Finally, Hemingway makes the nature of Jake's problematic condition clear (or as clear as he will
ever make it, in this extremely subtle story). Reading between the lines, and keeping in mind the
hints dropped during the book's prior chapters, one can deduce the following: While fighting on
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 14
the Italian front during World War I, Jake was somehow castrated. (This is what the Italian liaison
colonel means when he says to Jake, "You . . . have given more than your life.") "Of all the ways
to be wounded," indeed!
Thus, Jake can never consummate his love for Brett. Valiantly, he tries to think of his disability as
some sort of cosmic joke — and Brett sees it as punishment for being free with her sexuality.
Their plight is genuinely tragic, however, because of the particular nature of the wound. Recall
Jake's lascivious description of Brett's body in Chapter III ("She was built with curves like the hull
of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey"), as well as the eroticallycharged way he sees her in the cab at the start of this chapter. Jake's castration has not
eliminated his sexual desire, only his ability to fulfill that desire. (Erection and ejaculation are
both physiologically impossible.) Therefore, even looking at Brett is agony for him, and for her as
well, because she understands the pain he's in. No wonder Jake feels rage toward Brett's gay
companions, men who presumably could make love to her but are uninterested in doing so. And
yet Jake will spend much of the story watching Brett go off with other men (like the Count, in this
chapter), even encouraging her to do so.
Chapter IV is crucial, because it is here, at last, that Hemingway clarifies the conflict of The Sun
Also Rises. To reiterate: The protagonist, Jake Barnes, wants Brett Ashley, but he can't "have" her,
despite Brett's reciprocal feelings. "Isn't there something we can do about it?" Jake asks. The
reader, who empathizes with Jake's pathetic lot, wants to know this as well, and reads on. The
fact that, as Jake says, "there's not a damn thing we can do" is another aspect of The Sun Also
Rises that marks the book as Modernist — as genuinely experimental, in fact. In the tradition of
all the books that came before it, this novel has a powerful conflict at its center. And yet the
conflict would seem to be insolvable. Hemingway's experiment: Can he hold our attention
anyway, much less leave us fulfilled in the end?
Note the phallic references that make brutal fun of Jake's condition. At the start of the chapter,
he and Brett travel "up . . . then levelled [sic] out" and finally "went smoothly down,"
immediately after which Jake tries to kiss Brett and she recoils. A few pages later, they sit in the
cab "like two strangers" while passing by a pool of live trout (a phallic fish), which is closed and
dark. "I've never let you down, have I?" Brett inquires of Jake later. Even the novel's title and the
biblical passage to which it alludes participate in the book's black humor: You may not "rise," the
title taunts Jake, but at least the sun does.
Be sure to observe the careful characterization of Brett up to this point, though much of it occurs
between the lines. We know that she is attractive to men — not just Jake, but Cohn and the
Count and even the homosexuals with whom she is first seen. This despite a distinctly
androgynous quality to her appearance: Brett has cut her hair short, she wears a man's hat, and
she refers to everyone, including herself, as "chaps." The writer subtly links her to prostitutes —
first Brett is mistaken for Georgette and later she is offered money by the Count to accompany
him on a trip. (More will be made of this later in the book.) Finally, Jake sums up what may be the
most significant characteristic of Brett's personality: "I suppose she only wanted what she
couldn't have," he tells us bitterly.
It is Brett who introduces the theme of payment for bad behavior, as if life's misfortunes are
some sort of fine levied for sin. "When I think of the hell I've put chaps through," she says to Jake.
"I'm paying for it all now." Brett seems to think that there is a logic to the universe — that life,
though often painful, is at least fair. One of the bitter lessons of The Sun Also Rises is the
wrongheadedness of that philosophy.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 15
Stylistically, notice the emphasis here on the concrete and specific; this chapter is practically a
catalogue of streets and parks, restaurants and bars in 1920s Paris. Do we really need to know
exactly how much money is in Jake's bank account, as well as the fact that he reads not one but
two bullfighting papers? Clearly, Hemingway believes that it is exactly these banal details that
bring a scene to life. Reading about Jake's bank balance, it's hard not to think that the events in
this book of fiction really happened, though of course they did not.
Also, Hemingway introduces passages that combine Gertrude Stein's penchant for repetition with
the Irish novelist James Joyce's "stream of consciousness" technique; the latter attempts to
reproduce on the page the illogical workings of the human mind. In this case the human is drunk:
"I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn't keep away from it, and I
started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my
mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I
started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go
by and way down the street, and then I went to sleep."
Glossary
St. Etienne du Mont a church on a hilltop northeast of the Pantheon, in the Latin Quarter of
Paris.
Place de la Contrescarpe, Rue Mouffetard, Aveue des Gobelins streets between St. Etienne du
Mont and Parc Montsouris, on the Left Bank of the Seine.
Café Select a café in the Montparnasse district, southwest of the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank
of the Seine.
Boulevard Montparnasse the "main drag" of the Montparnasse district.
Boulevard Raspail an avenue connecting Boulevard St. Germain and Boulevard du Montparnasse,
on the Left Bank of the Seine.
Something the patronne's daughter said Presumably an insult regarding Georgette's profession.
corking (Informal) very good or well; excellently.
the Crillon the Bar du Crillon at the Hôtel du Crillon, across from the U.S. Embassy on the Place de
la Concorde; one of Europe's grandest hotels.
Boulevard St. Michel an avenue connecting Montparnasse with the Latin Quarter.
the Rotonde a café that still stands on the Boulevard du Montparnasse.
the Dome, Lavigne's, Closerie des Lilas Parisian cafés.
Ney Michel Ney, Duc D'Elchingen, Prince de La Muskova (1769–1815); French military leader
under Napoleon I; executed.
arc-light a lamp in which brilliant light is produced by maintaining an arc between two electrodes.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 16
Bonapartist Groups those who supported the Bonaparte dynasty in France
concierge a custodian or head porter, as of an apartment house or hotel.
Le Toril a periodical covering bullfighting.
Petite Correspondance (French) little correspondence; letters to the editor.
Cornigrams items about bullfighting, presumably.
Ospedale Maggiore the great hospital in Milan, which is the setting of part of Hemingway's A
Farewell to Arms.
Milano Italian name for Milan; a commune in northwestern Italy, in Lombardy.
Padiglione Ponte Ponte Pavilion, apparently the wing of the hospital where Jake was treated.
Padiglione Zonda another hospital pavilion.
You . . . have given more than your life Jake has made what the Italian liaison colonel considers
the ultimate sacrifice: he was castrated in battle.
Che mala fortuna (Italian) What bad luck.
He's quite one of us a reference to wartime experience; Jake is a veteran, and Brett served as a
nurse. Again, Cohn did not serve, perhaps because he was simply too young; therefore, he is "one
of them."
Biarritz aresort town in southwestern France, on the Bay of Biscay.
Cannes a city in southeastern France, on the Riviera.
Monte Carlo a town in Monaco; gambling resort.
the Bois the Bois de Boulogne, an enormous Parisian park.
Mumms a brand of Champagne.
cordon a keychain
Summary and Analysis Chapter V
Summary
The next morning, Jake walks to work, attends a news conference, and shares a cab with two
fellow correspondents back to the office, where Robert Cohn awaits. They go out to lunch, during
which Cohn quizzes Jake about Brett and speculates that he may be in love with her. They quarrel
briefly, then make up, after which Cohn says that Jake is his best friend.
Analysis
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 17
The plot moves forward in Chapter V, as Cohn announces his attraction to Brett. Additionally,
Cohn's questions to Jake provide Hemingway with an opportunity to share background on Brett.
According to Jake, she is thirty-four years old and seeking a divorce from her second husband, the
British Lord Ashley, so she can marry a Scotsman named Mike Campbell. Jake also says that Brett
is "a drunk."
Significantly, Brett was a kind of nurse during World War I — which is to say that, like Jake, she is
a veteran. Not only that; Brett's "own true love" died during wartime. She has experienced a
tragic romance. Again, Cohn did not serve in the Great War, and his relations with women have
been prosaic.
The start of this chapter offers the best example so far of the Hemingway style. Notice the short
sentences ("It was a fine morning"), and the emphasis on specificity (so many place names, for a
single paragraph) and on concrete detail. Also note the intentional repetition: "All along people
were going to work. It felt pleasant to be going to work." Later in Chapter V, most of the text is
dialogue — and untagged dialogue, at that (no "he said" or "I said"). This, too, was a Hemingway
innovation.
Glossary
Boulevard here, the Boulevard St. Michel.
Rue Soufflot a street running from the Luxembourg gardens to the Pantheon.
brioche a light, rich roll made with flour, butter, eggs, and yeast.
Luxembourg gardens formal gardens behind the Palais du Luxembourg, west of the Latin
Quarter.
the Sorbonne the University of Paris; specifically, the seat of the faculties of letters and science.
the Madeleine a church at the opposite end of the Rue Royal from the Place de la Concorde, on
the Right Bank.
Boulevard des Capucines an avenue connecting the Boulevard de la Madeleine with the Place de
l'Opera, on the Right Bank.
Opéra L'Opera Garnier, rococo opera house created by Charles Garnier.
CINZANO brand of aperitif.
Quai d'Orsay a street running alongside the Left Bank of the Seine, north of the Invalides district
Nouvelle Revue Française (French) New French Revision.
Lyons the English name for Lyon, a city in east-central France, at the juncture of the Rhone and
Salone rivers.
The Dingo a Parisian café.
file that line he got off this morning report on the news conference mentioned earlier.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 18
franc the basic monetary unit of France.
sommelier the person in a restaurant or club who is responsible for the selection and serving of
wines, especially with French cuisine; wine steward.
V.A.D. Volunteer Air Detachment.
dysentery any of various intestinal inflammations characterized by abdominal pain and frequent
and intense diarrhea with bloody, mucous feces.
Café de la Paix a Parisian café, the name of which means, significantly, Café of Peace.
Summary and Analysis Chapter VI
Summary
After Brett stands him up, Jake takes a taxi to a café on the Left Bank, where he has a drink with a
writer named Harvey Stone. Apparently, Stone is on a drinking binge; Jake gives him money for
food. They're joined by Robert Cohn. Stone leaves to buy dinner, and Cohn's lover, Frances,
arrives. She asks to speak with Jake privately, then tells him that she believes Cohn is
maneuvering to break up with her, despite the fact that they are engaged to be married. When
Jake and Frances return to the table where Cohn has been sitting, Frances berates him harshly,
and Jake slips away.
Analysis
This chapter's main purpose is characterization. We discover here that Jake is generous, as he
offers a hundred francs to the alcoholic writer Harvey Stone. Also, by virtue of Frances's desire to
speak with him in private about her troubles with Cohn, we learn that Jake is the sort of person in
whom others, particularly women, feel comfortable confiding. As the novel proceeds, Brett will
continue to confide in Jake, even at the expense of his feelings.
In Chapter VI, Hemingway characterizes Cohn himself by using all four of the means available to a
writer:
Via the use of these four methods of characterization, Hemingway offers us a three-dimensional,
textured, believably contradictory portrait of one of his main characters. About a fifth of the way
through The Sun Also Rises, the reader "gets" Robert Cohn, and this is no accident. Notice, as you
read on, how Hemingway uses these methods to characterize Jake himself, Brett, Mike Campbell,
Jake's friend Bill, and Pedro Romero — the ensemble cast of this short yet complex novel. For all
the talk of Hemingway's revolutionary prose style, we love books like this one, A Farewell to
Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls for their brilliantly drawn and, therefore, unforgettable
characters.
Though the statement is debatable, Hemingway gives The Sun Also Rises an improvisatory feel
when he has Jake tell us, "Somehow I feel as if I have not shown Robert Cohn clearly." It is as if
we are reading the story as it is being written by Jake, flaws and all. Perhaps this approach was
influenced not only by Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique and by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
whose The Great Gatsby employs the same technique, but by jazz (a largely improvised music),
which was sweeping not just the United States but Paris, as well, in the 1920s.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 19
Glossary
sweep a long oar
Fontainbleau a town in northern France, near Paris; the site of a palace of former kings of France.
Montereau town in northern France, on the Seine southeast of Paris.
Mencken H.L. (1880–1956); U.S. writer, editor, and critic.
He had a pile of saucers in front of him As each saucer represents one drink brought by the
waiter, Stone has been drinking for a long time.
porto port, a sweet fortified wine usually served after a meal.
Lenglen Suzanne Lenglen (1899–1938); Wimbledon singles champion 1919–1923.
the Lilas Closerie des Lilas, a café.
the Ritz a Parisian hotel founded by Cesar Ritz (1850–1918), Swiss hotel owner.
little chickens young girlfriends.
we that live by the sword shall perish by the sword paraphrase of Matthew 26:52.
Hardy Thomas (1840–1928); English novelist and poet.
Anatole France pseudonym of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault (1844–1924); French novelist
and literary critic.
Lourdes a town in southwestern France to which Roman Catholics travel so as to be healed of
injuries, illnesses, and so on.
Summary and Analysis Chapter VII
Summary
When Jake returns to his apartment, the concierge tells him that a lady and a gentleman,
apparently Brett and the Count, stopped by to see him when he was out. Jake receives a
telegram from his friend Bill Gorton, an American writer, saying that Bill is about to arrive in
France via steamship. Brett and the Count return. While the Count is out seeking champagne,
Jake expresses his love for Brett and asks if they can live together, but she tells him it would be
impossible because she would be tempted to cheat on him. She also tells him that she is about to
travel to San Sebastian, a coastal town in the Basque region of Spain. When the Count returns, all
three drink together, eat dinner, and go to a nightclub in Montmartre, where Jake and Brett
dance and she tells him she feels miserable. Jake takes her home, and they part.
Analysis
This is a significant chapter with respect to the characterization of Brett. First, we learn from the
concierge in Jake's building (a harsh judge of character, apparently) that Brett is nice and wellRAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 20
bred. By contrast, after sending the Count out for champagne, Brett seems somewhat insensitive
to Jake's pain; she says that if they lived together, she'd cheat on him. (At least she's honest.) "It's
my fault," Brett says. "It's the way I'm made." Brett allows the ashes from her cigarette to drop
on Jake's carpet; when he notices, she blames him for not leaving an ashtray out. "You're always
drinking, my dear," the Count says later. Again, Hemingway is using the dialogue of one character
to characterize another.
After dinner, the Count (who is unaware of Jake's sexual handicap) suggests that Jake and Brett
marry, thus confirming our suspicions that they are meant for each other. And at the end of the
evening, at the club where it is subtly implied that Brett had an affair with one of the black
musicians, she tells Jake that she feels miserable. She stops him from kissing her, tells him not to
"come up" (note the cruel humor on Hemingway's part), and finally says, "I won't see you again."
Apparently their inability to consummate their love hurts Brett nearly as much as it does Jake.
Jake himself tells Brett, for the first time in the novel, that he loves her. "Couldn't we live
together?" he begs of her, in one of the novel's many heartbreaking moments. "Couldn't we just
live together?" Again, Hemingway uses one character to tell us how another is behaving: "Don't
look like that, darling," Brett says to Jake. The writer hasn't told us exactly what "like that" is, but
we can guess from the context.
The importance of truly living life, rather than merely reading about it in books, is reiterated in
this chapter, as when Jake recommends that the Count write a book on wine and the Count
responds, "[A]ll I want out of wines is to enjoy them." (Remember that Robert Cohn is a writer of
books — and a reader about, rather than a liver of, life.) The Count has been, he says "in seven
wars and four revolutions," and he has the scars (from two arrows!) to prove it. Brett's response:
"I told you he was one of us. Didn't I?" Jake has a war wound, too — as does Brett, though hers
left no physical scars. Again, Cohn is not a veteran. The Count explains that it's because he has
lived so much that he can "enjoy everything so well." The Count is one of the aging mentors that
people Hemingway's novels and stories; other examples are Montoya, later in The Sun Also Rises,
and Count Greffi, in A Farewell to Arms.
Glossary
Her lodge the concierge's booth in the lobby of Jake's building.
gentille (French) pretty, nice, graceful; amiable, pleasing.
très (French) very.
monsieur (French) sir, mister.
quelqu'une (French) such a one.
pelouse (French) lawn.
pesage (French) paddock.
chez (French) the home of.
the France a luxury ocean liner.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 21
a brick (Old Informal) a fine person.
hell's own (Slang) the ultimate with respect to.
drag (Slang) influence that gains special or undeserved favors; pull.
siphon siphon bottle, a heavy, sealed bottle with a tube on the inside connected at the top with a
nozzle and valve which, when opened, allows the flow of pressurized, carbonated water
contained within.
tromper (French) to trick
bilge (Slang) worthless or silly talk or writing; nonsense.
San Sebastian a seaport in the Basque region of northern Spain.
Veuve Cliquot a brand of champagne.
that stick apparently, the Count uses a walking stick or cane.
ruddy a euphemism for bloody (British Informal); confounded.
magnum a wine bottle holding about 1.5 liters, about twice as much as the usual bottle.
Abyssinia the former name for the country now known as Ethiopia.
the hill Montmartre.
"……" unclear. Perhaps the drummer is chanting, then singing, an obscenity.
Summary and Analysis Chapter VIII
Summary
Jake receives a postcard from Brett in San Sebastian and a note from Cohn saying that he's
leaving France for a while; meanwhile, it is rumored that Frances has gone to England. Jake's
friend Bill visits briefly before traveling to Vienna and then Budapest. When Bill returns, he is
severely intoxicated and reports being drunk for four days in Vienna. Jake and Bill have dinner
together while Brett, back from San Sebastian picks up Mike Campbell, her fiancé. Mike, too, is
profoundly drunk.
Analysis
Note the proximity of Brett's message from San Sebastian to Jake's statement, "Nor did I see
Robert Cohn again." When questioned about her trip, Brett replies that her trip was "not
frightfully amusing," that she saw "hardly anybody," "never went out," and "[d]idn't do a thing."
Brett seems to be changing the subject, and she is. As we will discover in the next chapter, she
has traveled to San Sebastian with Cohn, a revelation that will enrage and sadden Jake. He feels
betrayed by Brett, despite the fact that they are not currently involved with one another. In fact,
Brett is married to Lord Ashley and engaged to Mike Campbell. But these two are men at least
somewhat worthy of Brett's love, in Jake's opinion, unlike the immature and inexperienced Cohn.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 22
Like Cohn, Bill Gorton is a writer. Unlike Cohn, however, Bill was in Europe during the Great War
("Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, right after the armistice," Jake tells us), though we
learn later that he did not see combat. Thus, Bill is almost "one of us," in Brett's words.
One of the overarching themes of Hemingway's stories and novels was friendship between men,
and in Jake and Bill he has one of the most memorable friendships in literature, comparable to
that between Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, or the Bible's David and Jonathan. In this chapter,
Bill serves mainly as comic relief, which the reader badly needs after the depressing goings-on at
the end of Book I. Note, however, the undercurrent of sadness to Bill's incoherent drunkenness,
especially when viewed as part of a pattern that includes Jake himself, Brett, and Brett's fiancé,
Mike, all of whom seem to be anaesthetizing themselves with alcohol. They're trying to forget the
pain of the worldwide conflict just past, and to dull their senses to the seeming meaningless of
the life they fought to preserve in "the war to end all wars." Cohn does not drink to excess; as a
non-veteran, he doesn't need to.
"Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog," Bill explains
drunkenly. Like Brett, Bill is under the misapprehension that life is fair — that good behavior is
rewarded and bad behavior punished. Only Jake knows that good behavior is sometimes
punished. Jake did his duty and, as a result, he lives in agony.
As always, Hemingway emphasizes the actual here instead of the abstract, the concrete and
specific. This chapter contains even more names of streets and statues, nightclubs and
restaurants, than we've seen up until now — not to mention food: "We had a good meal, a roast
chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple pie and cheese."
Hemingway doesn't tell us much about what his characters look like, but he does let us know
what they eat (and, of course, drink), simply because we can learn about them via their choices
and reactions. Jake's appreciation of a good meal tells us that he is a still alive to the world,
despite his pain and the drinking he does to erase that pain. Not many writers prior to this one
had thought to characterize via dinner.
Finally, be sure to recognize the loneliness that pervades this chapter, despite the comedy of
Bill's intoxicated behavior. Standing on a bridge with him, Jake notices a man and a woman
"walking with their arms around each other." Soon afterward, he observes a girl ladling stew onto
a plate held before her by an old man. Everywhere, men and women are pairing off. Jake
attempts to make light of the sexual heat between Brett and Mike, telling Bill, "Mike was pretty
excited about his girlfriend." Bill's response confirms once again that Brett is attractive in general,
and not just to Jake: "You can't blame him such a hell of a lot," he says.
Glossary
the Concha San Sebastian beach.
light heavyweight a boxer between a super middleweight and a cruiserweight, with a maximum
weight of 175 pounds.
Dempsey Jack, born William Harrison Dempsey (1895–1983); U.S. professional boxer.
Pamplona a city in Navarre, in northeastern Spain.
Lasted just four days. . . . Don't remember. Wrote you a postcard. Remember that perfectly. Bill
drops the subjects of his sentences because he is drunk.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 23
Cologne a city in Germany, on the Rhine, in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia.
the island the Ile St.-Louis, in the River Seine.
Rue Denfert-Rochereau a street on the Left Bank.
pie-eyed (Slang) intoxicated, drunk.
Nix (Slang) no.
stud-book a register of purebred animals, especially racehorses.
American Women's Club list apparently a list of recommended tourist sites.
armistice a temporary stopping of warfare by mutual agreement, as a truce preliminary to the
signing of a peace treaty. The armistice referred to here is the one that ended World War I, on
November 11, 1918.
Quai d'Orleans a street on the Ile St.-Louis.
bateau mouche a pleasure steamer.
Notre Dame a famous early Gothic cathedral in Paris, built between 1163 and 1257; in full, Notre
Dame de Paris.
Quai de Bethune a street on the Ile St.-Louis.
Rue de Cardinal Lemoine a street in the Latin Quarter
Negre Joyeaux, Café Aux Amateurs Latin Quarter cafés.
Rue du Pot de Fer a street in the Latin Quarter.
Rue Saint Jacques a street in the Latin Quarter.
Boulevard du Port Royal an avenue in Montparnasse; west of Boulevard St. Michel; its name
changes to Boulevard Montparnasse.
Damoy's a Montparnasse café.
An old lady's bags did that Mike either fell down or got into a fight, because he is drunk.
piece (Slang) a woman regarded as a sexual partner.
Let's turn in early Mike is aroused and wants to have sex with Brett.
Summary and Analysis Chapter IX
Summary
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 24
Jake writes to Robert Cohn in Spain to say that he and Bill will meet Cohn at Bayonne (near the
French-Spanish border), to go fishing together. At a café that evening, Mike Campbell (who is
drunk again) invites himself and Brett along on the excursion, and they arrange to rendezvous in
Pamplona. Brett tells Jake that Cohn was with her in San Sebastian before Jake and Bill depart
Paris via rail. After encountering various Americans on the train (a small family and a large group
of Catholic pilgrims), they arrive in Bayonne in the evening.
Analysis
This chapter begins with a reference to the boxing match mentioned in Chapter VIII. As in books
like A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway here is constructing a kind of continuum that connects
heterosexual love with war, via "blood sports" like boxing, hunting and fishing, and (later in this
novel) bullfighting. The writer believed that loving a woman could prove just as dangerous as
fighting in a war; conversely, battlefield combat can teach a man lessons useful in his love affairs,
or at least harden him for the pain that Hemingway believed was unavoidable in matters of the
heart. Note that both ends of the spectrum meet, here, in Jake's war wound, which prevents him
from engaging in sexual intercourse. Cohn is a boxing champion and, therefore, he is somewhat
prepared to engage in the battle of the sexes (the same can be said of the bullfighter Romero,
who appears later in the book) — but he is not as well-prepared as the veterans Mike, Brett, and,
of course, Jake. The price these characters pay for their wisdom is unending pain that they can
only hope to dull with alcohol.
The theme of paying for things continues here, with Bill's response to the waiter on the train who
refuses to offer special service in exchange for a ten-franc bribe: "I suppose if I'd given you five
francs you would have advised us to jump off the train." Bill persists in believing in what he called
"a simple exchange of values," as does Brett. Jake alone understands that life is unfair.
Meanwhile, Hemingway continues to connect Brett with prostitution: "I think it's a brothel!"
Mike says of their hotel.
Chapter IX includes a major turning-point in the plot of The Sun Also Rises, in the revelation by
Brett that she was joined in San Sebastian by Robert Cohn; presumably, they slept together while
there. Brett doesn't seem to take Cohn terribly seriously, but this information nevertheless
devastates Jake, as we will begin to observe in the next chapter. At first Jake's foil, Cohn begins
now to emerge as a rival, even a full-fledged antagonist, making his introduction on the book's
first page (in fact, this novel's first two words are "Robert Cohn") more understandable than it
was at first.
Note the presence on the train to Bayonne of the American pilgrims and especially the tourists
from the States. "See America first" has been their attitude, according to the wife; the husband
seems indifferent to the fishing available in his home state of Montana. These are the philistines
whom Jake (not to mention Hemingway himself, and the circle to which Gertrude Stein and F.
Scott Fitzgerald belonged) avoided by living in Paris during the 1920s. Jake and especially Bill see
the pre-booking of all but the last lunch sittings by the pilgrims as less than fair play: "It's enough
to make a man join the Klan," says Bill, alluding to the white supremacist group that targeted
Catholics as well as Jews, like Cohn, and African Americans. He is joking, of course, but the
extremity of his remark is an index of the intensity of his anger — and, probably, his drunkenness.
Glossary
Hendaye a seacoast town in southwestern France, in that country's Basque region.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 25
Bayonne a city in southwestern France.
Burguete a town in northern Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Gare d'Orsay a neoclassical train station, across the Seine from the Louvre and the Tuileries; now
a museum of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art.
Comment? (French) Why?
Chablis a dry white Burgundy wine made in or near the town of Chablis, France.
chateau a large country house and estate, especially in France.
Tours a city in west-central France, on the Loire.
Bordeaux a seaport in southwestern France, on the Garonne River.
the Landes a region of southwestern France.
fire-gaps avenues through the woods created by cutting down trees, so as to discourage the
spread of forest fires.
Summary and Analysis Chapter X
Summary
The next morning, Jake, Bill, and Cohn stroll around Bayonne. Then they travel in a hired car
across the border into Spain and on to Pamplona. During lunch, Cohn makes a bet with Bill that
Brett and Mike will not arrive as planned, on the evening train. Jake picks up the tickets to the
bullfights that he ordered ahead of time, then prays in the cathedral. In the middle of dinner,
Jake and Cohn walk to the railroad station to meet Brett and Mike; as it turns out, they are not on
the train, and Cohn wins his bet with Bill. The next morning, Bill shares with Jake his dislike of
Cohn.
Analysis
Hemingway continues to perpetuate the illusion that the story Jake tells is improvised and
unedited, with statements like, "Cohn made some remark about [the cathedral] being a very
good example of something or other, I forget what." Also, "Why I felt an impulse to devil him I do
not know. Of course I do know." When we read about the man who sells the fishing tackle being
out of his store, necessitating a long wait by Jake, Bill, and Cohn, we are fooled momentarily into
believing that the events described really happened (perhaps to Hemingway). After all, why
would someone bother to invent such a trivial detail?
The theme of payment continues in this chapter, with an accounting of various monetary
transactions and a great deal of space devoted to the bet between Bill and Cohn. And Jake's rage
toward Cohn, because Cohn slept with Brett, begins to manifest itself: "I have never seen a man
in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn — nor as eager. I was enjoying it." Later, he is even more
explicit: "I certainly did hate him." Again, if Jake can't have Brett, then he wants a man worthy of
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 26
her to do so, not the boyish Cohn. The Count seemed to qualify — as will the matador Pedro
Romero a few chapters on.
Book II of The Sun Also Rises takes place mainly in an area of northeast Spain/southwest France
occupied by a people known as the Basques. Inventive, eccentric, and fanatically independent,
the Basque peasants stand in sharp contrast to the followers of fashion we encountered in Paris.
The Hemingway style bursts into bloom with Jake's description of the car trip from Bayonne to
Pamplona. Notice once again the emphasis on the concrete and specific, as well as the writer's
use of a very limited vocabulary. Note as well that the truism about Hemingway's use of short
sentences exclusively is inaccurate. He was fond as well of long compound sentences, like this
one:
"After a while we came out of the mountains, and there were trees along both sides of the road,
and a stream and ripe fields of grain, and the road went on, very white and straight ahead, and
then lifted to a little rise, and off on the left was a hill with an old castle, with buildings close
around it and a field of grain going right up to the walls and shifting in the wind."
In the description later of Jake's visit to the cathedral, Hemingway employs the stream-ofconsciousness technique that he borrowed from Joyce. All told, the writer's style was much more
varied than he is generally given credit for.
Glossary
sprinkling the streets wetting dirt streets to discourage clouds of dust from rising.
drygoods cloth, cloth products, thread, and so on.
Syndicat d'Initiative tourists' information bureau.
duster a lightweight coat worn to protect the clothes from dust, as formerly in open automobiles.
Basques a people living in the western Pyrenees of Spain and France.
pelota jai alai; a game like handball, played with a curved basket fastened to the arm, for
catching the ball and hurling it against the wall.
carabineers a soldier armed with a carbine (a rifle).
Bonaparte hats hats like those worn by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), a French military
leader and emperor of France (1804–1815), born in Corsica.
kepi a cap with a flat round top and a stiff visor, worn by French soldiers.
gunny-sacking a sack or bag made of gunny, a coarse, heavy fabric of jute or hemp.
peseta the basic monetary unit of Spain.
Café Iruña a café that still stands on the Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona.
Ayuntamiento town hall.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 27
baize a thick woolen cloth made to resemble felt and often dyed green, used to cover billiard
tables.
baggage-truck a handcart used for moving luggage.
darb a person or thing regarded as remarkable or excellent.
thrown on every screen projected onto every movie screen.
Irati River River in the Basque region of Spain.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XI
Summary
Jake and Bill set out on their fishing trip, riding a bus from Pamplona to Burguete. The Basques
aboard the bus share their wine with the Americans. Finally, Jake and Bill check into an inn at
Burguete, where they eat supper and go to sleep.
Analysis
This is a transitional chapter, the main purpose of which is to get Jake and Bill from their home
base in Pamplona to Burguete, their fishing-vacation spot. Still, notice the reiteration of both
characterization and theme. For instance, Robert Cohn does not participate in the drinking from
the Basques' wineskin while the bus loads before leaving Pamplona, a reminder that he doesn't
live life as unselfconsciously, as actively, as fully as do Jake and Bill.
Hemingway repeats the theme of "a simple exchange of values" in this chapter. Regarding the
wine they have shared, the English-speaking Basque on the bus asks Jake and Bill, "You can't get
this in America, eh?" — to which one of them (Bill, probably) replies, "There's plenty if you can
pay for it." Later, Jake feels that they're being overcharged by the innkeeper in Burguete, but he
finally submits: "Well, I thought, it's only a few days," he tells us. He and Bill proceed to help
themselves to the inn's liquor, to compensate. In life, however, there is no recompense for a raw
deal — as only Jake knows for certain.
Hemingway understood that dialogue is more than what is said between characters in
conversation; dialogue is what's not said, as well — as when Jake asks how much the room in the
inn will cost and the innkeeper "put her hands under her apron and looked away" before
responding. And of course, the bravura description of the physical world continues in Chapter XI,
both during the bus trip through the countryside and at the inn itself, where we can practically
feel, as we read, how cold it is. The latter effect is the result of Hemingway's emphasis on
concrete detail: the sweaters Jake and Bill don, their visible breath, the steaming pitcher of hot
rum punch and the bowl of hot vegetable soup, the sound of the wind blowing when the men
read in bed at night.
And the black humor at Jake's expense continues with the mention by Hemingway of two teams
of mules observed on the way to Burguete. The interspecies offspring of a horse and a donkey, a
mule is sterile, and cannot reproduce — just like Jake.
Glossary
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 28
klaxon a kind of electric horn with a loud, shrill sound.
Arriba (Spanish) up, upwards.
posada (Spanish) an inn.
arriero (Spanish) mule driver.
aguardiente (Spanish) clear brandy
Roncesvalles a pass through the Pyrenees, near the French border in the Navarra province of
Spain, utilized often by pilgrims from Paris to Santiago de Compostela.
Roncevaux French name for Roncesvalles.
Nuestra Señora de Roncesvalles Our Lady of Roncesvalles.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XII
Summary
The next morning, Jake awakens early and digs for worms near the inn. After Bill wakes up, they
go together to breakfast, during which they joke nonsensically and tease one another. Packing a
lunch, they hike together to a trout stream, where they split up in order to fish; they meet again
for lunch and joke some more, during which the subject of Jake's injury arises and is dropped.
After napping, they walk back to the hotel. Jake tells us that this goes on for five more days,
during which he and Bill hear nothing from Cohn, Brett, or Mike.
Analysis
This chapter comprises a sort of mid-book idyll. The author offers it to us by way of contrast to
the Paris scenes that went before. In this novel, Pamplona will serve as a kind of anti-Paris, semirural and organic where the City of Light is urban and decadent. The woods outside Burguete
where Jake and Bill fish for trout are even more different from Paris, and the sense of tranquility
that the fishing trip creates in them and us could not be more different from the freneticism of
the novel's opening chapters.
Hemingway makes explicit here the themes of irony and pity: the irony of Jake's situation (he is a
kind of superman who nevertheless can't perform the most basic of manly activities) as well as
the pity we feel for him. The writer does so in an extended section, rich with dialogue, that is
meant to be funny but has not dated well. The joking between Jake and Bill, over breakfast and
later at lunch, is certainly believable as such, but it's difficult for a contemporary audience to
follow, because the references to Frankie Fritsch and so forth have grown obscure with the
passage of time. (The reference to Bryan's death tells us exactly when these scenes are occurring:
1925.) Do note, however, that Jake's physical condition is alluded to — and quickly backed away
from. ("I'd a hell of a lot rather not talk about it" could be the motto of Hemingway's stoic take on
the world, and Jake's, too.) The writer has established, however, that Jake's condition is not
simple impotence and that it was caused by an accident.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 29
Another theme of Jake and Bill's banter concerns the latter's status as an expatriate. He has fled
America, with its prudish Anti-Saloon League and bourgeois President Coolidge (who famously
said "The business of America is business"). Finally, note the gruff tenderness shared by Jake and
Bill in these scenes. One of Hemingway's pleasures in life as in art was what we now call "male
bonding," and in this case the bonding is poignant, as in some ways it replaces the love that Jake
cannot fully express with female companions.
More black humor: "Get up," Jake tells Bill, who replies "What? I never get up." Of course, it is
Jake, not Bill, who never gets up. Later, trout (again, a phallic fish) try in vain to swim against the
current of a waterfall, and — not so humorously — Jake reads a book about a man frozen inside a
glacier whose wife awaits the reappearance of his body for twenty-four years. Jake is "frozen,"
too, only no one awaits his unthawing.
Glossary
diligence a public stagecoach, especially as formerly used in France.
mattock a tool for loosening the soil, digging up and cutting roots, and so on; it is like a pickaxe
but has a flat, adz-shaped blade on one or both sides.
… shitty (rhymes with pity)
"The Bells are Ringing for Me and my Gal" a popular-song title.
Riff a mountain range along the northeastern coast of Morocco, extending from the Strait of
Gibraltar to the Algerian border.
Caffeine, we are here. pun on Charles E. Stanton's "Lafayette, we are here" (Paris, July 4, 1917).
General Grant Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822–1885); eighteenth President of the U.S. (1869–
1877); commander in chief of the Union forces in the Civil War.
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889); U.S. statesman; president of the Confederacy (1861–1865).
Dred Scott case a controversial U.S. Supreme court decision (1857) that denied the claim of a U.S.
black slave to be free as a result of living in free territory.
Anti-Saloon League American temperance organization.
landing-nets a small bag-like net attached to a long handle, for taking a hooked fish from the
water.
ford a shallow place in a stream or river where one can cross by wading or riding on horseback, in
an automobile, and so on.
fly-book a book-like case to hold artificial fishing flies.
sinker a lead weight used in fishing.
strike the pull on the line by a fish seizing or snatching at bait.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 30
moraine a mound, ridge, or mass of rocks, gravel, sand, clay, and so on carried and deposited
directly by a glacier along its side (lateral moraine), at its lower end (terminal moraine), or
beneath the ice (ground moraine).
Bryan William Jennings (1860–1925); U.S. politician and orator.
Great Commoner nickname for William Jennings Bryan.
simian of or like an ape or monkey.
Holy Cross a college located in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Frankie Fritsch a college football star of the 1920s known as "the Fordham Flash."
Fordham a Jesuit university located in the Bronx, New York.
Loyola any of a number of colleges and universities named for Saint Ignatius de Loyola, founder
of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.
cock-eyed (Slang) drunk.
Notre Dame a Catholic university located in South Bend, Indiana.
Ford Henry (1863–1947); U.S. automobile manufacturer.
President Coolidge (John) Calvin (1872–1933); thirtieth President of the U.S. (1923–1929).
Rockefeller John D(avison) (1839–1937); U.S. industrialist and philanthropist.
Jo Davidson (1883–1952); U.S. sculptor.
three-handed bridge a version of the card game featuring three rather than the standard four
players.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XIII
Summary
After receiving telegrams from Mike and Cohn, Jake and Bill return via bus to Pamplona. There
they meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn at a café, where a drunken Mike tells anecdotes before
the group walks to the corrals outside of town to see the unloading of the bulls. At another café
afterward, Mike browbeats Cohn for tagging after Brett. (Apparently Cohn returned to San
Sebastian while Jake and Bill were fishing in Burguete.) Bill leads Cohn away before any punches
are thrown; later, in their hotel room, Bill tells Jake that he feels for Cohn.
Analysis
Hemingway continues to celebrate male friendship in this chapter, as well as directing our
attention to the specialness of combat veterans, by means of the character of Harris, the
Englishman with whom Jake and Bill play bridge in the evening during their fishing trip. "I've not
had much fun since the war," says Harris, before presenting Jake and Bill with a gift of hand-tied
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 31
flies. Intimacy is possible between men, Hemingway shows us, though it must occur via sports
and games (and/or war).
Jake is also intimate with the hotelier Montoya:
"He smiled as though bull-fighting were a very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled
as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something
we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand."
This passage makes explicit a dichotomy that has been hinted at in this novel but never
addressed directly before now, between what we might call insiders and outsiders. We have
already observed the split between war veterans (including, even, the Count) and those, like
Cohn, who did not participate. Other inside/outside sets in The Sun Also Rises include those who
live life and those who merely read about living; Catholics vs. non-Catholics; and aficionados (of
not just bullfighting but fishing and even eating and drinking) and those who lack passion for and
knowledge about these activities.
Note that in every case mentioned, Jake is on the inside, while characters like Brett, Bill, and Mike
are on the inside of some groups but not others. (Mike is a veteran, but he can't hold his liquor.
Bill is an expert fisherman but knows nothing about bullfighting.) Cohn is on the outside, period.
Notice as well that Hemingway never ceases dramatizing these differences. In this chapter, for
instance, Brett and Mike wear Basque berets, while Cohn is bareheaded. Even while shaking
hands, Mike has "a way of getting an intensity of feeling" into it, while Cohn shakes hands only as
a formality, "because we were back." Mike asks Cohn, "Why don't you ever get drunk, Robert?"
as if insulting him — and he is. Cohn has no need to get drunk, because he hasn't been wounded,
and he hasn't been wounded because he hasn't lived. He is an outsider.
The bitter joking continues in this chapter, with its many references to steers; a steer is a
castrated ox. Though Mike compares Cohn to a steer, it is Jake, of course, who is most like this
animal. In fact, notice that the herd described during the chapter's central scene comprises four
bulls and two steer, an exact parallel to this novel's ensemble cast: Jake and Cohn are the steer,
and Mike, Bill, and Brett are bulls — even though bulls are male; Brett is sufficiently androgynous
to qualify. She is also sufficiently brave (a result of her status as a veteran), "watching, fascinated"
when one of the steers is gored. The fourth bull will be the matador Pedro Romero, not yet on
the scene.
Finally, Hemingway is justly celebrated for his descriptive abilities but rarely for his command of
dialogue. This chapter's climactic scene stands alongside the most accomplished dramatic writing
ever. To wit: In four pages featuring four characters, the speakers often are left identified, and
yet — thanks to the writer's expert characterization prior to the scene — there's never any
question about who is speaking. The characterization continues, with Bill's sympathetic reaction
to Cohn, and with Mike's behavior after the near-fight — "as though nothing had happened." As
for Jake, he compares the meal at chapter's end to "certain dinners I remember from the war.
There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not
prevent happening." This technique is called foreshadowing; encountering the passage, we
wonder what warlike things are about to occur, and we read on.
Glossary
Por ustedes (Spanish) For you
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 32
copper a coin of copper or bronze, as a penny.
Vengo Jueves (Spanish)I come Thursday.
desencajonada (Spanish) releasing.
San Fermines Fiesta de San Fermín, which lasts from noon on July 6 to 14 every year.
Buen hombre (Spanish) Good man.
the spilling open of the horses When the horses on which the picadors, or lancers, ride are gored
by the bull, their entrails often fall out onto the floor of the bullring.
SOL, SOL Y SOMBRA, and SOMBRA (Spanish) SUN, SUN AND SHADE, and SUN.
Piccadilly a street in London, England; traditional center of fashionable shops, clubs, and hotels.
Prince of Wales (1894–1972); son of George V; Duke of Windsor; later king of England, as Edward
VIII; abdicated.
gazette any of various official publications containing announcements and bulletins.
King George V (1865–1936); king of Great Britain and Ireland (1910–1936); son of Edward VII.
cove (British slang) a boy or man; chap; fellow.
shakes (Slang) ability, importance, and so on.
blind (Slang) drunk.
counsel a lawyer or group of lawyers giving advice about legal matters and representing clients in
court.
loopholes a hole or narrow slit in the wall of a fort, for looking or shooting through.
Castile region and former kingdom in northern and central Spain: gained autonomy in tenth
century and united with Leon, and later with Aragon (fifteenth century), and became the nucleus
of the Spanish monarchy.
Toro (Spanish) Bull.
buck to dislodge or throw by bucking.
buck up to cheer up.
Circe in Homer's Odyssey, an enchantress who turns men into swine.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XIV
Summary
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 33
Jake goes to bed drunk. Because he is afraid of the dark, he tries reading, then thinks about his
friendship with Brett and whether each of his friends is a "good" or "bad" drunk. During the next
two days, as the final preparations are made for the fiesta, the town is quiet.
Analysis
In this mainly transitional chapter, Hemingway again applies Joyce's stream-of-consciousness
technique to drunken thought. Some of Jake's musings in this state concern the theme of "equal
exchange"; intoxicated, he drifts into the misapprehension shared by other characters that "You
gave up something and got something else" — then quickly snaps back to the knowledge that this
is another "silly" philosophy. In an unguarded moment, Jake also admits to himself that he likes
to see Mike hurt Cohn. "I wished he would not do it, though," Jake continues, "because afterward
it made me disgusted with myself."
Surprisingly for someone thought to be the ultimate in macho, Hemingway was himself afraid of
the dark and, thus, many of his protagonists were as well. In this case, it seems appropriate,
considering Jake's quite understandable disinclination to be alone with himself.
The inside-outside theme is reiterated in Chapter XIV when Jake tells us that he "went to church a
couple of times, once with Brett." Brett asks to accompany Jake to confessional, and he tells her
"it would be in a language she did not know" — meaning Spanish, of course. But Jake also means
that Brett, as an outsider to Catholicism, can never truly understand the very notion of
confession. And indeed, she seems disinclined to regret her mistakes, much less seek forgiveness
for them.
Lastly, Jake makes an observation in this chapter that perhaps illuminates the famous Hemingway
style. Talking about Brett and Mike's speech, he tells us that "The English spoken language — the
upper classes, anyway — must have fewer words than the Eskimo. . . . The English talked with
inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. . . . I liked the way they talked." Hemingway
was a great admirer of upper-class British behavior, especially the stoic "stiff upper lip" tradition.
Perhaps their limited vocabulary influenced his own tendency, when writing, to use few words.
(The Basque language, as well, is notable for its minuscule vocabulary. Another influence on the
writer?)
Glossary
Turgenieff Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883); Russian novelist.
"A Sportsman's Sketches" title of Turgenev short-story collection.
picador in bullfighting, any of the horsemen who weaken the neck muscles of the bull by pricking
with a lance.
barrera the protecting wall enclosing the floor of a bull ring at bullfights.
ANIS DEL TORO (Spanish) anise of the bull; brand of French or Spanish liqueur flavored with
aniseed.
paseo (Spanish) a leisurely walk, especially in the evening; stroll.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 34
vermouth a sweet or dry, white fortified wine flavored with aromatic herbs, used in cocktails and
as an aperitif.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XV
Summary
The fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days, begins at noon on a Sunday. Musicians
and dancers fill the streets — and even some of the shops, like the wine store, where Brett is
placed on a cask so the Basque peasants can dance around her as if she is an idol. Locked out of
his own room, Jake sleeps on one of the beds in Cohn's while the rest of the group stays out all
night and then attends the running of the bulls from the corrals to the bullring, through the
streets of Pamplona. That afternoon, Jake meets the nineteen-year-old matador Pedro Romero,
after which Jake, Bill, Cohn, Mike and Brett attend a bullfight. Mike ribs Cohn for being upset by
the goring of the horses. (Brett, by contrast, did not flinch.) The next day, Romero performs
admirably in the ring, and Brett cannot help talking about her attraction to him.
Analysis
"They got their money's worth in the wine shops," Jake says of the peasants who come to
Pamplona for the fiesta. "Money still had a definite value. . . . Late in the fiesta it would not
matter what they paid, nor what they bought." Hemingway is working metaphorically here, with
the fiesta standing in for life itself. At first, equal exchanges are possible, he says — or at least
they seem to be. As life goes on, however, one learns that the existence of such transactions is
illusory.
We are reminded by the imagery in this chapter that, other than Cohn, all the novel's major
characters participated in the Great War. Indeed, their status as veterans explains their
aimlessness — not to mention their reliance on alcohol to get them through each day. The café
on the morning of the fiesta is "like a battleship stripped for action." Rockets are fired to mark
the start of the celebration, and a "ball of smoke hung in the sky like a shrapnel burst." The war
and its futility explain the presence of Jake, Bill, Brett, and Mike on the European continent
(where the fighting occurred) rather than their own countries, where they feel like strangers
amongst those who did not fight. As Bill says to Cohn, "We are the foreigners" — meaning that
they are foreigners in Spain. But the expatriates of the 1920s were foreigners in their own
homelands, as well.
"The fiesta was really started. 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 as thought nothing could have any
consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the
fiesta you had the feeling, even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it
heard. It was the same feeling about any action. It was a fiesta and it went on for seven days."
The word fiesta appears five times in this paragraph. Kept up appears three times. There are two
instances of the words consequences, happened, and feeling, as well as the phrase for seven
days. And yet the effect is not dull, but rather hypnotic, as Hemingway's teacher Gertrude Stein
understood.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 35
The writer's characterization of Brett continues in Chapter XV, where it is intertwined with the
theme of inside/outside. Note that Brett is barred from the church (ostensibly because she is
bare-headed), and yet on the street and in the wine shop she herself is quite literally worshipped
as a goddess. Not only is Brett not a Catholic like Jake, or even a Christian; she is a kind of pagan
whose value system lies outside the church, literally — and the peasants recognize this. Jake
compares Brett to a whore now and again, but Hemingway clearly understands that her behavior
is not immoral; it is amoral. She cannot look away from the bullfight because she does not fear
death — she may, in fact, be attracted to it.
Hemingway introduces a new character, the last member of the novel's ensemble cast, in this
chapter: the matador Pedro Romero. Because he lives and works in close proximity to death,
Romero is like the combat veterans Jake and Mike. And yet he is boyish, like Cohn. Naturally,
Brett is attracted to him (or as her fiancé, Mike, puts it, "I believe, you know, that she's falling in
love with this bullfighter chap"). In fact, Romero brings out a sexual voracity in Brett that we
could only surmise prior to this point in the novel — a hunger and aggressiveness unprecedented
in a female character at the time The Sun Also Rises was published. In a radical book, she was
positively revolutionary.
Glossary
6th of July Since the two days prior to the fiesta are described by Jake as having been "quiet," we
can assume that American Independence Day went more or less unobserved by him, Bill, and
Cohn — not surprisingly, considering the alienation they appear to feel from their homeland.
Sherry a Spanish fortified wine varying in color from light yellow to dark brown and in flavor from
very dry to sweet.
Jerez (Spanish) sherry.
translate to move from one place or condition to another; transfer.
great giants, cigar-store Indians, thirty feet high, Moors, a King and a Queen enormous effigies
carried through the streets to celebrate the fiesta.
bladder a bag consisting of or lined with membraneous tissue in the body of many animals,
capable of inflation to receive and contain liquids or gasses.
because she had no hat traditionally, women are discouraged from entering churches in Europe
bareheaded.
bota (Spanish) wineskin.
Nada (Spanish) Nothing.
Anis del Mono a brand of French or Spanish liqueur flavored with aniseed.
Mucha suerte (Spanish) Much luck.
torero (Spanish) a bullfighter, especially a matador.
kike (Slang) a Jew; a hostile and offensive term.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 36
gentry people of high social standing; especially, in Great Britain, the class of landowning people
ranking just below the nobility.
shove it along (Slang) cut it out.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XVI
Summary
The hotelier Montoya visits Jake to express his concern that mixing with rich tourists will corrupt
Romero. At dinner, Jake speaks with Romero and a bullfighting critic, after which Brett, clearly
infatuated, invites the bullfighter to her table. As usual, Bill and Mike are drunk. Montoya looks
on with disapproval; exactly what he feared has come to pass. Once again, Mike picks on Cohn,
and the two nearly come to blows. Jake, Brett, Mike, and Bill move on to a café favored by
foreigners, where they are joined by a female acquaintance of Bill's who will later be identified as
Edna. Mike, Bill, and Edna leave Jake, Brett, and Cohn; Brett lashes out at Cohn, who leaves as
well. Brett tells Jake that she feels guilty for having slept with Cohn while engaged to be married,
and that she's tired of being pursued by him. She asks Jake if he loves her, and when he says that
he does, she says she is in love with Romero. Jake helps Brett find Romero in a café, where they
flirt openly. Jake leaves; when he returns, the two are gone.
Analysis
Having finally introduced his entire ensemble cast, Hemingway begins here to use it to its fullest
effect, like a chess master moving pieces around a board. Brett rejects Cohn outright. Having
been trusted by his mentor Montoya to look out for Romero, Jake betrays the former by first
introducing the young matador to his decadent friends, and then actually fixing him up with the
plainly-destructive Brett. Brett has hurt Mike, Cohn, and Jake himself; it's hard to imagine that
she won't harm the younger and far more naïve Romero. Meanwhile, Mike cannot get past the
fact that his fiancée slept with Cohn, and tensions between the two men mount.
As late in the story as we are at this point, characterization nevertheless continues. Jake tells
Brett that he'd behave just as badly as Cohn, if given the opportunity, to which Brett replies,
"Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot." Again, Cohn's primary function in this book is to serve as
Jake's foil — to make him look good, really. His behavior in this chapter certainly accomplishes
that.
Look closely at the start of this chapter for yet another example of the famous and influential
Hemingway style. Stylistically, at least, Hemingway never wrote better than during the
descriptive passages in this early novel. With regard to his dramatic writing, the scene in which
Montoya observes Romero with the drunken English and Americans is also practically peerless.
Though he never says a word, it is clear to us precisely what Montero is thinking.
And, of course, the cruel phallic joking continues. "Tell him that bulls have no balls," a drunken
Mike shouts. Later, a fireworks technician's fruitless attempts at pyrotechnics are clearly
metaphoric: He tries to launch a series of balloons, but
"[t]he wind brought them all down, and Don Manuel Orquito's face was sweaty in the light of his
complicated fireworks that fell into the crowd and charged and chased, sputtering and cracking,
between the legs of the people."
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 37
"I say, I wish one would go up," Brett remarks. Hemingway never ceases reminding us of Jake's
terrible condition.
Glossary
Navarrais from the province of Navarra, in northeastern Spain.
Algabeno, Gallo bullfighters
Bootblack a person whose work is shining shoes and boots.
Señor Mr.; sir; a Spanish title of respect.
lidia (Spanish) fight.
toro (Spanish) bull.
Course de taureaux (French) running of bulls.
Gibraltar a small peninsula at the southern tip of Spain, extending into the Mediterranean.
Ronda a town in the province of Andalusia, in southern Spain.
Malaga a seaport in southern Spain, on the Mediterranean.
Malagueño (Spanish) native to or typical of Malaga.
banderillero (Spanish)a bullfighter who assists the matador by placing banderillas, or harpoons,
in the withers of the bull.
Borracho! Muy borracho! (Spanish) Drunk! Very drunk!
Tell him Brett wants to come into — the missing word or words are not precisely obvious,
though clearly they are sexual in nature.
of title titled, having a title, especially of nobility.
pirotecnico (Spanish) fireworks.
esta ciudad (Spanish) this town.
Globos illuminados (Spanish) illuminated balloons.
lorgnon a single or double eyeglass, as a monocle or pince-nez.
He can't believe it didn't mean anything. Brett understands that sleeping with her was
meaningful to Cohn, though the experience was of little import to her.
amontillado a pale, relatively dry sherry.
a goner (Slang) doomed
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 38
I tapped with my fingertips on the table. Jake is superstitiously "knocking on wood" so as to
counteract Romero's statement, which seems to tempt fate.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XVII
Summary
Jake finds Mike and Bill and Bill's friend Edna, who says she's kept them out of four bar fights.
Robert Cohn shows up, looking for Brett, and Mike tells him that she has gone off with Romero.
Cohn calls Jake a pimp. Jake takes a swing at him and, in the ensuing fight, Jake is beaten up.
When he returns to the hotel, Bill urges Jake to speak with Cohn. After putting up some
resistance, Jake does goes to Cohn's room; Cohn, crying, says he will be going home in the
morning and begs Jake's forgiveness, which Jake grants.
The following day, Jake meets up with Mike and Bill again (Edna has gone home), and Mike
reports that the night before, Cohn found Brett in Romero's room and beat him up, after which
Cohn cried. Mike, who is too drunk to open his own beer bottle, admits that he is upset by Brett's
promiscuity; when last seen, he is ordering more liquor with which to numb his pain.
Analysis
This chapter is crucial with regard to Mike's characterization, as we see him genuinely falling
apart because of the affair with Pedro Romero instigated by Brett. Suddenly the source of Mike's
extreme drunkenness becomes clear. It is his fiancée's untamable promiscuity. The answer to
Edna's incessant questioning? Yes, Mike is bankrupt, but not only in the financial sense. He is
tapped out emotionally and spiritually, as well. Brett brings men joy, but she destroys them, too.
Before chapter's end, Robert Cohn (introduced to us at the start of the book as a boyish naïf) will
be ruined as well — and planning to leave the scene for good, a turning point in the novel's plot.
Is the young bullfighter Romero next?
Though she never appears within Chapter XVI, Brett is its focus, as nearly everything that
happens here is done in her name — even Romero's defeat of the bull. "All for sport, all for
pleasure," the café owner says ruefully to Jake. He is speaking about the tragedy of the gored
peasant, but he could be talking about Mike, Cohn, and Jake — as well as the Count, and
countless others, too. Brett is no steer. She is a bull, and she can gore anyone who doesn't flee
from her fast enough. (Of course, she has her reasons. To quote Mike himself, "She hasn't had an
absolutely happy life." Note the horrifying story he tells here of her marriage to the deranged
Lord Ashley.)
Pay special attention to the fistfight between Jake and Robert Cohn. Not only is this our payoff
for the seemingly incidental information in the novel's first sentence that Cohn "was
middleweight boxing champion of Princeton." It is also one of the most successfully rendered —
one of the most accurate — fight scenes in all of literature. As the famous teacher of creative
writing, John Gardner, often pointed out, action that is neither too sketchy nor so complicated
that it becomes confusing is enormously difficult to render on the page. In the Barnes-Cohn bout
that ends in seconds, Hemingway proves himself the gifted craftsman that he is reputed to be —
a kind of champ of American letters, at least early in his career.
Even better is the writer's astonishing description of his late-night return to the Hotel Montoya.
Though still profoundly intoxicated, Jake's drubbing at the hands of Cohn has provided him with a
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 39
kind of clarity in viewing the world that he seems to have experienced only once: "Walking across
the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I
had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre. It was all different. I felt as I felt
once coming home from an out-of-town football game." Jake goes on to share with us the details
of an autumn afternoon in the Midwest (following an injury to his head in a football game),
reminding the reader that although The Sun Also Rises takes place in France and Spain
exclusively, it is very much a book about America — about the America that the soldiers in World
War I believed they were fighting to defend, before becoming disillusioned by combat and their
return home.
Also, this passage serves as a reminder of how very little we know about the basic facts of Jake's
past. Who are his parents and siblings? Where did he grow up, and how old is he now? What
exactly were his combat experiences, prior to sustaining the wound that serves as the basis for
the story he tells here? Typically, Hemingway has excised all this background material. His creed
in this regard might have been "less is more," and it inspired not only the storytellers who came
immediately after him, but an entire school of novelists and short-story writers in the 1970s and
1980s (the aftermath of another disappointing international conflict) — that is, half a century
after The Sun Also Rises was written. Though this minimalist approach can cause confusion for
reader if it is mishandled, when it is done right it creates instead an effect that is hypnotic,
mysterious, and even profound. It is as if we are looking at the tip of an iceberg and left to
wonder what lies beneath the water's surface. And the result is active, involved readers who turn
the pages of this difficult book as quickly as if perusing a cheap airport suspense novel.
Again regarding technique, note how Hemingway finesses the point-of-view limitations he has
established for his novel — bends the rules, so to speak. To review: Jake and Jake alone is telling
the story of The Sun Also Rises, so we can't witness any scenes that he himself does not.
However, it would be a shame to miss the drama of Cohn's encounter with Romero in the latter's
room — at which Jake wasn't present. So Hemingway has Brett, who's there, tell Mike. Bill asks
Mike about it, and Jake listens in, then tells us. A writer as talented as Hemingway was able to
surmount storytelling challenges of this kind — and do it with panache.
Finally, another word about Robert Cohn. In this chapter, more than ever before, he serves as
Jake Barnes's foil: the character who, more than any other, characterizes Jake by contrast. "I've
been through hell, Jake. It's been simply hell," Cohn says, crying in his hotel room. And indeed,
the rejection and humiliation to which Brett has subjected Cohn is extreme and certainly painful.
But think about Jake's situation vis-à-vis Brett. Cohn is a boxer, Jake a war veteran. Cohn,
certainly, has visited hell. But Jake lives there.
Glossary
the Suizo a café or restaurant in Pamplona.
wicket a small window or opening, as for a bank teller or in a box office.
cold (Informal) unlucky or ineffective.
Vaya! (Spanish) Go!
encierro (Spanish) enclosure.
cogido (Spanish) gored.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 40
cornada (Spanish) goring.
Es muy flamenco (Spanish) It is very flamenco
Tafalla a town in Navarra, south of Pamplona.
Estella, Sanguesa towns in Navarra.
grade a sloping surface.
Bocanegra (Spanish) Blackmouth.
You've been in the war This seems to imply that Bill is not a veteran, and yet he has referred to
being in France at the end of the war; an apparent contradiction. Perhaps Bill was covering the
war as a newspaper correspondent.
Would you mind opening it? Mike is too drunk too open his own beer bottle.
baronet a man holding the lowest hereditary British title, below a baron but above a knight.
Bring up half a dozen bottles of beer and a bottle of Fundador Mike intends to stay severely
intoxicated.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XVIII
Summary
It is the last day of the fiesta. Cohn has left Pamplona, presumably to return to his girlfriend,
Frances, and Mike, drunk as always, is clearly embittered by Brett's affair with Romero. Jake and
Brett pray at the cathedral, where she feels uncomfortable, before she visits Romero. Then Jake,
Brett, and Bill attend the bullfight, in which Romero, beloved of the crowd, kills the bull and
presents its ear to Brett — even though he is cut and bruised from his fight with Cohn the night
before. After Jake and Bill share a meal, Mike tells Jake that Brett has left town also, with
Romero.
Analysis
This is a climactic chapter structurally, in that it resolves the conflicts of most of the book's
central characters.
Apparently accepting that he will never have Brett, Robert Cohn leaves Pamplona and the novel;
we will not see him again.
Pedro Romero, on the other hand, gets exactly what he wants: a victory over the bull he was
scheduled to fight (not to mention survival in this mortally-dangerous activity) as well as Brett
herself — and this despite long odds, considering Romero's sickly state following his fight with
Cohn.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 41
Brett too gets what she wants: Romero, who seems to be the only man since Jake for whom she
has felt true passion. (As a result, she is "radiant . . . happy." "I feel altogether changed," she tells
Jake.)
Bill, of course, never quite had a conflict, other than his desire for a good time, which he seems to
have fulfilled.
The jury is still out on the fate of poor Mike, who desperately wants his fiancée Brett, as always.
Jake's handpicked substitute has triumphed, but at the end of Book II, Jake, as ever, remains
alone. "The three of us sat at the table," Jake says of himself, Bill, and Mike in the concluding
sentence of Book II, "and it seemed as though about six people were missing." Brett, Romero,
Cohn, the Count, Harris, and Edna — six characters are, indeed, gone from the book, most of
them never to return.
Remember the inside/outside dichotomy introduced earlier, and pay attention to Hemingway's
use in the last few chapters of the English tourists from Biarritz. "They sat in the big white car and
looked through their glasses at the fiesta," Jake tells us. Most of the foreigners at the fiesta only
observe the goings-on, much as Cohn has lived his life through books. They are outside the
festival, while Jake, Bill, Mike, and Brett are inside it, participating almost as fully as do the locals.
The English tourists serve as a sort of collective foil to the novel's ensemble of central characters.
Similarly, Jake brings Brett inside the cathedral to pray, but she belongs outside the church in the
pagan world of the fiesta and the bullfight and asks to leave. Jake is comfortable in both worlds.
Though Hemingway's meaning is not made explicit, the awkward encounter with the German
maître d'hôtel dramatizes the rage that these war veterans feel toward the country that
instigated the conflict that so damaged all of them. It also reminds us, late in the novel, of the
ultimate source of their pain and sadness. Remember, The Sun Also Rises is a war novel; in typical
Hemingway style, it happens to omit the war.
In terms of symbolism, it was noted earlier that, whereas Jake and Cohn are like steers, the rest
of the novel's central characters resemble bulls — even Brett, despite the fact that bulls are male
cattle. This is reiterated in the lines "Pedro Romero . . . loved bull-fighting, and I think he loved
the bulls, and I think he loved Brett."
In fact, the bullfight is described by Hemingway much as one might describe a sexual conquest.
First there is a kind of flirtation, then a passionate, intimate intermingling: "Each time he let the
bull pass so close that the man and the bull and the cape . . . were all one sharply etched mass. It
was all so slow and so controlled. It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep." The
bullfighter's blood-stained fighting-cape is said to be made of percale (a fabric most often
associated with bed sheets). At last (if the toreador has succeeded) comes penetration of the bull
with his phallic sword (". . . the sword went in, and for just an instant he and the bull were one,
Romero way out over the bull. . . . Then the figure was broken. The was a little jolt as Romero
came clear. . . ."), after which boys converge upon the bull from all over the arena and dance
around it — much as the peasants danced around Brett at the start of the fiesta. Remember that
this is the very bull who killed a man earlier in the day — symbolic of Brett's devastation of the
hapless Cohn?
Symbolism aside, the description of the bullfight that takes up most of this chapter is a brilliant
bit of expository writing. With regard to description, pacing, and overall impact, it stands beside
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 42
the writer's other towering achievement of this kind: the famous retreat from Caporetto, in A
Farewell to Arms.
And lastly, here's a brilliant bit of high-Modernist creativity on Hemingway's part: Mike's dialogue
at one point appears to contain a series of typographical errors: "I'm getting a lit tle sleep. I've
want ed a lit tle sleep for a long time," he tells Jake. In fact, this line and a few that follow are the
writer's attempt to recreate Mike's drunken, sleepy slurring of words on the page. Whether the
desired effect is achieved or not, you've got to give Hemingway credit for trying.
Glossary
Paseo de Sarasate a park in the center of Pamplona.
She did not knock implies that Brett and Romero are intimate.
death mask a cast of a person's face taken soon after death.
smooth-rolled before a bullfight, the sand of the bullring is flattened and smoothed by means of
heavy rollers.
muleta (Spanish) a red flannel cloth draped over a stick and manipulated by the matador in his
series of passes.
glasses opera glasses or binoculars.
Belmonte Juan Belmonte was a matador renowned throughout Spain during the early 1920s. In
other words, Hemingway here features an actual person as a minor character in his fictional
story.
It looked badly marked that is, bruised from his fight with Cohn.
percale fine, closely woven cotton cloth.
fistula an abnormal passage from an abscess, cavity, or hollow organ to the skin or to another
abscess, cavity, or organ.
motor automobile.
"quite" according to Hemingway himself, in his bullfighting treatise Death in the Afternoon, "the
taking away of the bull from any one who has been placed in immediate danger by him."
veronica a move in which the matador holds a cape out and pivots slowly as the bull charges past
it.
templed again, according to Death in the Afternoon, temple is "the quality of slowness, suavity,
and rhythm in a bullfighter's work."
spraddle (blend of spread and straddle) (Informal or Dialectic) to spread (the legs) in a sprawling
or straddling way.
Summary and Analysis Chapter XIX
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 43
Summary
What's left of the group splits up, with Bill returning to Paris and Mike to Saint Jean de Luz, on the
French side of the border. Jake travels to San Sebastian, where he relaxes alone in cafés and on
the beach. Soon, however, his relative tranquility is shattered by a telegram from Brett begging
him to join her in Madrid. Jake faithfully travels to the capital overnight; when he finds Brett in
her hotel room, she is devastated by the end of her affair with Romero. Though she says she
doesn't want to talk about it, she does nothing but talk, and Jake of course listens. Brett reveals
that it was she who ended the relationship, and that she intends to return to Mike. As the novel
ends, Jake and Brett are drunk and riding in a cab, their bodies pressed together by the
movements of the car — just as they were at the start of Chapter IV.
Analysis
It has been suggested that the final chapter of The Sun Also Rises is unnecessary, as the conflicts
of its major characters were for the most part resolved by the end of Book II. But most novels
feature some sort of denouement (literally, "unraveling"), a dramatization, by the author, of the
ways in which the world has been changed by the action of the book. (Think of F. Scott
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the final pages of which show us the protagonist's once-perfect
lawn now overgrown, with Nick Carraway preparing to return to the Midwest.) One sense in
which The Sun Also Rises is a Modern, even radical, book is in its insistence that change (or
change for the better, at least) is a myth. After 250 pages overflowing with almost-uninterrupted
violence, alcohol abuse, and sex, the novel's characters end up exactly where they began: Cohn is
presumed to be with Frances; Bill is in Paris; Mike is still engaged to Brett, who still plans to marry
him; and Brett is, of course, miserable, and turning to Jake for comfort — comfort he is all too
willing to provide, at the expense of his own sanity.
The early Moderns presumed that technology would make life easier, happier, better. Similarly,
the Great War was called "the war to end all wars" — as if human beings had finally evolved to
the point where wars would be unnecessary. And yet it is precisely technology, in the form of
airplanes and submarines, machine guns and mustard gas, that made the conflict of 1914–1918
so universally devastating. Unlike the American pilgrims on the French train, and even the English
tourists from Biarritz, the veterans of World War I who populate The Sun Also Rises know the
brutal truth that nothing has changed — that nothing can change, because human nature can't
change. Thus, the only possible ending for this book is one that mirrors the beginning, with the
awesomely attractive and yet profoundly destructive Brett once again taking advantage of Jake's
decency and desire. In fact, Brett has actively refused to change — for Romero, who requested
that she grow her hair out (that is, behave more conventionally for the sake of his pleasure). On
the other hand, she does resist his charms and insist that Romero leave her for his own good, and
this, indeed, seems evidence of growth.
The bulk of the chapter is therefore taken up by a series of strangely quiet scenes in which Jake
Barnes eats, drinks, swims, and so on. Remember, however, the scene in which he is joined while
sunning on a raft off of San Sebastian by a boy and girl at the raft's opposite end who do little
besides talk quietly but are obviously in love. The point about this episode, and the others like it
in Chapter XIX, is that Jake is alone. He is rehearsing for the rest of his sorrowful life. This is a
bitterly sad book, because Jake's injury is apparently permanent. Jake can only be tortured by
women to whom he is attracted, feeling a desire for them that he cannot satisfy.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 44
Once again and to the very last, black humor abounds. A bike racer cannot ride properly due to
the boils that have developed in his crotch; ride is slang for sexual intercourse. ("Want to go for a
ride?" Jake asks Brett in the final scene. Of course, the ride he would prefer is impossible.) A
soldier near the beach has only one arm, the other having been symbolically castrated. In the
Hotel Montana, Jake cannot make the elevator to Brett's floor work. Finally, after Brett's almost
obscenely absurd contention that she and Jake "could have had such a damned good time
together," we observe a policeman directing traffic who, Jake says, "raised his baton. The car
slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me."
Note the contrast between Spain and France that is reiterated in this chapter. In France, there is
"a safe, suburban feeling," which stands in opposition to the wild, frontier quality of Spain. "It
was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain," Jake tells us. He
also tells us that living in France is a simple matter of paying for the things you want, while in
Spain the situation is much more complicated. Money is not enough. ("The Spaniards . . . did not
know how to pedal," says a bike racer; Hemingway is punning on peddle, meaning "to sell.")
France, therefore, is a kind of cleaned-up illusion about life, while Spain, in this book, represents
life itself: unpredictable and often difficult. Remember, however, that Jake returns to Spain, and
it is in Spain that the book ends. Despite his Sisyphean situation, Jake Barnes nevertheless
chooses to engage with the world and all its insurmountable difficulties. He chooses life.
Glossary
I think I'll go to San Sebastian Jake is returning to the scene of Brett's affair with Cohn.
Saint Jean de Luz a seacoast town in the Basque region of France, near the Spanish border.
very Ritz very fancy.
tick (Informal, chiefly British) credit; trust.
consigne (French) baggage-check room.
Château Margaux a French wine.
Pyrenees a mountain range along the French-Spanish border.
strega an Italian liqueur made from herbs and flowers.
vieux marc (French) literally, old dregs or grounds. An after-dinner drink.
summer-time the European equivalent of daylight savings time.
Tour du Pays Basque (French) Circuit of the Basque Region.
Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic a particular kind of Parisian stylishness.
Bilbao a port in the Basque country, in northern Spain, near the Bay of Biscay.
terasse (French) terrace or balcony.
sportif (French) sporting.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 45
football soccer.
La France Sportive (French) Sporting France.
Chope de Negre a Parisian café
depart (French) start (of the race).
bootblack a person whose work is shining shoes and boots.
L'Auto a French periodical.
MADRID the capital of Spain, in the central part.
Sud (French) south, southerly.
LOVE Note that Brett's telegram is signed with her name only. Though profoundly attracted to
Jake, she is perhaps incapable of love.
Avila a city of central Spain, west of Madrid.
Escorial a huge quadrangle of granite buildings near Madrid, built in the sixteenth century by
Philip II of Spain; it encloses a palace, a church, a monastery, and so on.
the Norte station a Madrid railroad station where trains from the north arrive.
Puerta del Sol (Spanish) Gate of the Sun, in the very center of Madrid.
Carrera San Jeronimo a street in central Madrid.
Muy Buenos (Spanish) Very Good.
a female English probably a literal translation of the woman's phrasing in Spanish.
chica (Spanish) girl.
fonda (Spanish) inn.
the male English Because he speaks English (and perhaps because of his clipped, curt manner)
the woman has mistakenly assumed that Jake is from England rather than America.
a sou any of several former French coins, especially one equal to five centimes.
scad (Informal) a very large number or amount.
Gib a town in Spain; also a pun by Hemingway at Jake's expense — a gib is a castrated male cat.
one of these bitches that ruins children an older woman who corrupts young men.
nickelled plated in nickel.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 46
He thinks it was me. Not the show in general. Because he is inexperienced, Romero attributes
his pleasure to Brett in particular, rather than to sex generally.
suckling unweaned.
Study Help Full Glossary for The Sun Also Rises
absinthe a green, bitter, toxic liqueur made with wormwood oil and anise, now illegal in most
countries.
Abyssinia the former name for the country now known as Ethiopia.
aguardiente (Spanish) clear brandy
Algabeno, Gallo bullfighters
Alger Horatio Alger (1832–1899), U.S. writer of boys' stories; his books typically deal with rags-toriches stories of young boys advancing from poverty to wealth and acclaim.
Alsace a historical region of northeastern France, under German control from 1871 to 1919.
American Women's Club list apparently a list of recommended tourist sites.
amontillado a pale, relatively dry sherry.
Anatole France pseudonym of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault (1844–1924); French novelist and
literary critic.
Anis del Mono a brand of French or Spanish liqueur flavored with aniseed.
ANIS DEL TORO (Spanish) anise of the bull; brand of French or Spanish liqueur flavored with aniseed.
Anti-Saloon League American temperance organization.
apéritif an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite.
arc-light a lamp in which brilliant light is produced by maintaining an arc between two electrodes.
Ardennes a wooded plateau in northeastern France, southern Belgium, and Luxembourg; the scene
of heavy fighting in World War I.
armistice a temporary stopping of warfare by mutual agreement, as a truce preliminary to the
signing of a peace treaty. The armistice referred to here is the one that ended World War I, on
November 11, 1918.
Arriba (Spanish) up, upwards.
arriero (Spanish) mule driver.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 47
Avenue de l'Opéra a boulevard running southwest from the Place de l'Opera to the Palais Royal, on
the right bank of the Seine in Paris.
Avila a city of central Spain, west of Madrid.
Ayuntamiento town hall.
baggage-truck a handcart used for moving luggage.
baize a thick woolen cloth made to resemble felt and often dyed green, used to cover billiard tables.
bal musette (French) bagpipe dance
banderillero (Spanish)a bullfighter who assists the matador by placing banderillas, or harpoons, in
the withers of the bull.
baronet a man holding the lowest hereditary British title, below a baron but above a knight.
barrera the protecting wall enclosing the floor of a bull ring at bullfights.
Basques a people living in the western Pyrenees of Spain and France.
bateau mouche a pleasure steamer.
Bayonne a city in southwestern France.
because she had no hat traditionally, women are discouraged from entering churches in Europe
bareheaded.
Belmonte Juan Belmonte was a matador renowned throughout Spain during the early 1920s. In
other words, Hemingway here features an actual person as a minor character in his fictional story.
Biarritz aresort town in southwestern France, on the Bay of Biscay.
Bilbao a port in the Basque country, in northern Spain, near the Bay of Biscay.
bilge (Slang) worthless or silly talk or writing; nonsense.
bladder a bag consisting of or lined with membraneous tissue in the body of many animals, capable
of inflation to receive and contain liquids or gasses.
blind (Slang) drunk.
boat train a train scheduled to be at a port in time for the prompt transfer of passengers to or from a
ship.
Bocanegra (Spanish) Blackmouth.
the Bois the Bois de Boulogne, an enormous Parisian park.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 48
Bonaparte hats hats like those worn by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), a French military leader
and emperor of France (1804–1815), born in Corsica.
Bonapartist Groups those who supported the Bonaparte dynasty in France
bootblack a person whose work is shining shoes and boots.
Bootblack a person whose work is shining shoes and boots.
Bordeaux a seaport in southwestern France, on the Garonne River.
Borracho! Muy borracho! (Spanish) Drunk! Very drunk!
bota (Spanish) wineskin.
Boulevard Boulevard St.-Germain, the "main drag" of Paris's Latin Quarter.
Boulevard des Capucines an avenue connecting the Boulevard de la Madeleine with the Place de
l'Opera, on the Right Bank.
Boulevard du Port Royal an avenue in Montparnasse; west of Boulevard St. Michel; its name changes
to Boulevard Montparnasse.
Boulevard here, the Boulevard St. Michel.
Boulevard Montparnasse the "main drag" of the Montparnasse district.
Boulevard Raspail an avenue connecting Boulevard St. Germain and Boulevard du Montparnasse, on
the Left Bank of the Seine.
Boulevard St. Michel an avenue connecting Montparnasse with the Latin Quarter.
a brick (Old Informal) a fine person.
Bring up half a dozen bottles of beer and a bottle of Fundador Mike intends to stay severely
intoxicated.
brioche a light, rich roll made with flour, butter, eggs, and yeast.
British East Africa the former name of the country now known as Kenya.
Bruges French name for a city in northwestern Belgium.
Brussels the capital of Belgium, in the central part.
Bryan William Jennings (1860–1925); U.S. politician and orator.
buck to dislodge or throw by bucking.
buck up to cheer up.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 49
Buen hombre (Spanish) Good man.
Burguete a town in northern Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
by-line a line identifying the writer of a newspaper or magazine article.
Café de la Paix a Parisian café, the name of which means, significantly, Café of Peace.
Café de Versailles a Parisian café.
Café Iruña a café that still stands on the Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona.
Café Napolitain a Parisian café.
Café Select a café in the Montparnasse district, southwest of the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of
the Seine.
Caffeine, we are here. pun on Charles E. Stanton's "Lafayette, we are here" (Paris, July 4, 1917).
Cannes a city in southeastern France, on the Riviera.
carabineers a soldier armed with a carbine (a rifle).
carbons carbon copies of typewritten pages.
Carmel, California . . . Provincetown, Massachusetts a town on the California coast north of Los
Angeles, and a town at the tip of Cape Cod. Traditionally, both towns have welcomed artists and
writers.
Carrera San Jeronimo a street in central Madrid.
Castile region and former kingdom in northern and central Spain: gained autonomy in tenth century
and united with Leon, and later with Aragon (fifteenth century), and became the nucleus of the
Spanish monarchy.
C'est entendu, Monsieur (French) It is understood, sir.
Chablis a dry white Burgundy wine made in or near the town of Chablis, France.
chateau a large country house and estate, especially in France.
Château Margaux a French wine.
Che mala fortuna (Italian) What bad luck.
chez (French) the home of.
chica (Spanish) girl.
Chope de Negre a Parisian café
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 50
CINZANO brand of aperitif.
Circe in Homer's Odyssey, an enchantress who turns men into swine.
the Coast the West Coast of the United States.
cocher (French) coachman, driver.
cock-eyed (Slang) drunk.
cogido (Spanish) gored.
cognac a French brandy distilled from wine in the area of Cognac, France.
cold (Informal) unlucky or ineffective.
Cologne a city in Germany, on the Rhine, in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia.
Comment? (French) Why?
the Concha San Sebastian beach.
concierge a custodian or head porter, as of an apartment house or hotel.
Connais pas (French) I don't know.
consigne (French) baggage-check room.
copper a coin of copper or bronze, as a penny.
cordon a keychain
corking (Informal) very good or well; excellently.
cornada (Spanish) goring.
Cornigrams items about bullfighting, presumably.
counsel a lawyer or group of lawyers giving advice about legal matters and representing clients in
court.
Course de taureaux (French) running of bulls.
courts tennis courts.
cove (British slang) a boy or man; chap; fellow.
the Crillon the Bar du Crillon at the Hôtel du Crillon, across from the U.S. Embassy on the Place de la
Concorde; one of Europe's grandest hotels.
Damoy's a Montparnasse café.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 51
darb a person or thing regarded as remarkable or excellent.
death mask a cast of a person's face taken soon after death.
Dempsey Jack, born William Harrison Dempsey (1895–1983); U.S. professional boxer.
depart (French) start (of the race).
desencajonada (Spanish) releasing.
diligence a public stagecoach, especially as formerly used in France.
The Dingo a Parisian café.
Dites garçon, un pernod (French) Tell the waiter, a pernod.
the Dome, Lavigne's, Closerie des Lilas Parisian cafés.
drag (Slang) influence that gains special or undeserved favors; pull.
Dred Scott case a controversial U.S. Supreme court decision (1857) that denied the claim of a U.S.
black slave to be free as a result of living in free territory.
drygoods cloth, cloth products, thread, and so on.
duster a lightweight coat worn to protect the clothes from dust, as formerly in open automobiles.
dysentery any of various intestinal inflammations characterized by abdominal pain and frequent and
intense diarrhea with bloody, mucous feces.
encierro (Spanish) enclosure.
Es muy flamenco (Spanish) It is very flamenco
Escorial a huge quadrangle of granite buildings near Madrid, built in the sixteenth century by Philip II
of Spain; it encloses a palace, a church, a monastery, and so on.
esta ciudad (Spanish) this town.
Estella, Sanguesa towns in Navarra.
featherweight a boxer between a junior featherweight and a junior lightweight, with a maximum
weight of 126 pounds.
a female English probably a literal translation of the woman's phrasing in Spanish.
fiacre (French) hackney-coach, cab.
file that line he got off this morning report on the news conference mentioned earlier.
fine à l'eau (French) brandy and water.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 52
fines (French) brandies.
fire-gaps avenues through the woods created by cutting down trees, so as to discourage the spread
of forest fires.
fistula an abnormal passage from an abscess, cavity, or hollow organ to the skin or to another
abscess, cavity, or organ.
Flamand (French) Flemish.
Flemish of Flanders or its people, language, or culture.
fly-book a book-like case to hold artificial fishing flies.
fonda (Spanish) inn.
Fontainbleau a town in northern France, near Paris; the site of a palace of former kings of France.
football soccer.
ford a shallow place in a stream or river where one can cross by wading or riding on horseback, in an
automobile, and so on.
Ford Henry (1863–1947); U.S. automobile manufacturer.
Fordham a Jesuit university located in the Bronx, New York.
Foyot's a Parisian restaurant.
franc the basic monetary unit of France.
the France a luxury ocean liner.
Frankie Fritsch a college football star of the 1920s known as "the Fordham Flash."
Gare d'Orsay a neoclassical train station, across the Seine from the Louvre and the Tuileries; now a
museum of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art.
Gare St. Lazare railroad station located in Paris's 8th Arrondisement.
gazette any of various official publications containing announcements and bulletins.
General Grant Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822–1885); eighteenth President of the U.S. (1869–1877);
commander in chief of the Union forces in the Civil War.
gentille (French) pretty, nice, graceful; amiable, pleasing.
gentry people of high social standing; especially, in Great Britain, the class of landowning people
ranking just below the nobility.
get off some cables send newspaper stories overseas via telegram.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 53
Gib a town in Spain; also a pun by Hemingway at Jake's expense — a gib is a castrated male cat.
Gibraltar a small peninsula at the southern tip of Spain, extending into the Mediterranean.
glasses opera glasses or binoculars.
Globos illuminados (Spanish) illuminated balloons.
a goner (Slang) doomed
grade a sloping surface.
Grand Cerf a hotel in or near Senlis, apparently.
Great Commoner nickname for William Jennings Bryan.
great giants, cigar-store Indians, thirty feet high, Moors, a King and a Queen enormous effigies
carried through the streets to celebrate the fiesta.
gunny-sacking a sack or bag made of gunny, a coarse, heavy fabric of jute or hemp.
Hardy Thomas (1840–1928); English novelist and poet.
He can't believe it didn't mean anything. Brett understands that sleeping with her was meaningful
to Cohn, though the experience was of little import to her.
He had a pile of saucers in front of him As each saucer represents one drink brought by the waiter,
Stone has been drinking for a long time.
He thinks it was me. Not the show in general. Because he is inexperienced, Romero attributes his
pleasure to Brett in particular, rather than to sex generally.
hell's own (Slang) the ultimate with respect to.
Hendaye a seacoast town in southwestern France, in that country's Basque region.
her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. Jake seems to be claiming that Brett
initiated the 1920s fashion for short, or "bobbed," hair on women.
Her lodge the concierge's booth in the lobby of Jake's building.
He's quite one of us a reference to wartime experience; Jake is a veteran, and Brett served as a
nurse. Again, Cohn did not serve, perhaps because he was simply too young; therefore, he is "one of
them."
the hill Montmartre.
his compatriot Moses, who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. A reference to Cohn's
Jewishness.
Holy Cross a college located in Worcester, Massachusetts.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 54
I tapped with my fingertips on the table. Jake is superstitiously "knocking on wood" so as to
counteract Romero's statement, which seems to tempt fate.
I think I'll go to San Sebastian Jake is returning to the scene of Brett's affair with Cohn.
Irati River River in the Basque region of Spain.
the island the Ile St.-Louis, in the River Seine.
It looked badly marked that is, bruised from his fight with Cohn.
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889); U.S. statesman; president of the Confederacy (1861–1865).
Jerez (Spanish) sherry.
Jo Davidson (1883–1952); U.S. sculptor.
kepi a cap with a flat round top and a stiff visor, worn by French soldiers.
kike (Slang) a Jew; a hostile and offensive term.
King George V (1865–1936); king of Great Britain and Ireland (1910–1936); son of Edward VII.
kiosque (French) a small structure open at one or more sides.
klaxon a kind of electric horn with a loud, shrill sound.
La France Sportive (French) Sporting France.
the Landes a region of southwestern France.
landing-nets a small bag-like net attached to a long handle, for taking a hooked fish from the water.
Lasted just four days. . . . Don't remember. Wrote you a postcard. Remember that perfectly. Bill
drops the subjects of his sentences because he is drunk.
L'Auto a French periodical.
L'Avenue's a Parisian restaurant.
Le Toril a periodical covering bullfighting.
Lenglen Suzanne Lenglen (1899–1938); Wimbledon singles champion 1919–1923.
Let's turn in early Mike is aroused and wants to have sex with Brett.
lidia (Spanish) fight.
Liège a province of eastern Belgium, or its capital, on the Meuse River.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 55
light heavyweight a boxer between a super middleweight and a cruiserweight, with a maximum
weight of 175 pounds.
the Lilas Closerie des Lilas, a café.
little chickens young girlfriends.
loopholes a hole or narrow slit in the wall of a fort, for looking or shooting through.
lorgnon a single or double eyeglass, as a monocle or pince-nez.
Lourdes a town in southwestern France to which Roman Catholics travel so as to be healed of
injuries, illnesses, and so on.
LOVE Note that Brett's telegram is signed with her name only. Though profoundly attracted to Jake,
she is perhaps incapable of love.
Loyola any of a number of colleges and universities named for Saint Ignatius de Loyola, founder of
the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.
Luxembourg gardens formal gardens behind the Palais du Luxembourg, west of the Latin Quarter.
Lyons the English name for Lyon, a city in east-central France, at the juncture of the Rhone and
Salone rivers.
the Madeleine a church at the opposite end of the Rue Royal from the Place de la Concorde, on the
Right Bank.
MADRID the capital of Spain, in the central part.
magnum a wine bottle holding about 1.5 liters, about twice as much as the usual bottle.
Malaga a seaport in southern Spain, on the Mediterranean.
Malagueño (Spanish) native to or typical of Malaga.
the male English Because he speaks English (and perhaps because of his clipped, curt manner) the
woman has mistakenly assumed that Jake is from England rather than America.
mattock a tool for loosening the soil, digging up and cutting roots, and so on; it is like a pickaxe but
has a flat, adz-shaped blade on one or both sides.
Mencken H.L. (1880–1956); U.S. writer, editor, and critic.
middleweight a boxer between a junior middleweight and a super middleweight, with a maximum
weight of 160 pounds.
Milano Italian name for Milan; a commune in northwestern Italy, in Lombardy.
miniature-painter a painter of very small paintings, especially portraits, done on ivory, vellum, and so
on.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 56
monsieur (French) sir, mister.
Monte Carlo a town in Monaco; gambling resort.
Montereau town in northern France, on the Seine southeast of Paris.
Montmartre a district of Paris, in the northern part; noted for its cafés and as an artists' quarter.
moraine a mound, ridge, or mass of rocks, gravel, sand, clay, and so on carried and deposited directly
by a glacier along its side (lateral moraine), at its lower end (terminal moraine), or beneath the ice
(ground moraine).
motor automobile.
Mucha suerte (Spanish) Much luck.
muleta (Spanish) a red flannel cloth draped over a stick and manipulated by the matador in his series
of passes.
Mumms a brand of Champagne.
Muy Buenos (Spanish) Very Good.
Nada (Spanish) Nothing.
Navarrais from the province of Navarra, in northeastern Spain.
Negre Joyeaux, Café Aux Amateurs Latin Quarter cafés.
New York Herald a now-defunct daily newspaper.
Ney Michel Ney, Duc D'Elchingen, Prince de La Muskova (1769–1815); French military leader under
Napoleon I; executed.
nickelled plated in nickel.
Nix (Slang) no.
the Norte station a Madrid railroad station where trains from the north arrive.
Notre Dame a Catholic university located in South Bend, Indiana.
Notre Dame a famous early Gothic cathedral in Paris, built between 1163 and 1257; in full, Notre
Dame de Paris.
Nouvelle Revue Française (French) New French Revision.
Nuestra Señora de Roncesvalles Our Lady of Roncesvalles.
of title titled, having a title, especially of nobility.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 57
An old lady's bags did that Mike either fell down or got into a fight, because he is drunk.
one of these bitches that ruins children an older woman who corrupts young men.
Opéra L'Opera Garnier, rococo opera house created by Charles Garnier.
Ospedale Maggiore the great hospital in Milan, which is the setting of part of Hemingway's A
Farewell to Arms.
Padiglione Ponte Ponte Pavilion, apparently the wing of the hospital where Jake was treated.
Padiglione Zonda another hospital pavilion.
Pamplona a city in Navarre, in northeastern Spain.
Pantheon quarter the Left Bank district surrounding the Pantheon, a "Temple of Fame" where JeanJacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, and others are buried.
paseo (Spanish) a leisurely walk, especially in the evening; stroll.
Paseo de Sarasate a park in the center of Pamplona.
patronne (French) proprietress.
pelota jai alai; a game like handball, played with a curved basket fastened to the arm, for catching
the ball and hurling it against the wall.
pelouse (French) lawn.
percale fine, closely woven cotton cloth.
Pernod a particular brand of anise, a French or Spanish liqueur flavored with aniseed.
pesage (French) paddock.
peseta the basic monetary unit of Spain.
Petite Correspondance (French) little correspondence; letters to the editor.
picador in bullfighting, any of the horsemen who weaken the neck muscles of the bull by pricking
with a lance.
Piccadilly a street in London, England; traditional center of fashionable shops, clubs, and hotels.
piece (Slang) a woman regarded as a sexual partner.
pie-eyed (Slang) intoxicated, drunk.
pirotecnico (Spanish) fireworks.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 58
Place de la Contrescarpe, Rue Mouffetard, Aveue des Gobelins streets between St. Etienne du Mont
and Parc Montsouris, on the Left Bank of the Seine.
Por ustedes (Spanish) For you
porto port, a sweet fortified wine usually served after a meal.
posada (Spanish) an inn.
poules (French) literally, hen; slang for prostitute.
prepped attended a preparatory school.
President Coolidge (John) Calvin (1872–1933); thirtieth President of the U.S. (1923–1929).
Prince of Wales (1894–1972); son of George V; Duke of Windsor; later king of England, as Edward
VIII; abdicated.
Princeton an Ivy League university located in the town of Princeton, in central New Jersey.
Puerta del Sol (Spanish) Gate of the Sun, in the very center of Madrid.
Pyrenees a mountain range along the French-Spanish border.
Quai de Bethune a street on the Ile St.-Louis.
Quai d'Orleans a street on the Ile St.-Louis.
Quai d'Orsay a street running alongside the Left Bank of the Seine, north of the Invalides district
the Quarter the Latin Quarter, a section of Paris south of the River Seine where many artists and
students live.
quelqu'une (French) such a one.
an R.G. Dun report precursor of Dun & Bradstreet, an agency furnishing subscribers with information
as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses.
a review of the Arts a journal, perhaps published quarterly and probably containing fiction, poetry
and criticism.
Riff a mountain range along the northeastern coast of Morocco, extending from the Strait of
Gibraltar to the Algerian border.
the Ritz a Parisian hotel founded by Cesar Ritz (1850–1918), Swiss hotel owner.
Rockefeller John D(avison) (1839–1937); U.S. industrialist and philanthropist.
Roncesvalles a pass through the Pyrenees, near the French border in the Navarra province of Spain,
utilized often by pilgrims from Paris to Santiago de Compostela.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 59
Roncevaux French name for Roncesvalles.
Ronda a town in the province of Andalusia, in southern Spain.
the Rotonde a café that still stands on the Boulevard du Montparnasse.
ruddy a euphemism for bloody (British Informal); confounded.
Rue de Cardinal Lemoine a street in the Latin Quarter
Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève a street in the Latin Quarter.
Rue de Rivoli a boulevard that parallels the Seine, on Paris's right bank.
Rue Denfert-Rochereau a street on the Left Bank.
Rue des Pyramides a street connecting the Avenue de l'Opera with the Rue de Rivoli.
Rue des Saints Pères a street on the Left Bank, perpendicular to the Boulevard St. Germain.
Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic a particular kind of Parisian stylishness.
Rue du Pot de Fer a street in the Latin Quarter.
Rue Saint Jacques a street in the Latin Quarter.
Rue Soufflot a street running from the Luxembourg gardens to the Pantheon.
Saint Jean de Luz a seacoast town in the Basque region of France, near the Spanish border.
San Fermines Fiesta de San Fermín, which lasts from noon on July 6 to 14 every year.
San Sebastian a seaport in the Basque region of northern Spain.
scad (Informal) a very large number or amount.
Seine a river in northern France, flowing northwest through France into the English Channel.
Senlis a town in northern France, northeast of Paris.
Señor Mr.; sir; a Spanish title of respect.
shakes (Slang) ability, importance, and so on.
She did not knock implies that Brett and Romero are intimate.
Sherry a Spanish fortified wine varying in color from light yellow to dark brown and in flavor from
very dry to sweet.
shove it along (Slang) cut it out.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 60
simian of or like an ape or monkey.
sinker a lead weight used in fishing.
siphon siphon bottle, a heavy, sealed bottle with a tube on the inside connected at the top with a
nozzle and valve which, when opened, allows the flow of pressurized, carbonated water contained
within.
smooth-rolled before a bullfight, the sand of the bullring is flattened and smoothed by means of
heavy rollers.
SOL, SOL Y SOMBRA, and SOMBRA (Spanish) SUN, SUN AND SHADE, and SUN.
Something the patronne's daughter said Presumably an insult regarding Georgette's profession.
sommelier the person in a restaurant or club who is responsible for the selection and serving of
wines, especially with French cuisine; wine steward.
the Sorbonne the University of Paris; specifically, the seat of the faculties of letters and science.
a sou any of several former French coins, especially one equal to five centimes.
the spilling open of the horses When the horses on which the picadors, or lancers, ride are gored by
the bull, their entrails often fall out onto the floor of the bullring.
sportif (French) sporting.
spraddle (blend of spread and straddle) (Informal or Dialectic) to spread (the legs) in a sprawling or
straddling way.
sprinkling the streets wetting dirt streets to discourage clouds of dust from rising.
St. Etienne du Mont a church on a hilltop northeast of the Pantheon, in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
Strasbourg a city and port in northeastern France, on the Rhine.
strega an Italian liqueur made from herbs and flowers.
strike the pull on the line by a fish seizing or snatching at bait.
stud-book a register of purebred animals, especially racehorses.
suckling unweaned.
Sud (French) south, southerly.
the Suizo a café or restaurant in Pamplona.
summer-time the European equivalent of daylight savings time.
sweep a long oar
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 61
Syndicat d'Initiative tourists' information bureau.
Tafalla a town in Navarra, south of Pamplona.
Tell him Brett wants to come into — the missing word or words are not precisely obvious, though
clearly they are sexual in nature.
templed again, according to Death in the Afternoon, temple is "the quality of slowness, suavity, and
rhythm in a bullfighter's work."
terasse (French) terrace or balcony.
that stick apparently, the Count uses a walking stick or cane.
three-handed bridge a version of the card game featuring three rather than the standard four
players.
thrown on every screen projected onto every movie screen.
tick (Informal, chiefly British) credit; trust.
tight (Slang) drunk.
torero (Spanish) a bullfighter, especially a matador.
Toro (Spanish) Bull.
Tour du Pays Basque (French) Circuit of the Basque Region.
Tours a city in west-central France, on the Loire.
translate to move from one place or condition to another; transfer.
très (French) very.
tromper (French) to trick
Tuileries the Jardin des Tuileries, public gardens on the right bank of the Seine.
Turgenieff Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883); Russian novelist.
V.A.D. Volunteer Air Detachment.
Vaya! (Spanish) Go!
Vengo Jueves (Spanish)I come Thursday.
vermouth a sweet or dry, white fortified wine flavored with aromatic herbs, used in cocktails and as
an aperitif.
veronica a move in which the matador holds a cape out and pivots slowly as the bull charges past it.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 62
very Ritz very fancy.
Veuve Cliquot a brand of champagne.
vieux marc (French) literally, old dregs or grounds. An after-dinner drink.
W.H. Hudson William Henry Hudson (1841–1922), a writer raised in Argentina by American parents
whose subjects include South America and England.
we that live by the sword shall perish by the sword paraphrase of Matthew 26:52.
a week's mail stories Jake is a foreign correspondent for a North American newspaper. He refers
here to his week's quota of articles to be mailed overseas.
white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, talking a homosexual stereotype.
wicket a small window or opening, as for a bank teller or in a box office.
Would you mind opening it? Mike is too drunk too open his own beer bottle.
You . . . have given more than your life Jake has made what the Italian liaison colonel considers the
ultimate sacrifice: he was castrated in battle.
You've been in the war This seems to imply that Bill is not a veteran, and yet he has referred to being
in France at the end of the war; an apparent contradiction. Perhaps Bill was covering the war as a
newspaper correspondent.
Character Analysis Jake Barnes
Jake Barnes is not merely the narrator (storyteller) of The Sun Also Rises. He is also its
protagonist, or main character. That means that the novel is driven by his needs and desires more
than those of the other characters. Jake's main need, of course, is for Brett. He wants to love
Brett and to be loved by her in turn. The bitter irony of The Sun Also Rises: Although Brett is more
than willing, Jake's sexual attraction can never be satisfied, because he has been castrated in
combat during World War I. Because he feels sexually drawn to Brett, who is attracted to him in
turn, Jake's inability to consummate their mutual desire makes being near Brett or even thinking
about her sheer agony for him.
Like Brett herself, as well as her fiancé, Mike Campbell, and the Count Mippipopolous, Jake is a
casualty of war. He tries to heal himself, at least emotionally, with friendship, food, and fishing.
(Fishing is almost sacramental for Jake; notice that he and Bill drink less when they are in
Burguete.) Aficion (passionate expertise, especially regarding bullfighting) provides Jake with
comfort, because it offers him a measure of control over a world that otherwise frightens him by
virtue of its extreme randomness. And of course, like Brett and Mike, he dulls his pain with
alcohol, quantities of drink that are almost incomprehensible.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 63
Jake never sees the big picture, just an unending stream of details. He lives in the present,
refusing to analyze things. (Notice that Hemingway refuses to provide us with background on his
protagonist's youth, aside from one brief memory of an afternoon in the American Midwest. As
mentioned earlier, there are no combat scenes in this novel about war and its effects.) This is not,
however, because Jake is a superficial person. In fact, he is capable of the most penetrating
insights, as when he says of Brett, "I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have." Rather, it
is due to the fact that if Jake were to examine the reality of his situation for even a moment, that
reality would probably result in his suicide.
Despite the crushing disappointment that is his life, post-war, Jake tries to behave well, in a moral
sense. He fails in this when he sets Brett up with the bullfighter Pedro Romero, thus hurting her
admirer (and Jake's friend) Robert Cohn and running the risk of destroying Romero's career
before it has even begun. In fact, Jake wants very much to damage Cohn. He can't stand that
someone whom he feels to be deeply unworthy of Brett's love should have her — and Cohn has
never served in combat. Thus, he is less than a man in Jake's estimation. Notice that Jake
approves of the Count, whose body is tattooed with war wounds. Though Romero is not a
veteran per se, he faces death every day in the bullring. Therefore, Jake sees Romero as a
satisfactory proxy for Jake himself; as a result, he does indeed "pimp" for Brett, just as Cohn says.
Jake fails morally during the fiesta of San Fermin, and he knows it. Still, like all of Hemingway's
heroes, he stoically tries to get on with life anyway. Note that despite his horrifying physical
condition, Jake never pities himself, except on occasion when he's very drunk and — significantly
— alone. (A Hemingway hero would never bellyache about his problems within earshot of
someone else.) And although Jake cannot have sexual intercourse, he undeniably can love others:
his friend Bill Gorton, his mentor Montoya, and of course Brett herself. Jake's devotion to Brett
knows no bounds, as proven by the novel's final chapter, in which he travels cross-country to be
with her in Brett's time of need. Though Jake thinks of himself as someone for whom love is
impossible, precisely the opposite proves true.
Character Analysis Brett, Lady Ashley
What's most remarkable about Brett, Jake Barnes's love interest in The Sun Also Rises, is her
utter modernity. In her book Terrible Honesty, the writer Ann Douglas points out that the 1920s
is the earliest decade that seems modern or contemporary to us. Hemingway's Brett is proof of
that. She is not the least bit old-fashioned. If she were made real and somehow transported to
high-society Paris, London, or New York of the present day, she would fit right in.
Brett parties hard. She is unapologetically sexual and aggressively promiscuous. She even wears
her hair cut short, like a man. She's one of the boys (she refers to everyone she knows as
"chaps"), whether the boys are the group of gay men in whose company Brett is first seen, or
Jake, Cohn, Mike, Romero, and the Count, all of whom she has attempted affairs with. And yet
she strikes all those who meet her, even Bill Gorton, as attractively feminine. Notably, Brett
seems not to have any female friends; she is a "man's woman." As a result, nearly all the men in
the book fall in love with her: not just Jake and Cohn, but Mike, Romero, the Count, and even the
drummer in the Paris nightclub and the Basque peasants who see her on the streets of Pamplona.
Jake and Mike love Brett so passionately, in fact, that they are willing to allow (and in Jake's case,
encourage) the object of their affection to pursue affairs with other men.
Yet Brett's breezy style and the way in which she is game for any experience (remember that she
doesn't flinch at the carnage in the bullring) hardly indicate personal happiness, much less inner
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 64
peace. She often tells Jake that she's miserable. Also, Brett seems to feel dirty, as evinced by the
number of baths she takes during the story; indeed, she may be attracted to Jake partly because
he is "clean" — that is, asexual. Romero may be "clean" in another way, a virgin. After all, he is
only a teenager, in a very conservative society.
Brett is unhappy for three reasons. First, like Jake, Mike, and the Count, she is a war veteran.
Though she of course did not see combat, Brett served in a military hospital, an experience that
was surely harrowing just the same, especially considering the newly-brutal weapons employed
in World War I. Second, there is no place in her society for a woman like Brett — a female Don
Juan, if you will. (This may partly explain her lack of relationships with women. She has been
ostracized by her female peers for her brazen sexuality.) Finally, Brett is nearly as tormented by
their unrequited love as Jake is. In fact, her serial affairs can be seen as attempts to fill the void
created in her by Jake's unavailability. Notice that immediately after Jake tells Brett he loves her,
she says she is in love with Romero, as if to bury her powerful, reciprocal feelings for Jake.
Although Jake Barnes is the protagonist of The Sun Also Rises, Brett serves as the novel's center,
its objective focus. She is the "sun" around which the other characters orbit, starstruck, in the
way that the Basque peasants place her on a wine cask and dance in adoration during the fiesta,
as if Brett were a goddess. Brett cannot relate to Jake's Catholicism partly because she herself is
an object of worship and dislikes sharing the altar with other deities. This does not mean that
Brett is selfish, however, or narcissistic. She is merely realistic about, and accepting of, the power
she has over men.
Unlike Jake, who is in the same boat at the book's conclusion as he was on the first page, Brett
has changed by the end of The Sun Also Rises. First, she has grown truly capable of loving
someone besides Jake — an important step if she is to live a life less than utterly miserable. Even
more striking: Though she loves Pedro Romero — loves him madly, in fact — she ends their
relationship because she knows to continue it would harm Romero's career. Brett has
demonstrated a capacity for generosity that was not apparent at the start of the novel, a moral
strength we could not have imagined her possessing. Now if she can only grow strong enough to
leave Jake — to leave him in peace.
Character Analysis Robert Cohn
Though he is the first character to appear in The Sun Also Rises, Robert Cohn is not the novel's
hero; rather, Cohn is the hero's foil, the character who will serve to highlight the protagonist's
strengths and weaknesses by contrast. According to Jake, at least, Cohn is insecure and selfconscious. He is perpetually broke and a dabbler in the arts. Cohn is voluble and naive. (A kind of
overgrown child, he even bursts into tears more than once.) And Cohn allows himself to be
controlled by the women in his life: his mother, his wife, and his lover. Later, Brett reduces him to
a pathetic puppy. Most significantly of all, Cohn is not a veteran of the Great War. At least
initially, Cohn appears to be everything Jake is not, and vice versa.
In fact, if there is a typical Hemingway hero, Robert Cohn is something like the exact opposite of
that. He learns not by doing, but by reading. (Ironically, the world-famous writer Hemingway was
suspicious of books. A fundamental tenet of the author's credo was: Believe only what you have
seen with your own eyes.) Most of Cohn's ideas about life and how to life it appear to have come
from the printed page. He wants to visit South America because he has read about it. Most likely,
his badly-misplaced fantasies of a lasting love affair with Brett come from books, too. Cohn
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 65
believes in true love and can't conceive of sex as recreation, as Brett does. No wonder their brief
time together ends disastrously for him.
Robert Cohn is a boxer, a practitioner of one of the so-called "blood sports" (like bullfighting)
admired by Hemingway, and by Jake. Cohn fights effectively, too; note how he dispatches Jake
himself as well as Mike with his fists and only fails to beat Romero, who possesses a sort of
superhuman resilience. And yet, Jake appears not to admire Cohn for his pugilistic skills.
Somehow Cohn lacks a sufficiently nuanced understanding and appreciation of the art of boxing.
This may say more about Jake himself and his competitive nature than it says about Cohn, but
again, Cohn's function in The Sun Also Rises is to illustrate the protagonist's qualities — good and
bad — by comparison. In fact, it may be precisely Cohn's resemblance to Jake (both are writers
and athletes, and both attract Brett) that the latter finds so unsettling. Cohn is a living reminder
to Jake of what he used to be, before the war ruined everything. Ultimately, Jake wants to hurt
Cohn so that Cohn will no longer be unwounded. Though admirable in many ways, Hemingway's
hero has a dark side.
Character Analysis Bill Gorton
Although he is but a supporting player in The Sun Also Rises, Bill Gorton serves many purposes in
the novel. As such, he exemplifies Hemingway's command of the storytelling craft, even at the
dawn of the author's career.
First, Bill provides much-needed comic relief in a story that is otherwise unremittingly grim, if
fascinating. Granted, many of Bill's jokes, especially on the Burguete fishing trip, have not
outlasted their particular time; his topical humor is as dated to us as that of Shakespeare or
Chaucer. Bill's drunken babble upon his return to Paris from Vienna is eternally comical, however.
Ditto his inebriated quest for a stuffed dog.
Secondly, Bill's presence in the novel allows Hemingway the opportunity for more
characterization of his protagonist. Jake says things to Bill that he says to no one else — not even
the reader. We learn via their friendship that Jake is capable of generosity and warmth toward
another man (as opposed to his competitive behavior with Cohn). And Bill shows us how Jake
appears on the outside, to those who (unlike the reader) aren't privy to his inner torment. Bill is
Jake's public face.
Unlike Jake, Brett, Mike, and the Count, Bill Gorton did not fight in a war, though a comment
about his presence in Paris just after the armistice indicates he may have been a war
correspondent. And yet not only Jake, but Brett and Mike as well, accept him as a peer while
rejecting Cohn. Is Bill gay? He's practically the only male character indifferent to Brett's charms,
the spell she casts over men of every age and nationality. Perhaps, like Jake, Bill has struggled
with a sexual secret. Carrying the burden of his sexuality in a homophobic culture might be a
battle that Bill fights every day — one that allows him to fit in with the group in a way that Robert
Cohn can't.
Character Map
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 66
Ernest Hemingway Biography
Early Years
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, a prosperous suburb of Chicago
that was also home to the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His father, Clarence E.
Hemingway, was a doctor; his mother, who was very religious, had given up a promising career as
a singer in order to rear six children, of whom Ernest was the third and the oldest boy.
Hemingway attended public school in Oak Park, and the family vacationed in the north woods of
Michigan, where Clarence taught Ernest hunting and fishing and a general love of the outdoor
life. Later, Hemingway would portray Oak Park's bourgeois values in an unflattering light in
stories like "Soldier's Home"; his parents' marriage was the subject of the bitterly resentful tale
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," among others. On the other hand, Hemingway wrote with
nothing less than adoration about life "Up in Michigan," in the story of that name and many
others featuring his fictional alter ego Nick Adams. Clarence Hemingway committed suicide in
1928.
Upon graduation from high school at the age of 17, Hemingway left Oak Park for a stint as a
reporter at the highly respected daily newspaper The Kansas City Star. Shortly afterward, he
enlisted in a Red Cross ambulance corps stationed on the Austrian front in Italy during the last
year of World War I. Hemingway was wounded almost immediately (he was delivering cigarettes
and chocolate to Italian soldiers beyond the front lines) and sent to an American hospital in
Milan, where he fell in love with an American nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky; these events
inspired the Hemingway novel A Farewell to Arms (published 1929). After the war, Hemingway
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 67
returned to the States in the hopes of beginning a career of one kind or another that would
support him and Agnes, whom he planned to marry. That plan was shattered when she wrote
from Europe to say that she'd fallen in love with another man.
Instead, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921; shortly thereafter, the couple moved to
Paris, where the first of the writer's three sons was born. All the while, Hemingway was reading
as much as he could, writing stories and poems, and trying to find his voice as a writer — a
process that suffered a devastating setback when a suitcase containing all the copies of all the
stories he had written to date (four years' work) was stolen from Hadley on a train to
Switzerland.
Education
Hemingway's formal education did not extend beyond high school in Oak Park, where he edited
the school paper. His training as a writer continued, however, during his time as a reporter in
Kansas City and as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. He covered the Greek-Turkish
War of 1920; the experience inspired some of the most striking and effective of the inter-chapter
vignettes in Hemingway's groundbreaking debut story collection, In Our Time.
Even more influential, perhaps, were the writers Hemingway met while living in Paris during the
1920s (the setting of The Sun Also Rises): the American expatriates Ezra Pound and F. Scott
Fitzgerald, the Irishman James Joyce, and especially Gertrude Stein, also an American. (Stein's
comment about Hemingway and his contemporaries — "You are all a lost generation" — became
one of the epigraphs at the start of The Sun Also Rises.) Hemingway liked to claim that he learned
about writing from the post-Impressionist paintings of Cezanne — an intriguing notion, though he
never made it clear exactly what Cezanne taught him.
Any discussion of Hemingway's education would be incomplete without a mention of the
attention and energy he devoted to the subject matter of his books. Just as he learned to write
from the most talented contemporary practitioners of the craft, he apprenticed himself to
acknowledged experts in warfare and the "blood sports" with which his work is so often
concerned, eventually becoming an aficion (to quote The Sun Also Rises) of these pursuits. He
learned about bullfighting from Spanish matadors, big-game hunting from a British guide in East
Africa, deep-sea fishing from a native of the Bahamas, and military tactics from career soldiers
met in World War I. Hemingway loved mastering the abstruse terminology and complex
procedures of each of these activities. As any reader of his work knows, he also was fascinated by
food and drink; the pages of Hemingway's fiction and nonfiction are filled to overflowing with
references to foreign dishes and obscure wines and liqueurs. Finally, he was a quick study at
languages and was relatively fluent in quite a few.
Literary Writing
Hemingway's first book published in the United States, In Our Time (1925), was a collection of
stories (like "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River") linked by the character of Nick Adams,
who appears in many of them; by the short vignettes between the stories that tell a story of their
own; by the theme of behavior in the face of life-threatening violence; and by the now-famous
Hemingway style. The book was acclaimed upon its publication, and it remains a classic.
The Torrents of Spring, a novella that attempts in a rather belabored fashion to satirize the work
of the American writer Sherwood Anderson, followed in 1926, as did The Sun Also Rises, a novel
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 68
about expatriate life in Paris and Spain after World War I. In both subject and style, the latter
book is a genuinely radical work of Modern art. (The specifics of its central conflict are never
explicitly stated, for instance.) The Sun Also Rises is probably the most-admired of all
Hemingway's books. Men Without Women (1927) comprises stories of bullfighters and boxers,
including "The Undefeated," "The Killers," and "Fifty Grand." Men Without Women also contains
"Hills Like White Elephants," a story told almost entirely in dialogue.
Published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms toned down Hemingway's revolutionary style to yield a
more conventional — and a more moving — book than he had produced up to that time; the
result was the novel's widespread popular success as well as worldwide fame for Hemingway
himself. The story collection Winner Take Nothing followed in 1933. Less consistently satisfying
than the two collections that preceded it, Winner Take Nothing nevertheless contained more
formal experimentation, like the verbatim foreign dialogue in "Wine of Wyoming."
At this point in his career, Hemingway seems to have become distracted by his own celebrity.
Eight years passed between A Farewell to Arms and his next novel, the slight and poorly-received
To Have and Have Not (1937), which is really a collection of linked short stories that share a
setting (Cuba and Key West, where Hemingway bought houses) rather than a true novel. In the
interim, Hemingway wrote two books of nonfiction: a loose, baggy treatise on bullfighting called
Death in the Afternoon (1932) and The Green Hills of Africa (1935), which was about big-game
hunting. All the while, the Hemingway legend was growing — thanks in no small part to the
author's own embellishments (and sometimes out-and-out lies) about his past. For instance,
Hemingway claimed to have fought in the Italian infantry during World War I when he did no
such thing.
Finally, in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls appeared. The book is a big novel about the Spanish Civil
War, which Hemingway had covered as a correspondent and documentary filmmaker. Critics
accused it, and him, of self-parody — and indeed, the novel's style is often unbearably mannered.
Still, the best-selling For Whom the Bell Tolls stands among the early stories and his first two
novels as Hemingway's main storytelling achievements.
During World War II, Hemingway occupied himself by reporting from Europe. He also hunted
German submarines in the Caribbean from the deck of his fishing boat, the Pilar. In 1950, he
finally published another book, the critically lambasted Across the River and Into the Trees. He
recovered somewhat with The Old Man and the Sea (1952), a novella about a Cuban fisherman's
struggle with a great marlin that might be Hemingway's answer to Moby-Dick. His most popular
work, The Old Man and the Sea was the last Ernest Hemingway book to be published before the
author's suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961. A Moveable Feast, his charming memoir of
the years spent with other expatriates in Paris during the 1920s, appeared three years later.
Hemingway's fame, and the public's desire for more of his work, continues to be so formidable
that the executors of his estate have brought out a number of books since his death that the
writer himself had not considered fit for publication. Islands in the Stream (1970) reprises the
Caribbean setting of To Have and Have Not. The Garden of Eden (1986), about a ménage à trois,
dramatizes the author's fascination with androgyny, hinted at in The Sun Also Rises and near the
end of A Farewell to Arms, as well as in stories like "The Sea Change." The Complete Short
Stories: The Finca Vigia Edition (1987) contains some of Hemingway's unpublished short fiction.
And 1999's True at First Light either reports on or imagines an affair between a Hemingway-like
hero and an African girl.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 69
Honors and Awards
The most influential American writer of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway was rewarded
throughout his life for his achievements. Upon the appearance of his first published stories he
received the kudos of his literary peers — giants like James Joyce and Ezra Pound. With the
publication of A Farewell to Arms, he achieved best-sellerdom. By the time For Whom the Bell
Tolls appeared, "Papa" Hemingway was recognized worldwide by millions who had never read a
word of his prose; he had achieved a degree of celebrity that had never been approached by a
literary writer and has not been matched since.
Near the end of his life, the adulation was made explicit, as The Old Man and the Sea was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. The following year, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for
Literature "for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration." Though his popularity
has diminished somewhat in the past quarter-century due to charges of sexism and brutality in
his life and work, Ernest Hemingway's influence lives on. Whether consciously or not, any writing
teacher who advises students to "show, don't tell" is paying Hemingway tribute.
Critical Essays on Various Aspects
Critical Essays The Radical Structure of The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises is a radical book because it is a war story without combat and a love story
lacking a single love scene. The novel also risks reader dissatisfaction with regard to structure.
Think about it: Jake Barnes wants a satisfying love relationship with Brett, Lady Ashley. And yet,
as soon as we figure out Jake's postwar anatomical condition (he was castrated in a place crash),
we know that he will never be satisfied. The ending of The Sun Also Rises is foreordained (Jake
will not "get" Brett). Therefore, according to the conventions of storytelling — not to mention
common sense — there's no real reason to read on. And yet we do read on. Why?
Typically, a contemporary novel begins with a scene, dropping readers directly into the action of
the story and thereby piquing our interest. Who are these people? we wonder as we navigate the
first few paragraphs of a book we've picked up. What are their relationships to one another, and
to their time and place? We read on, at least at first, to find out the answers to such fundamental
questions. By the time we've comprehended a story's fundamental situation, we're inside its
special world.
Alternately, a book-length work of fiction might start with background, answering those
questions before we've had the chance to ask them. Sometimes called exposition, background is
information we need in order to fully understand the action of the story. Without it, readers may
be unsure of the significance of the scenes they read. They may even lose their way altogether.
An example of a novel that begins with background is Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the
first line of which reads "The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex" — after which
Austen describes the circumstances (most of them financial) leading up to the book's first actual
scene. This is perhaps a more logical way to begin a story than the first approach described. It is
also less dynamic and engaging, however. After all, sheer information is never as compelling as
action.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 70
However he or she begins, somewhere early in any novel an author must introduce the book's
conflict (that is, the situation wherein the protagonist, the main character, lacks something that is
not easy to obtain). In a way, conflict is story, as we read, consciously or unconsciously, to see if
and how the protagonist will get what he or she wants. Will Odysseus arrive home safely to
regain control of his kingdom? Will Hamlet kill his uncle, as instructed by the ghost of his father?
Will Jane Eyre survive childhood and adolescence?
When offered a story lacking a conflict, most readers lose interest sooner or later, no matter how
nuanced the characterization or poetic the description, no matter how sparkling the dialogue or
original the style. Reading a conflict-free novel would be like listening to a piece of music that
lacked a melody, or even what musicians call tonality. Or like looking at a painting of . . . nothing
— nothing identifiable, that is. And in fact, this is just the sort of Modern music and art that was
being made in the early 1920s, by European innovators like the composer Arnold Schoenberg and
the painter Pablo Picasso, when Hemingway was living in Paris and crafting The Sun Also Rises.
Certainly, there was a context for Hemingway's artistic experiment. Yet that by no means assured
the book's aesthetic success.
The novel contains other structural oddities as well. Like many novels before it, The Sun Also
Rises begins with exposition. And yet the background offered in the book's first pages concerns a
character who is not even at this novel's exact center. Reading the book for the first time, we
assume that Robert Cohn will be our hero, only to discover that he is instead a kind of foil for the
story's protagonist — an anti-protagonist if not quite an antagonist. (We never learn this sort of
background information about Jake at all — where and how he grew up, much less the specifics
of his wartime experiences.) Hemingway delays including an actual scene until the book's fourth
page. And the aforementioned conflict isn't explicitly stated until the book's fourth chapter, in
Jake's apartment, when he asks Brett, "Isn't there anything we can do about it?" (Jake answers
his own question: "And there's not a damn thing we could do.")
To recap: The Sun Also Rises opens with exposition on a character other than the book's
protagonist (about whom we're never offered much background at all), followed by a relatively
late introduction of action and then — finally — a conflict, but one that has already been
resolved. Two hundred pages remain. Why read them?
The answer: Hemingway bombards us with the results of his informal but intensive education in
the writing craft. Just as abstract artists, deprived of the tool of representation, must wow us
with composition, line, color, and perhaps sheer originality, Hemingway made up for his lack of a
traditional story structure by means of characterization, description, dialogue, and style.
From the very first line of The Sun Also Rises, the writer introduces us to characters who are
unique and sympathetic, and therefore unforgettable. The novel features not one or two, but five
fully three-dimensional figures at its center: Jake, Brett, Cohn, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell, and
Pedro Romero. (Secondary characters include Frances, Georgette, the Count, Harris, and
Montoya.) They are different enough from each other that there's never any confusion as to
who's who, even in scenes featuring nearly all of these characters at once. (This is partly due to
the fact that Hemingway brings his ensemble cast onstage one at a time, allowing us to "meet"
each player before the next one is introduced.)
Moreover, not one of the characters we encounter in The Sun Also Rises is a "type" we've seen
before onstage, onscreen, or in another book — though we may recognize Bill or Frances from
our real lives. Each of them behaves badly in one way or another, and some do so again and
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 71
again. And yet we understand the human failings of these imaginary people. As a result, we care
about what happens to each of them; when the gang splits up near novel's end, we're sorry to
see them go.
As discussed elsewhere, Hemingway described not just people but places and things in a new
way. One of the pleasures of reading The Sun Also Rises lies in experiencing 1920s Paris and the
Basque country of France and Spain via the writer's concrete, specific, creative, and careful
descriptions. He does inner states, too, reminding us what it's like to be drunk or sleepy, to feel
the joy of friendship or the agony of unrequited love.
Hemingway was a master at writing dialogue, too, a fact rarely remarked upon. Scenes like the
one in Chapter XIII that begins "We were sitting in the café . . ." are remarkable for the way in
which they overflow with information on the characters and their relationships to each other yet
never seem forced or artificial. This is the way people really talk, we think as we read — drunk
people, at least. Of course that's not quite true. But Hemingway's dialogue-writing brilliance lay
in his ability to imitate dialogue without exactly reproducing it; to put it plainly, he left out the
boring parts.
Thus, in writing his first full-length novel, Ernest Hemingway followed the lead of the great
Modern artists of the early twentieth century. In the manner of Schoenberg's twelve-tone
compositions or Picasso's early Cubist canvasses, The Sun Also Rises is a book in which the central
question (Will Jake and Brett get together?) is answered only a few pages in. (Imagine if we knew
at the outset of Gone with the Wind that Scarlett would never have Rhett for good, at story's
end. Hard to conceive of, isn't it?) Hemingway succeeds in his seemingly-impossible quest by
virtue of all the other writing-craft elements at his disposal — a considerable arsenal, as it turns
out. It is a bravura performance, one that not many writers have equaled, or even attempted,
since.
Critical Essays The Hemingway Influence
Ernest Hemingway has been called the most influential writer of the twentieth century. In 1926,
The Sun Also Rises caused a sensation among critics and fellow writers. With the publication of A
Farewell to Arms in 1929, Hemingway achieved widespread fame, and despite a steady decline in
the quality of his work thereafter, his fame continued to grow until his suicide in 1961 and
beyond. Striking evidence of this is the 1958 movie of The Old Man and the Sea; it's hard to
imagine a book less suited to the big screen, and yet Hemingway's celebrity at the time of its
publication was so massive that Hollywood had virtually no choice but to film the novella. The
publication of recovered fragments from the writer's unpublished oeuvre has never failed to
make headlines worldwide, from A Moveable Feast in 1964 to the so-called "fictional memoir"
True at First Light, in 1999.
Hemingway achieved more than celebrity, however. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,
then he was a great writer, indeed. Especially after reading The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's
influence is easy to discern in an enormous number of the writers who have followed him. This
influence has taken three forms: (1) thematic, (2) stylistic, and (3) the "Papa" Hemingway
lifestyle.
Critical Essays The Hemingway Character
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 72
As the literary critic Leslie Fiedler argues in his study Love and Death in the American Novel, the
classic American literary hero is a soldier, sailor, or cowboy who is brave, laconic, and (ultimately)
alone. From Hawkeye in James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans through Moby-Dick's
Ishmael and Twain's Huckleberry Finn, these characters "light out for the territories" because
they don't quite fit in polite society, and they quickly learn self-sufficiency in the wilderness, at
sea, or in combat. Hemingway, who identified Huckleberry Finn as the source of all American
literature, recognized this archetype, then updated and refined it. The overriding theme of his
stories and books was "grace under pressure" — specifically, the ability of "men without women"
(the title of an early story collection) to remain calm and competent in the face of life-threatening
violence.
Thus, Hemingway heroes like Jake Barnes stoically accept not only war wounds, but the pain of
losing whom they love, as well. (Think of Jake's tranquil, orderly San Sebastian vacation after he
has, in effect, handed Brett over to Romero.) Whether trout fishing, attending a bullfight, or
ordering wine, they are almost scarily adept at what they do, and when the universe conspires to
defeat them, they never complain.
The influence of the Hemingway hero can, therefore, be seen in many of the literary soldiers who
followed in Jake's footsteps and those of Hemingway's later protagonists, Frederick Henry and
Robert Jordan: for instance, the protagonist of James Salter's The Hunters, an account of the
exploits of a Korean War jet-pilot squadron. It is even more evident in the archetypal toughtalking detectives of Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) and James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential).
(Note: Like Jake Barnes and Frederic Henry, Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe is a veteran of
World War I, as evinced by his trademark trench coat — the coat worn by Allied officers in the
trenches of France and Italy. Nearly every character Humphrey Bogart ever played on-screen was
influenced by the Hemingway hero.) The cowboys in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy are
essentially Hemingway characters, too.
Critical Essays The Hemingway Style
Hemingway's influence has been even more pronounced in the realm of prose style. In his first
collection of stories and thereafter, he combined elements from Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and
journalism to created a radically Modern approach to the writing of sentences and paragraphs,
distinguished by the following hallmarks:
An emphasis on nouns and verbs rather than adjectives and adverbs. This is closely related to
Hemingway's preference for the actual versus the abstract. "I was always embarrassed by the
words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain," Frederic Henry says in A
Farewell to Arms. "Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow were obscene beside
the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of
regiments and the dates." Indeed, the first part of The Sun Also Rises overflows with the names
of streets and cafés in 1920s Paris, to the extent that one almost needs a map of the city to
follow the story's action. Remember, too, Jake's initial description of Brett. True, he tells the
reader that she "was damned good-looking." But then he offers us the following concrete details
linked by action verbs: "She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was
brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing
yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey."
A limited word-palette. Hemingway was fluent in three romance languages: French, Spanish, and
Italian. Each of these has a much smaller vocabulary than English, and yet each manages to be
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 73
richly expressive. Talking about Brett and Mike's speech, Jake Barnes tells us that "The English
spoken language — the upper classes, anyway — must have fewer words than the Eskimo. . . .
The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. . . . I liked the way they
talked." Hemingway may have been inspired by the ways in which these European cultures, all of
which he admired, managed to communicate effectively, even poetically, using so few words.
Frequent repetition of the same words and phrases. This is a technique he learned from Stein.
(The best-known sentences she ever wrote were "A rose is a rose is a rose" and "When you get
there, there's no there there.")
Short sentences ("It was a fine morning.") or long sentences consisting of short phrases and
clauses connected by conjunctions. Here's an example of the latter: "After a while we came out
of the mountains, and there were trees along both sides of the road, and a stream and ripe fields
of grain, and the road went on, very white and straight ahead, and then lifted to a little rise, and
off on the left was a hill with an old castle, with buildings close around it and a field of grain going
right up to the walls and shifting in the wind" (The Sun Also Rises, Chapter X).
A lack of clarity in the relationship between one sentence and the next. Instead of writing "I
drank much wine because it was good," Hemingway writes "The wine was good. I drank much of
it," merely implying the relationship. He thus forces us to be active readers, connecting the dots
and filling in the blanks. At least in The Sun Also Rises, this stylistic element jibes with the
worldview of Hemingway's characters. Jake, Brett, Mike, and others know that the modern world
is a place so illogical as to be positively nonsensical, a place in which previously meaningful
connections have been sundered. Hemingway's storytelling syntax reflects that.
Many storytellers (Salter, Chandler, and McCarthy, for example) have attempted to recapitulate
Hemingway's themes while mimicking his prose style. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, a group
of American writers known as the Minimalists adopted the Hemingway style but rejected "grace
under pressure" and so forth as distasteful and perhaps permanently outdated.
In her earliest stories, Ann Beattie wrote in the Hemingway style about well-off baby boomers
paralyzed by the challenges of adulthood. (Like Chandler and so many others, Beattie has specifically
mentioned Hemingway as an inspiration, specifically the inter-chapter vignettes from In Our Time.)
Raymond Carver's down-and-out drunks could hardly be less heroic, and yet the use of diction (word
choice) and syntax (sentence structure) in his masterly short stories is profoundly indebted to
Hemingway. Frederick Barthelme continues to craft stories and novels in an intentionally flat,
unadorned voice about largely ineffectual men (and sexy, aggressive women) living in the so-called
New South. All these writers jettisoned the sometimes embarrassing excesses associated with
Hemingway's value system while retaining the lessons he taught them as a writer of prose.
Critical Essays The Hemingway Lifestyle
Finally, in many ways Ernest Hemingway exemplified for the twentieth century what it means to live
like a writer. The most visible example of his influence in this area has been Norman Mailer. Though
Mailer's often baroque style could hardly be more different from Hemingway's (an exception is the
laconic "nonfiction novel" The Executioner's Song, which many critics consider Mailer's best book),
he seems to have modeled his life after Hemingway's, seeking fistfights, serial wives (Hemingway had
four, Mailer six so far), and "Papa"-like celebrity in general. And the career of the dilettantish George
Plimpton was a kind of parody of Hemingway's: Plimpton lived in Paris as a young man, but founded
a magazine (The Paris Review) rather than writing stories and novels. After that, he has engaged in a
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 74
number of stunts that seemed actually to mock Hemingway's vigorous lifestyle while attempting to
pay it tribute: briefly fighting a champion boxer and playing professional football, for instance, then
writing books about the experiences.
Prior to the publication of A Farewell to Arms, the Romantic poets probably served as our primary
model for the writing life. A writer was a tortured soul recollecting his or her experiences in
tranquility, à la Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Hemingway changed all that. Proust composed
Remembrance of Things Past in bed; Hemingway wrote standing up. Then he went big-game hunting
or deep-sea fishing — or to the bullfights.
Today, Hemingway's thematic influence is a victim of its own success. The tough-talking private
investigator is such a pervasive figure in our culture that it seems always to have existed. As his death
recedes farther into the past, the "Papa" lifestyle becomes harder to recall — and, therefore, tougher
to emulate than when Hemingway's exploits were a fixture in newsreels and the pages of Life
magazine. Regarding the influence of his prose itself, however, the Nobel Prize committee was
correct when it rewarded Ernest Hemingway "for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of
narration." He changed the way we write and read literature, and he changed it forever.
Analysis on Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
The Aimlessness of the Lost Generation
World War I undercut traditional notions of morality, faith, and justice. No longer able to rely on the
traditional beliefs that gave life meaning, the men and women who experienced the war became
psychologically and morally lost, and they wandered aimlessly in a world that appeared meaningless.
Jake, Brett, and their acquaintances give dramatic life to this situation. Because they no longer
believe in anything, their lives are empty. They fill their time with inconsequential and escapist
activities, such as drinking, dancing, and debauchery.
It is important to note that Hemingway never explicitly states that Jake and his friends’ lives are
aimless, or that this aimlessness is a result of the war. Instead, he implies these ideas through his
portrayal of the characters’ emotional and mental lives. These stand in stark contrast to the
characters’ surface actions. Jake and his friends’ constant carousing does not make them happy. Very
often, their merrymaking is joyless and driven by alcohol. At best, it allows them not to think about
their inner lives or about the war. Although they spend nearly all of their time partying in one way or
another, they remain sorrowful or unfulfilled. Hence, their drinking and dancing is just a futile
distraction, a purposeless activity characteristic of a wandering, aimless life.
Male Insecurity
World War I forced a radical reevaluation of what it meant to be masculine. The prewar ideal of the
brave, stoic soldier had little relevance in the context of brutal trench warfare that characterized the
war. Soldiers were forced to sit huddled together as the enemy bombarded them. Survival depended
far more upon luck than upon bravery. Traditional notions of what it meant to be a man were thus
undermined by the realities of the war. Jake embodies these cultural changes. The war renders his
manhood (that is, his penis) useless because of injury. He carries the burden of feeling that he is “less
of a man” than he was before. He cannot escape a nagging sense of inadequacy, which is only
compounded by Brett’s refusal to enter into a relationship with him.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 75
While Jake’s condition is the most explicit example of weakened masculinity in the novel, it is
certainly not the only one. All of the veterans feel insecure in their manhood. Again, Hemingway
does not state this fact directly, but rather shows it in the way Jake and his veteran friends react to
Cohn. They target Cohn in particular for abuse when they see him engaging in “unmanly” behavior
such as following Brett around. They cope with their fears of being weak and unmasculine by
criticizing the weakness they see in him. Hemingway further presents this theme in his portrayal of
Brett. In many ways, she is more “manly” than the men in the book. She refers to herself as a “chap,”
she has a short, masculine haircut and a masculine name, and she is strong and independent. Thus,
she embodies traditionally masculine characteristics, while Jake, Mike, and Bill are to varying degrees
uncertain of their masculinity.
The Destructiveness of Sex
Sex is a powerful and destructive force in The Sun Also Rises. Sexual jealousy, for example, leads
Cohn to violate his code of ethics and attack Jake, Mike, and Romero. Furthermore, the desire for sex
prevents Brett from entering into a relationship with Jake, although she loves him. Hence, sex
undermines both Cohn’s honor and Jake and Brett’s love. Brett is closely associated with the negative
consequences of sex. She is a liberated woman, having sex with multiple men and feeling no
compulsion to commit to any of them. Her carefree sexuality makes Jake and Mike miserable and
drives Cohn to acts of violence. In Brett, Hemingway may be expressing his own anxieties about
strong, sexually independent women.
Motifs
The Failure of Communication
The conversations among Jake and his friends are rarely direct or honest. They hide true feelings
behind a mask of civility. Although the legacy of the war torments them all, they are unable to
communicate this torment. They can talk about the war only in an excessively humorous or painfully
trite fashion. An example of the latter occurs when Georgette and Jake have dinner, and Jake
narrates that they would probably have gone on to agree that the war “would have been better
avoided” if they were not fortunately interrupted. The moments of honest, genuine communication
generally arise only when the characters are feeling their worst. Consequently, only very dark
feelings are expressed. When Brett torments Jake especially harshly, for instance, he expresses his
unhappiness with her and their situation. Similarly, when Mike is hopelessly drunk, he tells Cohn how
much his presence disgusts him. Expressions of true affection, on the other hand, are limited almost
exclusively to Jake and Bill’s fishing trip.
Excessive Drinking
Nearly all of Jake’s friends are alcoholics. Wherever they happen to be, they drink, usually to excess.
Often, their drinking provides a way of escaping reality. Drunkenness allows Jake and his
acquaintances to endure lives severely lacking in affection and purpose. Hemingway clearly portrays
the drawbacks to this excessive drinking. Alcohol frequently brings out the worst in the characters,
particularly Mike. He shows himself to be a nasty, violent man when he is intoxicated. More subtly,
Hemingway also implies that drunkenness only worsens the mental and emotional turmoil that
plagues Jake and his friends. Being drunk allows them to avoid confronting their problems by
providing them with a way to avoid thinking about them. However, drinking is not exclusively
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 76
portrayed in a negative light. In the context of Jake and Bill’s fishing trip, for instance, it can be a
relaxing, friendship-building, even healthy activity.
False Friendships
False friendships relate closely to failed communication. Many of the friendships in the novel have no
basis in affection. For instance, Jake meets a bicycle team manager, and the two have a drink
together. They enjoy a friendly conversation and make plans to meet the next morning. Jake,
however, sleeps through their meeting, having no regard for the fact that he will never see the man
again. Jake and Cohn demonstrate another, still darker type of false friendship. Although Cohn
genuinely likes Jake, Jake must often mask outright antagonism toward Cohn, an antagonism that
increases dramatically along with Jake’s unspoken jealousy of Cohn over his affair with Brett. At one
point, he even claims to hate Cohn. This inability to form genuine connections with other people is
an aspect of the aimless wandering that characterizes Jake’s existence. Jake and his friends wander
socially as well as geographically. Ironically, Hemingway suggests that in the context of war it was
easier to form connections with other people. In peacetime it proves far more difficult for these
characters to do so.
Theme of Dissatisfaction
People have fun in this book, but that’s about it – what’s missing is a lasting sense of contentment or
satisfaction with life in general. The cause of this is the massive social upheaval caused by the First
World War; after the war, nobody seems to care about the things that used to be important, and the
whole world has to re-define itself. Hemingway’s characters all struggle to discover their individual
brands of happiness, but none of them succeed in doing so. The implication is that the postwar world
is so disorderly and unstable that it’s impossible to just settle down and figure everything out. This is
understandable – heck, it’s hard enough to do that when everything’s peaceful, much less in the
aftermath of a catastrophic global event.
Theme of Identity
This novel is just jam-packed with people who think they have their public images worked out, but
really are just big old messes on the inside. Hemingway’s characters make a big show of being
confident and witty, but we quickly realize that they’re just frontin’ – nobody is really that confident,
and nobody is entirely true to themselves. Even our protagonist, who is one of the novel’s more
grounded characters, faces deep anxieties about his beliefs and the ways in which his actions
correspond with them. All of this has to do, of course, with the destabilizing trauma of the war; just
as nations have to rebuild themselves after the war, so do individual people.
Theme of Men and Masculinity
Masculinity is somewhat problematic in the world of this novel. The insecurity of the central male
characters produces an atmosphere of competition, rivalry, and mutual harassment, and we
constantly witness petty arguments that are rooted in this sense of challenged masculinity. The novel
revolves around several male characters and their various relationships with each other, and with
one central female character; Hemingway plays up the tensions of competition and jealousy to
demonstrate just how uncertain his male characters are. The shared sense of insecurity among many
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 77
of the book’s central male characters suggests a redefinition of masculinity post-WWI; particularly
notable is the fact that the protagonist’s impotence is caused by a wound he sustained in the war.
Theme of Drugs and Alcohol
The characters in The Sun Also Rises are serious drinkers – they drink like it’s their job. Actually,
alcoholism practically is a profession for one of the characters (Mike), a slacker whose major
distinguishing factor is his ability to get drunk and stay drunk for days, possibly years, on end. Alcohol
provides a much-needed escape from the realities of the world that Hemingway’s characters move
through; it allows them to push away their personal doubts and fears, as well as renounce
responsibility for their actions. Drinking is a largely ineffectual coping mechanism for this group of
aimless, uncertain, and irresponsible people.
Theme of Love
Ah, l’amour, l’amour. Of course a novel set in Paris (city of love, duh), involves love. However, don’t
forget that this is not exactly the romantic, sentimental Paris we usually imagine – Hemingway’s Paris
is an ailing, disillusioned postwar city, and therefore Hemingway’s love is also a special kind of ailing,
disillusioned, postwar love. The novel lacks a single substantial example of mutually shared and
consummated romantic love. While some characters struggle with an outdated definition of love, for
others, the prospect of love seems entirely subjugated to other concerns and realities. Love, when
mentioned at all in The Sun Also Rises, is usually only brought up in the context of accusations or
fights, or at best surrounding discussions of sex.
Theme of Man and the Natural World
There is an overwhelming sense that the modern world that Hemingway shows us runs the risk of
drifting dangerously far from the natural world. The author sets up a clear-cut opposition between
the decrepit urban space of Paris and the rejuvenating, healthy realm of Nature. Furthermore, many
of the characters are divorced not only from capital-N-Nature, but from their own natural states; the
perpetual drunkenness and self-imposed oblivion that dominate the book remove characters from
their true thoughts and emotions. Our protagonist and a few other characters share a profound
appreciation for nature, and in it they are able to take refuge from the negative effects of an
unsatisfactory, unhealthy society.
Theme of Exile
Nationality is a funny thing in The Sun Also Rises. While all of its characters are defined partially by
their roots, there is an overwhelming sense that national boundaries are no longer satisfactory in the
aftermath of the Great War. The community we encounter in the novel is one of American and
British expatriates living in France, in self-imposed exile from their respective homelands. The
pressing need for escape, self-invention, and individuation from one’s country plays into the choices
of the characters Hemingway shows us, as well as the fractured and unstable image of society he
portrays.
Theme of Warfare
World War I is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention (yes, it occurred to us that
this is probably the only time anyone has ever compared World War I to an elephant). When the war
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 78
does come up, characters attempt to make flippant comments about it, but there’s a lingering sense
of uneasiness – the experience of war is still too fresh in people’s minds to even seriously discuss it.
Our protagonist suffered a physical wound that left him impotent as a result of the war; the other
characters’ wounds are mental and emotional, and society as a whole is scarred by this global event.
Symbols
Bullfighting
The bullfighting episodes in The Sun Also Rises are rich in symbolic possibilities. The multiple possible
interpretations of these passages speak to the depth and complexity of the text. For example, nearly
every episode involving bulls or bullfighting parallels an episode that either has occurred, or will soon
occur, among Jake and his friends. The killing of the steer by the bull at the start of the fiesta, for
instance, may prefigure Mike’s assault on Cohn. Alternatively, we can read this incident as
prefiguring Brett’s destruction of Cohn and his values. Furthermore, the bullfighting episodes nearly
always function from two symbolic viewpoints: Jake’s perspective and the perspective of postwar
society. For instance, we can interpret the figure of Belmonte from the point of view of Jake and his
friends. Just as Cohn, Mike, and Jake all once commanded Brett’s affection, so too did Belmonte once
command the affection of the crowd, which now discards him for Romero. In a larger context,
Belmonte can symbolize the entire Lost Generation, whose moment seems to have passed. On still
another level, Hemingway uses bullfighting to develop the theme of the destructiveness of sex. The
language Hemingway employs to describe Romero’s bullfighting is almost always sexual, and his
killing of the bull takes the form of a seduction. This symbolic equation of sex and violence further
links sexuality to danger and destruction. It is important to note that the distinctions between these
interpretations are not hard and fast. Rather, levels of meaning in The Sun Also Rises flow together
and complement one another.
A Note on the Epigraph
Gertrude Stein was an avant-garde American poet at the center of a group of painters and expatriate
writers living in Paris after World War I. Among those in her circle were the artist Pablo Picasso and
the writers Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. Stein named the generation that came of
age during World War I the “lost generation.” The world quickly adopted the phrase as the most
accurate description of the generation that passed through the threshold of adulthood at this time—
working, fighting, or dying in the war. The horrific conflict shattered this generation’s faith in
traditional values such as love, bravery, manhood, and womanhood. Without these values, the
members of this generation found their existence aimless, meaningless, and unfulfilling. It is these
men and women that Hemingway portrays in The Sun Also Rises.
Before the novel opens, Hemingway quotes Stein and a biblical passage from Ecclesiastes. The
passage contrasts the transient nature of human generations with the eternal survival of nature: the
world endures, and the sun continues to rise and set despite the inevitable passage of each human
generation into death. Hemingway’s juxtaposition of the two epigraphs produces an ambivalent
tone. On the one hand, there is hope, because there will be a new generation after the aimless
generation that populates The Sun Also Rises. On the other hand, there is bitter irony, since every
generation is lost, in the sense that each generation will eventually die.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 79
Analysis on Literary Elements
SETTING
The novel is set in Paris, especially those districts frequented by American ex-patriots. In Book II, the
protagonist goes to Burguete, Spain for a fishing trip, and then to Pamplona for the fiesta of San
Fermin and the bullfights. After the fiesta, he goes to San Sebastian, Spain for a brief holiday, and
then to Madrid where the novel ends.
The social atmosphere is the frenetic social scene of expatriate Americans and British after World
War I, when the young people who had been affected by the war found themselves unable or
unwilling to return home. It was the same scene which many expatriate writers and artists
experienced before the next war dispersed them.
LITERARY/HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Sun Also Rises is what is called a roman á clef, a novel with a key, meaning that it is written about
actual people and events. For instance, Robert Cohn was based apparently on a man named Harold
Loeb. In addition, this is a novel written after the fact, in retrospect. It is said to be Hemingway's
greatest novel and serves as a good example of literary modernism (1910-1930), which was
characterized by technical innovations. Unlike traditional novels, this is a novel that does not tell a
story. The reader is thrust into the middle of the story with no direction and no outlining of issues.
Jake Barnes is like many of Hemingway's protagonists, who together form a sort of composite
character as a fictional alter ego of the author. The protagonist's background is middle-class midwestern American. When World War II begins, the hero volunteers as an ambulance driver. A crucial
event takes place: he is wounded seriously. While in the hospital he falls in love with a nurse who
abandons him. He becomes cynical. His wound henceforth serves as a physical sign of his
psychological trauma. The wound also represents a brush with death, a constant reminder of his
mortality. He consciously abandons youthful ideals and calls them obscene lies. He suffers for the
rest of his life from insomnia.
The Hemingway hero always has some sort of activity or pasttime that serves to provide order to his
life, bullfighting and fishing, especially. These activities serve as a sort of substitute for religion or any
ideology. They are a form of ritual activity, a way of ordering time. (See the character sketch of Pedro
Romero below for the Hemingway code hero).
MOOD
The mood of the novel is of irony and understated strong emotion. Hemingway, in his novel Death in
the Afternoon, wrote "The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it
being above water." It is in this artistic choice to show only the one-eighth, and to understate the
rest, that Hemingway writes the mood of his novel, The Sun Also Rises. The protagonist and his close
friends suffer constant shocks to their moral systems and act as though they are completely
unaffected.
CONFLICT
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 80
Protagonist
Jake Barnes, an expatriate American, who was made impotent from wounds suffered while fighting
in World War II, is in love with Brett Ashley, but cannot have her.
Antagonist
On one level, Jake's antagonist is Brett Ashley, who loves Jake, but who cannot stay with him because
of problems she suffers due to her own loss of a young lover during the war. Brett stays close to Jake,
but maintains multiple other lovers, a reality that frustrates and tortures Jake even more. On a
second level, the antagonist is Jake's own difficulty connecting with his emotions, symbolized in his
loss of the ability to have sex. Jake must find a way to reconcile living with his wound.
Climax
The climax occurs in Pamplona, where all the characters meet to watch the bullfights. Jake is forced
to choose between his connection to Montoya, his father figure and his mentor in the art of
appreciating bullfighting, and Brett, who has three lovers in Pamplona, Mike Campbell (her fiance),
Pedro Romero (the bullfighter who almost loses his ability to perform in the ring due to his affair with
Brett), and Robert Cohn. In choosing to help the selfish Brett, Jake forsakes Montoya and his code of
honor.
Outcome
The conflict ends in tragedy. Brett has stolen a large part of Jake. He gives up his code of honor in
order for her to satisfy her sexual appetite for Romero. The matador is "sacrificed" in the process.
Jake also loses the respect of Montoya and the other bullfighting aficionados. He returns to Paris,
stripped of his life-giving tie to bullfighting and is faced with the reality that there is no future with
Brett.
SHORT PLOT/CHAPTER SUMMARY (Synopsis)
The plot opens with Jake Barnes, an expatriate American and an aspiring writer, serving as a
newspaper correspondent in Paris. He leads a life of shallow social ties, frequenting nightclubs, bars,
and cafés.
He travels through the French Basque country and then to Burguete, Spain where he goes fishing
with his friend. Then he goes to Pamplona, Spain for a fiesta, the running of the bulls, and the
bullfights.
He leaves Pamplona and has a short holiday in San Sebastian, Spain. Then he goes to Madrid to help
the woman to whom he has had a long attachment.
PLOT STRUCTURE ANALYSIS
Hemingway's plot is structured in a ritual circle. As one cultural anthropologist has shown, narratives
are often structured on the circle in which the hero begins in a flawed society, goes out on a quest in
order to find some kind of solution to what has hurt his society, and then returns to restore order.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 81
Jake Barnes' Paris is a truly flawed society. Relationships on every level are out of order. He goes out
of Paris to Burguete, Spain, where he gets back in touch with the earth and the order that he finds in
fishing.
After this brief reprieve from the life-denying society, he goes to the fiesta in Pamplona to
experience the communal festivities where all are one and to experience the bullfights, a spectacle
which displays the ritual encounter with death. However, this hero makes a terrible mistake when he
betrays what he highly values.
He makes the choice to be true to Brett, a woman who embodies broken ties and self-involvement,
and he is repudiated by the patriarch of the wholesome society of men in Spain. At the novel's end,
he has not yet made it back to Paris, has not finished the circle. He seems to have realized his
mistake, but it is unclear whether he will act on that knowledge or sink further into destructiveness.
THEMES ANALYSIS
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926, only a few years after the close of World
War I. Much of the disease of the society in Paris results from the dislocations and wounds of the
war. Jake Barnes is wounded in the war, but all the other characters with the exception of Robert
Cohn, trace some affliction to the war. Hemingway uses Gertrude Stein's statement, "You are all a
lost generation," as the epigraph for his novel. These expatriates indeed seem lost, unwilling to
return home to lives of conventional morality and unable to erect an alternative standard of value in
Paris. Heavy drinking and the easy spending of money seem to be the only pursuits the characters
can find and they complain of their boredom often. With such a flawed society, Hemingway begins
his novel and his solutions to these flaws come out of the same kind of mix of cynicism and nostalgia
that the characters exhibit.
The alternative to Paris is found in the French and Spanish countryside with the barely defined
peasants whose values on sharing and communality provide a sharp contrast to the competitive and
money-oriented relationships of the expatriate set. However, Hemingway can only sustain the idyllic
pastoral scene for a brief while. It proves to be only a brief respite from the realities that Jake must
face.
His other alternative to the Parisian scene is in the code of bull fighting. Jake seems to have been a
long-time visitor to the bullfights in Pamplona, but he seems to have been able previously to
separate that connection from his connections in Paris. He seems to be bringing his expatriate friends
for the first time to Spain. Perhaps he wants to reconcile the two parts of his life. Perhaps he has
found the order and the values of bullfighting to be life giving for himself and wants to share it with
his friends to heal them from their various wounds. His strong connection with Montoya is presented
in a sort of father-son admiration. Jake is the dutiful son who returns year after year and shows his
homage to the bullfights. Montoya plays the role of beneficent father who provides stability for a lost
son. The bullfights are however, a world of men only (as was the fishing camaraderie). When Jake
brings Brett and Romero together, he spoils the purity of the brotherhood and he is expelled.
Hemingway seems not to have been able to imagine an alternative to the lost generation that could
be sustained and that could include women as well as men. Jake remains lost at the end of the novel
largely because he remains attached to a woman.
The Sun Also Rises: Metaphor Analysis
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 82
Metaphor Analysis
Jake's wound
Perhaps the most important metaphor in the book, Jake's impotence denies him the relationship
with Brett that he desires and seems to shut him off from the possibility of happiness. He is scarred
by the war, and the common avenue to happiness is denied him. This wound is a metaphor for the
psychic wound that the horror of World War I caused in the culture as a whole.
Fishing
Jake and Bill fish as a way to connect with and obtain value from the natural world. This common
endeavor makes them feel peaceful, calm, and happy. It represents a simple, old-fashioned practice
that retains value because it is founded on sound principles.
Drinking
The consumption of alcoholic beverages becomes an essential part of social interaction in this novel,
and characters who do not drink (as Cohn doesn't for most of the time) or who do not handle their
liquor well (as Cohn also doesn't the one time that he tries) are rendered socially awkward by this
inability to consume. The novel presents an array of beverages and means of consuming them, from
wine drunk from a leather bag with Spanish peasants on a bus as a show of congeniality, to beer,
absinthe, and a liqueur distilled from the flowers of the Pyrenees. As a metaphor, imbibing liquor
could be said to signify a way of coping with the difficulties of reality. Only Bill seems to be a really
convivial drinker; he quickly sympathizes with Jake's frustration and impotence, Mike's bankruptcy
and troubles with Brett, and Cohn's social challenges.
Boxing
Boxing appears in the novel through Cohn, and through Bill's tour of Vienna and Budapest. Through
Bill, it is a way of creating a spectacle of battle, and it can easily be manipulated or otherwise go
wrong. In Cohn, it becomes an arbitrary measure of physical skill with no enduring value or meaning.
It does not matter, really, that Cohn can beat Romero at boxing. Romero is far superior in every other
way. Perhaps only Edna, after watching Cohn make quick work of Mike and Jake, and Bill, in traveling
around Europe to watch boxing matches, show any respect for boxing in itself.
Bullfighting
The bullfight becomes one of the last sources of meaning and value in a distorted and damaged
world. Though the fights have been threatened by the decadence of some contemporary bullfighters,
they remain a place where many people (those with aficion) can see and appreciate real courage and
skill, and where greatness cannot be faked. The great bullfighter must have respect for the bull, and
respect for the sport, and these things are too strong to be shaken by the war.
Type of Work and Year of Publication
.......The Sun Also Risesis a novel about the profound psychological, moral, and social changes in
people who fought in or lived through the First World War. The book centers primarily on troubled or
dysfunctional Americans and Britons living in Paris in the postwar era. The book is a roman à clef in
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 83
that several characters are fictional representations of real people. Charles Scribner's Sons published
the novel in New York in 1926.
Title
.......Ernest Hemingway first called the novel ¡Fiesta! but later changed the title to The Sun Also Rises.
Some publishers—notably in England and Spain—still entitle the novel ¡Fiesta!
Epigraphs
.......The novel has two epigraphs. (An epigraph is a quotation preceding a literary work.) They are as
follows:
You are all a lost generation.
Hemingway attributed this quotation to Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), an American writer living in
Paris when he resided there.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The
sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth
toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind
returneth again according to its circuits… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto
the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.
Old Testament of the Bible, Book of Ecclesiastes 1:4-7
Commentary
.......World War I (1914-1918) shocked humankind with its brutality and high number of casualties.
More than 20 million soldiers and civilians died, and more than 20 million combatants suffered
battlefield wounds.
.......In the aftermath of the war, many people attempted to reclaim control over their destiny by
rejecting old values and establishing new ones, often unbounded and unrestrained. They set
themselves to creating new fashions and lifestyles and to developing new modes of expression in
literature and art. And, because Paris was the cultural capital of the world, tens of thousands of the
new wave of young people, many from America, took up residence there. But in attempting to cope
with the psychological and physical wounds of the war, some of them lost themselves in the comfort
of alcohol and aimless behavior, neglecting their work and putting their future lives on hold. They
became a "lost generation," as the first epigraph says.1
.......The Sun Also Risesfocuses on fictionalized versions of these lost souls. Whether they will
eventually find their way before their "generation passeth away" is a question that the novel does
not answer. What is certain, however, is that the cycles of nature will continue ad infinitum without
regard for the tribulations of mere man. Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley will die eventually. But the sun
will rise again, and the rivers will continue to run to the sea. Human beings can choose to believe
that a rebirth awaits them—a spiritual rebirth—or they can choose to despair, like the lost
generation, and let life happen to them.
Settings
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 84
.......The action takes place in 1924 and 1925 in the French cities of Paris, Tours, Bordeaux, Bayonne,
and Saint Jean de Luz and in the Spanish towns of San Sebastian, Pamplona, Burguete, and Madrid.
An indirect reference to a specific year occurs at the beginning of Chapter 9, when Jake Barnes
mentions the Ledoux-Francis boxing match of the previous evening. The actual fight took place on
June 9, 1925, at the Cirque de Paris. In this batamweight contest, Kid Francis defeated Charles
Ledoux. Hemingway (as Jake Barnes) erroneously reports that the fight took place on June 20.
Source
.......Ernest Hemingway based the novel on his own memories of World War I and on his experiences
living in Paris in the 1920s. During the war, he was an ambulance driver in Italy. After mortar fire
wounded him in July 1918, he rescued an Italian soldier and received a medal for heroism.
Hemingway decided to live in Paris after the war in large part because so many other writers—such
as James Joyce (1882-1941), Ezra Pound (1885-1972), and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)—resided
there. He hoped to learn from them.
Style
.......Hemingway's work as a news reporter for the Kansas City Star and a foreign correspondent for
the Toronto Star helped him develop his literary writing style. It is simple and compact, with short
sentences and paragraphs devoid of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. He deliberately omits
background details that other writers would include. For example, in The Sun Also Rises, he presents
little biographical information about the protagonist, Jake Barnes. Was his childhood happy? Was he
a good student? Does he have brothers and sisters? Hemingway does not answer any of these
questions. He does not even reveal Jake's exact age.
.......Spareness of detail about characters allows readers to interpret them through dialogue and
subtext, just as they "interpret" the people around them in real life—fellow students, teachers, coworkers, neighbors, politicians, clergymen, and so on. However, Hemingway does provide an
abundance of detail when describing street scenes in Paris and Pamplona. Here are two examples,
the first presenting a scene in Paris and the second in Pamplona.
.......The taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on into the dark, still climbing, then
levelled out onto a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt, passed
the trees and the standing bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe, then turned onto the cobbles of the
Rue Mouffetard. There were lighted bars and late open shops on each side of the street. We were
sitting apart and we jolted close together going down the old street. Brett's hat was off. Her head
was back. I saw her face in the lights from the open shops, then it was dark, then I saw her face
clearly as we came out on the Avenue des Gobelins. The street was torn up and men were working
on the car-tracks by the light of acetylene flares. (Chapter 4)
All we could see of the procession through the closely pressed people that crowded all the side
streets and curbs were the great giants, cigar-store Indians, thirty feet high, Moors, a King and
Queen, whirling and waltzing solemnly to the riau-riau.2They were all standing outside the chapel
where San Fermin and the dignitaries had passed in, leaving a guard of soldiers, the giants, with the
men who danced in them standing beside their resting frames, and the dwarfs moving with their
whacking bladders through the crowd. We started inside and there was a smell of incense and
people filing back into the church, but Brett was stopped just inside the door because she had no hat,
so we went out again and along the street that ran back from the chapel into town. The street was
lined on both sides with people keeping their place at the curb for the return of the procession. Some
dancers formed a circle around Brett and started to dance. They wore big wreaths of white garlics
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 85
around their necks. They took Bill and me by the arms and put us in the circle. Bill started to dance,
too. They were all chanting. Brett wanted to dance but they did not want her to. They wanted her as
an image to dance around. When the song ended with the sharp riau-riau! they rushed us into a
wine-shop. (Chapter 15)
.......Hemingway presents the events in the novel chronologically. As in other Hemingway works,
these events often center on activities that usually appeal to men more than to women, such as
boxing, fishing, and bullfighting.
.......One of the hallmarks of his style is the frequent use of and as a conjunction, as in the following
passage. .......That winter Robert Cohn went over to America with his novel, and it was accepted by a
fairly good publisher. His going made an awful row I heard, and I think that was where Frances lost
him, because several women were nice to him in New York, and when he came back he was quite
changed. He was more enthusiastic about America than ever, and he was not so simple, and he was
not so nice. The publishers had praised his novel pretty highly and it rather went to his head. Then
several women had put themselves out to be nice to him, and his horizons had all shifted. (Chapter
2)Point of View
.......In The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes tells the story in first-person point of view. Whenever
Hemingway wants the reader to know about a happening at which the narrator was not present, he
has another character tell Barnes about it. An example is Bill Gorton's recounting of the boxing match
in Vienna (Chapter 8).
Climax
.......The climax occurs when Robert Cohn adopts the attitude of Jake Barnes and others of the lost
generation. Cohn, of course, is not the main character. But his rejection by Brett—whom he foolishly
thought would respond to his quixotic ideals—devastates him in the same way that the war
devastated Jake and his fellow veterans. His disillusionment supports the Jake Barnes view of the
world that life is an umbra of defeat that follows the vanquished everywhere. The climactic moment
comes in the following passage.
Cohn: "I guess it isn't any use," he said. "I guess it isn't any damn use."
Barnes: "What?"
Cohn: "Everything." Conflicts
.......The main conflict is the effort of Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, Bill Gorton, and Mike Campbell—to
cope with the memories, impact, and aftermath of World War I. In the case of Jake Barnes, this
conflict manifests itself in the friction in his relationship with Brett Ashley. A secondary conflict pits
Robert Cohn against anyone seeking the attentions of Brett Ashley.
The Crippling Effects of World War I
.......A war injury renders Jake Barnes impotent. He deeply loves Brett Ashley, and she says she loves
him. But because of his injury, he can never consummate a sexual act. Consequently, Brett refuses to
marry him, saying she will not live with a man who is incapable of fully expressing his love for her.
Moreover, while seeing him, she also sees other men, becoming intimate with them. Jake stoically
accepts his fate and does not outwardly object to Brett's liaisons. His injury is a metaphor and symbol
for all the men who came home from the war physically, psychologically, and/or morally impaired.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 86
Other Themes
Rudderless Lifestyles
.......Brett Ashley, Mike Campbell, and Robert Cohn tend to live from day to day without long-range
goals. Mike and Brett go from from bar to bar or country to country, separately or with each other,
to lose themselves. Mike has no job. Instead, he relies on the promise he will eventually receive an
inheritance. Cohn invests in a magazine and becomes its editor. After it fails, he goes to Paris with
the woman he believes he loves, Frances Clyne. Then he wants to go to South America, but drops this
plan—and Frances—after meeting Brett. He has a liaison with her in San Sebastian and then follows
her to Pamplona, but she drops him after becoming enamored of bullfighter Pedro Romero.
Meanwhile, Cohn fails to advance his career as a novelist. However, he does succeed at one thing:
bringing out the worst in Campbell, Gorton, and others, who frequently ridicule him.
.......As for Barnes, he has a job that he works at, although he tends to lose himself—and his thoughts
of Brett—in bar-hopping and traveling.
Inertia
.......Jake, Brett, Mike Campbell, and Bill Gorton are little more than lumps of inertia. The more they
drink and the more they travel, the more they remain the same. At the end of the novel—after the
last bull dies and the fiesta ends—they return to the same life they were leading at the beginning of
the novel. Nothing has changed.
Escape Into Alcohol
.......Jake Barnes, Bill Gorton, and Mike Campbell drink often—Gorton and Campbell excessively.
Drinking enables them to escape the memories of the war while providing each an opportunity to
fraternize with his former comrades in arms. Brett also imbibes freely, partly to anesthetize herself
against the pain of loving an impotent man, partly to make connections with other men, partly to
assert her equality with males, and partly to escape her personal problems.
Promiscuity
.......Brett Ashley makes a religion of promiscuity and infidelity. She carouses with Count
Mippipopolous, pledges to marry Mike Campbell, trysts with Robert Cohn, and seduces Pedro
Romero.
.......Apparently, she is seeking the fulfillment that her real love, Jakes Barnes, cannot provide and
that her first two loveless marriages did not give her. Ironically, her descent into lust makes her just
as dysfunctional as Barnes, for lust is not love. It leaves its victims empty.
.......Readers and critics often cite Brett as an example of the new, liberated female of the postwar
era. True, Brett acts the part. Like many men, she smokes, drinks excessively, and plays around; she
even wears a boyish hairstyle and a man's felt hat. And she has no fear of speaking her mind. But this
“liberated” woman is really a prisoner—a prisoner of her carnality. For example, after she sees the
handsome young Pedro Romero performing, she has the following conversation with Jake.
"I'm a goner. I'm mad about the Romero boy. I'm in love with him, I think."
"I wouldn't be if I were you."
"I can't help it. I'm a goner. It's tearing me all up inside."
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 87
"Don't do it."
"I can't help it. I've never been able to help anything."
"You ought to stop it."
"How can I stop it? I can't stop things. Feel that?"
Her hand was trembling.
"I'm like that all through."Bigotry
Cohn
.......Robert Cohn is not a World War I veteran, like Jake, Bill, and Mike. But he is a veteran of his own
war against anti-Semitism, which he first encountered at Princeton. There, he took up boxing “to
counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton,”
Barnes says. His Jewishness isolates him from Jake, Bill, and Mike and provokes bigoted remarks and
observations. For example, when Cohn insists on going to South America, Jake observes to himself,
“He had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.” After Brett's encounter with Cohn in San Sebastian, Mike
tells Jake, “Brett's gone off with men. But they weren't ever Jews, and they didn't come and hang
about afterward." Before attending the bullfights at Pamplona, Bill says, “That Cohn gets me. He's
got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he'll get out of the fight will be
being bored." But the anti-Semitism is not limited to the men. Brett tells Jake, “Oh, darling, don't be
difficult. What do you think it's meant to have that damned Jew about . . . ?
Blacks
.......Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton both use the word nigger to refer to blacks. For example, in
describing a bar scene, Jake writes, "Inside Zelli's it was crowded, smoky, and noisy. The music hit
you as you went in. Brett and I danced. It was so crowded we could barely move. The nigger
drummer waved at Brett. We were caught in the jam, dancing in one place in front of him. In
discussing a boxing match, Gorton says, "Remember something about a prizefight. Enormous Vienna
prize-fight. Had a nigger in it. Remember the nigger perfectly."
.......Although Jake and Bill do not deride blacks—in fact, Bill compliments the black fighter as an
"[a]wfully noble-looking nigger"—their use of the term nigger nonetheless reflects the attitude of the
times: that blacks were inferior. Gorton's phrase suggests that he thinks it is unusual for a black to
look dignified and admirable.
Fate
.......Like the three Fates in Greek mythology, the war, the environment, and heredity all seem to
have conspired against Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley At least that is what they appear to think.
.......Although Jake is not a complainer, he does think often about his bad luck, as in this passage:
"Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed. Of all the ways to be
wounded." In the Italian hospital where he was recuperating, an Italian liaison colonel told him, "Che
mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!"
.......Even what appears to be good luck for Jake is actually bad luck. As Jake notes, "Probably I never
would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England."
.......Brett also seems under the control of a force, as the following dialogue reveals.
"I'm a goner. I'm mad about the Romero boy. I'm in love with him, I think."
"I wouldn't be if I were you."
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 88
"I can't help it. I'm a goner. It's tearing me all up inside."
"Don't do it."
"I can't help it. I've never been able to help anything."Novel as a Roman à Clef
.......The Sun also Risesis a roman à clef (French for novel with a key), which bases some or all of its
fictional characters on real persons. Such a novel allows its author to satirize a person or reveal
scandalous details about him or her while minimizing the likelihood of a libel suit. It also enables an
author to fictionalize some aspects of real person's life. Following are the names of fictional
characters in The Sun Also Rises and their real-life counterparts.
Bullfighting Terms
Following are definitions of bullfighting terms used in the novel.
el banderillero: Man who weakens a bull for the bullfighter by lodging barbed sticks, or darts, in the
neck of the bull.
la banderilla: Barbed stick that the banderillero lodges in the neck of a bull.
la barrera: Barrier around a bullfighting arena.
la cogida: A goring.
la cornada: A goring.
la corrida: A dash; a run.
la corrida de toros: Bullfight.
el encierro: Corral; enclosure.
la lidia: Bullfighting.
el matador: Top bullfighter; main bullfighter.
la muleta: Red cape draped from a wooden rod. The bullfighter taunts the bull by waving the muleta
in front of it.
el picador: Horseman who pricks the neck of a bull with a lance during a bullfight.
el torero: Bullfighter or another participant in a bullfight, such as a picador or a banderillero
la verónica: Maneuver in which a bullfighter holds out his red cape, allowing a bull to charge it, then
pivots and sweeps the cape over the bull's head.
charges.
Symbols
Bull: (1) Life: You can conquer the bull or let it run over you. (2) Masculinity: The bull's piercing horns
are phallic symbols. But Pedro Romero kills several bulls, just as Brett Ashley kills the hopes of men
who pursue her.
Bankruptcy: Mike Campbell's bankruptcy—and the apparent impoverishment of Harvey Stone—
symbolize the moral and spiritual bankruptcy and impoverishment of the Lost Generation.
German waiter: The annoying maître d'hôtel at the hotel in Pamplona represents image of postwar
Germany, as the following exchange between Jake and Bill suggests.
Jake: "I won't eat down-stairs with that German head waiter. He was damned snotty when I was
getting Mike up-stairs."
Bill: "He was snotty to us, too."
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 89
The Running of the Bulls
.......The running of the bulls at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain, is the most famous
event of its kind. (Similar events take place in Portugal and Mexico, as well as in other Spanish cities.)
The festival is held annually July 6 to 14. On the morning of July 7, keepers release bulls scheduled for
fights. The bulls then run through city streets on a route leading to the bullfighting arena. Side streets
are barricaded. Men aged 18 or older run just ahead of them in the narrow streets a display of
bravado. Many of them suffer injuries, occasionally a fatal one. The bulls run again on each day of the
bullfighting competition. In The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes describes the scene from a balcony.
When I woke it was the sound of the rocket exploding that announced the release of the bulls from
the corrals at the edge of town. They would race through the streets and out to the bull-ring. I had
been sleeping heavily and I woke feeling I was too late. I put on a coat of Cohn's and went out on the
balcony. Down below the narrow street was empty. All the balconies were crowded with people.
Suddenly a crowd came down the street. They were all running, packed close together. They passed
along and up the street toward the bullring and behind them came more men running faster, and
then some stragglers who were really running. Behind them was a little bare space, and then the
bulls galloping, tossing their heads up and down. It all went out of sight around the corner. One man
fell, rolled to the gutter, and lay quiet. But the bulls went right on and did not notice him. They were
all running together. After they went out of sight a great roar came from the bullring. It kept on. Then
finally the pop of the rocket that meant the bulls had gotten through the people in the ring and into
the corrals.
Notes
1...riau-riau: A dance through the streets of Pamplona, from city hall to the chapel of San Fermín, on July 6,
beginning at 4:30 p.m. A band plays a waltz.
2...lost . . . says: Although Hemingway attributed the quotation to Gertrude Stein, she reportedly said it
originated with the owner of an auto-repair shop, a Monsieur Pernollet. He used the phrase une génération
perdue (a lost generation) in referring to the young men who had fought in the First World War, inasmuch
as they had missed their formative teen years.
3...batamweight . . . Francis: Kid Francis defeated Charles Ledoux on June 9, 1925, at the Cirque de Paris.
Hemingway (as Jake Barnes) says the fight took place on June 20.
4...San Fermín: Saint Fermín, a Roman Catholic bishop who was martyred circa AD 302.
5...pelota: Two-man game resembling handball in which each player uses a curved wicker basket to retrieve
a ball bounced from a wall and hurl it back against the wall. The game is similar to jai alai.
6...Joselito (1895-1920): José Gómez Ortega, a celebrated matador who died in a bullfight when he was only
twenty-five.
7...Fates: In Greek mythology, they were three goddesses—Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis—who controlled
the destiny of each human.
Criticism on
The Sun Also Rises
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 90
a. The Hemingway Code Hero: Hemingway defined the Code Hero as a “man who lives correctly,
following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often
stressful, and always painful.”
i. The Code Hero measures himself by how well he handles the difficult situations that life throws at
him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a
person faces death.
ii. The Code Hero believes in no cosmic truth or all-powerful God. There is no after life.
iii. The Code Hero is typically an individualist and free-willed. Although he believes in the ideals of
courage and honor he has his own set of morals and principles based on his beliefs in honor, courage
and endurance. A code hero never shows emotions; showing emotions and having a commitmnet to
women shows weakness. Qualities such as bravery, adventurousness, and travel also define the code
hero.
iv. The code hero is his dislikes the dark. It symbolizes death and is a source of fear for him. The rite
of manhood for the code hero is facing death. However, once he faces death bravely and becomes a
man he must continue the struggle and constantly prove himself to retain his manhood.
v. Hemingway’s heroes search for a code — values that give their lives meaning. The artists of
modernism turned inward to find the truth since the external world was one of chaos. As a result,
truth becomes relativistic, subjective, and personal, lacking absolutes. This fluctuating reality
becomes the basis of a modernist interpretation of the universe: the construction of reality based
upon an individualistic and provisional interpretation of internal values.
vi. In an effort to maintain human dignity in the face of the wasteland, the hero shows compassion
and empathy for his fellow men. This is what there is in the absence of religious or epistemological
understanding.
b. Ideas to consider:
i. Consumership: All the characters are consumers of something: Brett consumes men, Bill and Mike
consume alcohol, Robert Cohn consumes himself, in a sense, in the gradual dismantling of his
manhood. Robert ostensibly possesses all the traits of a “man,” yet in reality these are a sham. He is
aboxer, but he cannot rely on brutality without asking for forgiveness. He is a writer, yet he cannot
produce after his initial work. He falls in love with a woman who immascualtes him, and he makes
himself pathetic. In fact, Cohn is fuzzy. There are no absolutes, and so his story is not finished for the
reader.
ii. Emasculation: Jake Barnes is in reality emasculated, but, perhaps because he is thus insulated from
Brett’s destructive nature, he is ironically the most manly in the novel. He is the code hero, and he is
the moral center. It is Jake’s story that is completed for the reader, and it is only Jake at the end who
rises above Brett.
iii. A new definition of the hero: Jake Barnes is a new kind of hero—demonstrating a new kind of
bravery—for the modern world.
iv. The wasteland internalized: The characters live in a world devoid of meaning or grace, and they
internalize it. They, too, lack meaning or purpose or direction.
1. Jake Barnes is on a quest for meaning. He looks to bullfighting, an ancient sport that predates the
disillusionment of the modern world. Ultimately, however, meaning can only be wound within
himself.
EXPATRIATE LIFE STYLE AS TOURIST DESTINATION:
THE SUN ALSO RISES
AND EXPERIENTIAL TRAVELOGUES
OF THE TWENTIES
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 91
allysonnadiafield
Harvard University
Ernest cared far less than I about aesthetics.What he cared
about was the action and the emotional body of the
traveler. He was a born traveler as he was a born novelist.
—Janet Flanner
What was the value of travel if it were not this—to discover
all romance is not bound between the covers of novels?
—Robert F.Wilson, Paris on Parade
when the sun also rises was published in 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously
dubbed Ernest Hemingway’s novel “a romance and a guidebook”
(Aldridge 123). The novel was celebrated as a roman à clef that depicted an actual
segment of Parisian expatriate society. By the time Hemingway began The
Sun Also Rises, he was already a fixture in the Parisian expatriate literary community,
and had garnered mention in Robert Forrest Wilson’s 1924 guidebook
Paris on Parade. Hemingway was reputedly disdainful of tourists, yet the
novel’s repetition of place names is organized into itineraries similar to those
of travel guides contemporaneous to the novel.
The Sun Also Rises can be considered as part of the tradition of travelogues
such as Pages from the Book of Paris, Paris with the Lid Lifted, How to be
Happy in Paris (without being ruined), and Paris on Parade that offer experiential
guides to a lifestyle, rather than to monuments or museums. With Jake
Barnes’s emphasis on his environment and recurrent references to the streets,
bars, and cafés frequented by his expatriate companions, Hemingway contributes
to a body of travel literature describing the places that constitute the
geography of the infamous expatriate lifestyle.While A Moveable Feast presents
a Paris of memory and nostalgia for Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is a
fictionalized depiction of the Left Bank that should be read against the contemporaneous
travelogues promoting the quartier as a stylish destination; the
expatriate artist lifestyle becomes a tourist experience as Hemingway depicts
the fictional movements in The Sun Also Rises as experiential travelogue.1
In Search of Experience: “Gay Paree” Travelogues of the Twenties
In Paris on Parade, published in 1924, Robert Forrest Wilson presents a
guidebook to Paris in the form of an exposé uncovering the lifestyle of the
Americans who constitute a significant presence in the city:“only ten thousand
of us; but,my, what a noise we make! How important we are to Paris!” (274).2
Wilson is not interested in promoting an authentic French experience. Instead,
he guides his reader through the “American village” of the Latin Quarter and
Montparnasse on Paris’s Left Bank.He writes, “Gay Paree, indeed, can scarcely
be regarded as a French institution at all. It is a polyglot thing existing upon
French tolerance, the gaiety being contributed largely by the guests” (Wilson
279). The legend of “Gay Paree”—drinking, dancing, and other behavior unencumbered
by puritan values—lured tourists who were more enamored with
the lifestyle on display than with the monuments speckling the city.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 92
Wilson devotes a chapter to the newly extended Latin Quarter (reaching
to Montparnasse), an area “that has emerged from the war, a Parisian district
which (so far as its American citizenry is concerned) has for its focus,
community center, club and town-hall the Café du Dôme” (194).Wilson explains
that the area is defined by the “American influence” of its large expatriate
artist community (196):
The new Latin Quarter is completely centralized around one
spot—the corner of the Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse.
Here stand the Café du Dôme and the Café Rotonde; and you
can no more know the present Latin Quarter without knowing
these two cafés than you can know an Ohio county-seat without
knowing its public square and court-house. They are half its
life. (209–10)
The expatriates,Wilson explains, frequent only a few of the area cafés: “At
the Raspail-Montparnasse corner on a summer evening, for instance, those
two chief artists’ cafés of the new Quarter, the Dôme and the Rotonde, will
be jammed to the last chair inside and out, with dozens standing on the
sidewalks waiting for places” (206). This is a Paris created by its American
inhabitants and defined by main boulevards, particular cafés, and the
mores of the expatriates. The result is a cosmopolitan American city unhindered
by the restrictions of Prohibition.
Wilson encourages his readers to seek out “one of the last few genuine
American barrooms remaining on earth” (113).Writing to an American audience,
Wilson acknowledges that in Paris “Prohibition is three thousand miles
away,” yet “these law-abiding pages will afford no clue to the location of this
exiled place beyond assertions that it is in plain sight from the entrance to
Ciro’s restaurant and that its owner’s name is Harry” (113–4).3Wilson points
to Harry’s Bar, but guides his reader to engage in “a Parisian thing,” to order
aperitifs at a café off the tourist path (114).4After all, as the Gallic proverb professes,
“the French cock is a wine-drinking cock” (168).Wilson’s guide to Left
Bank lifestyle was one of many such volumes published in the 1920s and purporting
to provide the reader with an insider’s view of “Gay Paree.”
In 1927, Bruce Reynolds published a travel guide to Paris that he promoted
as a “Travel Cocktail” that would guide the reader to the “frolic” of
“those raging, rousing, rapturous Nights in Peppy Paree.” In Paris with the
Lid Lifted, Reynolds forgoes the tour-book synopses of the city’s museums,
cathedrals, and historic sites and writes a “joy-ride” covering bars, dance
halls, restaurants, race tracks, balls, and “the naughty places,” accompanied
with pen and ink illustrations of gentlemen in top hats leering through
monocles at scantily dressed flappers (4). Reynolds’s book is a guide to experience
as destination; he outlines the steps the reader must follow to partake
in the lifestyle specific to expatriate Paris and promises that his reader
will be “richer in memory and experience” even if poorer in funds (224).
After imploring the reader to forget about a budget vacation, the introduction
ends with the enticement, “If you are one of us—come along”:
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 93
But remember, this trip is not for Goody-goods, or crepe-hangers,
or hard-shells, or nose-tossers. This will be a chummy,
clubby party. Very, very select. We must all understand each
other; all be great friends and all enter into the spirit of the
party, with a snap.We must be alert, a-sparkle, a-tingle, alive.5
(Reynolds 7)
He includes timetables that cover each aspect of the tourist’s visit for fifteen
days. Each element in the timetable is cross-referenced with an entry in the
guidebook elaborating on the listed café, outing, or licentious behavior. The
timetables reveal a penchant for the expatriate itinerary, leading the traveler
to haunts such as Harry’s Bar, the Ritz, Zelli’s, and the New York Times office.
Reynolds’s guide is ironic and tongue-in-cheek, complete with “alibis
for the wife, if you couldn’t leave her at home,” a list of hangover cures for
fifteen days of bingeing (cures include “castor oil” such as the Louvre, Arc
de Triomphe, and Notre-Dame de Paris, because after all, “‘nice’ places do
exist in Paris”).He concludes with a French-English glossary for terms useful
when dealing with tailors or chauffeurs, or when in the pursuit of young
French women (228). Like Reynolds, Wilson mentions the monumental
sights of Paris only in the last chapter of his guide, reserved for the “gentle
tourist”: “Though the patient reader of these pages may long since have despaired
of finding any reference to them, there are, after all, sights to be seen
in Paris” (336). Dispensing with iconic monuments as mere footnotes to the
main attraction, these guidebooks serve as guides to the party lifestyle of
the expatriate community. Though humorous, they are also detailed and
resonant with Hemingway’s depictions of the same environment in A
Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises.
In Paris on Parade,Wilson reserves a chapter for “the bookshop crowd,”
referring to the writers and literary enthusiasts who frequent Sylvia Beach’s
famous Shakespeare and Company. Wilson identifies James Joyce as the
“supreme modern master of English” in the eyes of the bookshop crowd,
but he mentions “the outstanding personages of this interlocking directorate
of the Continental advance movement in English letters” and names
Robert McAlmon, Ford Madox Ford, Bill Bird,George Antheil, Ezra Pound,
and Hemingway (244).6 A favorite subject of Wilson’s guide, Hemingway
reputedly “mingles democratically with the artist-writer crowd at the Café
du Dôme” (248).Wilson writes on the up-and-coming young writer:
Mr. Bird has published a book by Ernest Hemingway and so has
Mr.McAlmon. This fact and the further one that he is intimate
with the bookshop circle seem to mark Mr. Hemingway for
Young Intellectualism’s own, but there are indications that his
sojourn is to be only temporary. In other words, his work promises
to remove him from the three-hundred-copy class of authorship….
He has recently finished a novel which is said to
break new ground. (248)
This novel was not The Sun Also Rises, the first draft of which was written between
July and September 1925 and published in October 1926.7 Wilson is
most likely referring to the thirty-page long in our time, completed in May
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 94
1923 and published in Paris by Bill Bird in April 1924 (Brenner 731–3). However,
Hemingway fulfilled Wilson’s prophecy with The Sun Also Rises, a novel
that depicts travel as the permanent state of its expatriate protagonists.
Jake Barnes as Tour Guide to Hemingway’s “Paris”
Hemingway’s novel, with Jake’s detailed itineraries, is indebted to the travelogues
that represent the lifestyle of the “dilettantish Americans” that Hemingway
held in contempt (Lynn 160).8 Yet the culture of drinking that
Hemingway portrays in The Sun Also Rises is mirrored in the guidebooks as a
major emphasis and the travelogues are strikingly resonant with Jake’s repeated
itineraries and references to the lifestyle of the expatriate community,
including the importance of cafés and bars such as the Dôme, Select, Closerie
des Lilas, Deux Magots, Zelli’s, Café Napolitain, The Crillon, and The Ritz.9
The sequencing of items on the travelogue itineraries reads like a schedule
of visits with a specific order and timeline, a continuous chronology requiring
discipline to follow (Atherton 205). For Jake the former war pilot and Hemingway
the former ambulance driver, dividing the day into spatially oriented
tasks might be instinctual. Likewise, their shared discipline of journalism
might serve as an organizational frame where experience must be accomplished
and transformed into text within a deadline.Yet this way of organizing
time is also a product of the tour guide function that both Jake and Hemingway
share (Atherton 201). John Aldridge writes that the expatriate writers of
the 1920s were like “proxy writers” whose work depicted the lifestyle they enjoyed
that was inimitable in America (110). The belief in “the interdependence
of art and experience” that Aldridge uses to define Hemingway and other ex3
patriate writers points to the importance of experience as a literary trope highlighted
by Jake’s experiential recounting of daily routine (111).
Aldridge’s synopsis of the mythic legacy left by the writers of the 1920s
sounds like the touristic myth of Paris itself: “our view of the literary life of the
twenties is a complex mixture of myth and reality, of reality fantasized into
myth and myth personified to the point where it seems like something we ourselves
experienced” (112).He credits Hemingway with mythologizing his experience
while still in the midst of it (Aldridge 113).Yet the experience Hemingway
depicts had already been mythologized by the travelogues. Tourism created the
myth, but it was fed by its reiteration in fiction and legend; the emphasis of that
generation on their own experiences, specifically of youth, created repeated literary
explorations of the rite de passage (Aldridge 118). Hemingway literalizes
rites of passage with Jake who wanders through Paris delineating points on an
itinerary marking sites of experience, a geography of memory.
In chapter four, after leaving Brett with the Count, Jake describes his
walk home: “I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down towards the
Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded,
looked across the street at the Dome, its tables running out to the edge of
the pavement” (37).His path is defined by the cafés that align the boulevard
and the activity still going on within them. In the morning, marked by the
start of chapter five, Jake describes walking to work and passing tourists engrossed
in street performances. In contrast to the stationary tourists, Jake is
among the crowds of people going to work. Implicitly aligning himself with
the bustling Parisians, he remarks “It felt pleasant to be going to work” (43).
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 95
Jake’s methodical recounting of street names, cafés, and quartiers underscores
his status as an étranger. Yet he is comfortably cosmopolitan in his
“home town” of Paris and distinguishes himself from the tourists he passes
(Griffin 173). Jake’s walk to work recalls Claude Washburn’s 1910 personal
memoir/guidebook Pages from the Book of Paris. which juxtaposes “Americans
with guide-books” who serve to “heighten one’s sense of the city’s
emptiness” and working Parisians, sequestered in their bureaux (159).
Yet for all of Jake’s specificity, his Paris is not that of Hemingway. Hemingway
constructs another Paris distilled from his own experience. Hemingway’s
“Paris” is an amalgam of brand names, recognizable by their
accents and familiarity (Café Select, Café Napolitain, Montparnasse, The
Ritz). In this respect, The Sun Also Rises shares with the guidebooks the notion
that such names can be code for certain social mores. Hemingway’s
Paris also reflects his fictional style, defined by Aldridge as “not a realistic
reflection of a world but the literal manufacture of a world, piece by piece,
out of the most meticulously chosen and crafted materials” (123). Hemingway
manufactures an environment for his characters based on actual
places, but those places become mere points on a decontextualized itinerary,
creating a guidebook Paris without an overview map.10
Describing an itinerary through the city, Jake’s narration takes on the
tone of a travelogue: “The Boulevard Raspail always made dull riding” (48).
He also reflects the prejudices of the travel writers for certain cafés: “The
taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what café in Montparnasse
you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they
will always take you to the Rotonde” (49). Jake walks “past the sad tables of
the Rotonde” and chooses the Select (49). In his guide to Paris,Wilson notes
that the Rotonde (identified as a Russo-Scandinavian haunt) is a large,welllit
café with orchestra and nightly dancing and is “more pretentious in
every way” than the Dôme, but it is a newer café “and the American Quarterites
will have little to do with it” (210–11). Hemingway does not explain
the Rotonde’s stigma, but Jake’s action is in keeping with Wilson’s observation.
In his 1927 How to be Happy in Paris (without being ruined), John
Chancellor also notes that the American residents of the Quarter frequent
the Select or the Dôme rather than the Rotonde (161).
As does Chancellor,Wilson identifies the Dôme as the locus of “America’s
literary and artistic world” (215). He dedicates an entire chapter to “Domites”:
Accordingly if you are a Domite, a permanent resident, you can
sit on that Parisian terrace and keep in touch with things at
home. And on those great evenings, when some old acquaintance
has shown up and is telling you about mutual friends, you
forget that you are in a foreign city at all; you forget the thousand
leagues of Atlantic water; and,with the murmur of English
speech reaching your ears from the terrace, the Dôme itself
seems only some eastern projection of your own land. (216)
In Paris with the Lid Lifted, Reynolds writes that the habitués of the Dôme
will disappoint the tourist looking for authentic starving artists: “they don’t
look particularly starved or poetic or painter-ish, as you have pictured the
romantic, thrilling Latin Quarter-ite to look” (204).He then nods across the
street to the Rotonde, as Jake does, and notes that there are “some but not
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 96
as many nuts” and that the more favored Select is “at its best, about 5 a.m.
The haven of tired ‘street walkers’ and American gluttons for more” (204–5).
Reynolds’s introductory invitation—“if you are one of us—come
along”—mirrors the exclusivity implied by Brett’s repeated assessment of
who may be considered “one of us” (40). Attitude and lifestyle define the
club-like aspect of Jake’s circle and mark the distinction between figures
like the Count and Robert Cohn. The appeal of inclusion in this insider’s
Paris is a standard trope of travel literature that proposes to give its reader a
key to the city’s hottest bars, restaurants, and nightlife. The travelogues that
appeared during Hemingway’s tenure in Paris are no different; they guide
their readers through the Paris enjoyed by Jake, Brett, and their fellow
“club” members. Yet the novel does more than fictionalize a moment in
Paris’s social history. With The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway not only contributes
to the body of travel literature that offers an insider’s perspective
on the lifestyle of the self-exiled writers, artists, and bon vivants who made
Paris in the 1920s legendary, but also mythologizes the historic moment.
Writing on Hemingway in Paris, Carlos Baker explains: “One trouble
was that tourists in the Latin Quarter, gazing raptly into the Rotonde in
search of atmosphere, naturally supposed that what they saw were real
Parisian artists” (6). Baker notes that Hemingway was put off by the “congregation
of poseurs” milling idly at the corner of the Boulevard Montparnasse
and the Boulevard Raspail (6).11 Yet, the cafés of the area—the Select,
Rotonde, and the Dôme—feature prominently in Hemingway’s novel.
While he might not have been one of the “barflyblown bohemians” that
Baker distinguishes from the serious artists working in the Left Bank,Hemingway
collapses the distinction between the authentic and the imitative in
his fictionalizing of expatriate lifestyle in The Sun Also Rises (Baker 29).
Baker portrays a Left Bank divided between true artists and “poseurs.”
Yet this distinction is curiously absent from Hemingway’s novel. Biographers
such as Baker and Griffin point to Hemingway’s concern over authenticity,
the desire to portray the real underscored by F. Scott Fitzgerald
when he famously asserted that Hemingway is “the real thing” (Kuehl and
Jackson 78). Hemingway does little to defend the authenticity of his artist
characters, implying, for example, that the literary skills of Cohn are less
than brilliant. Charles Fenton remarks that Hemingway’s familiarity with
Europe gave “authenticity of atmosphere” to his early works.Yet his characa
ters are concerned with a different kind of authenticity, one that rewrites
the aristocratic expression “people like us” into Brett’s clubby “one of us.”
Hemingway does express a concern for authenticity in the appreciation of
bullfighting. In his study of an early version of The Sun Also Rises,William Balassi
notes that the character of Jake, identified in the manuscript as “Hem,”
finds the mores of expatriate Paris in conflict with afición, the passionate following
of bullfighting (35). Balassi writes that “Hem’s emotions are complicated
by sexuality, drunkenness, and contradictory rules of behavior, which
cause him to doubt whether he truly has afición. Perhaps he is, after all, more
like the other expatriates than he would like to admit”(35). This concern about
afición may be a displaced concern for the authenticity of expatriate artists, but
in the Paris segments of The Sun Also Rises Hemingway chronicles a lifestyle
that reads like a page from Reynolds’s Paris With the Lid Lifted.
Carlos Baker notes that the reader familiar with Paris may feel a “happy shock
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 97
of recognition”upon reading the names of Left Bank cafés and streets in The Sun
Also Rises, yet the uninitiated reader may find such excessive detail tedious (52).
He criticizes Hemingway’s emphasis on particular sites in Jake’s itineraries:
It is hard to discover…what purpose beyond the establishment
of the sense of place is served by Barnes’s complete itinerary of
his walk with Bill Gorton through the streets of Paris…. The
walk fills only two pages.Yet it seems much longer and does not
further the action appreciably except to provide Jake and Bill
with healthy after-dinner exercise. (52)
Without a hypothesis of the itinerary’s role in the novel, Baker concedes,
“Still, this is the way it was at that time in Paris” (52). The search for the authentic—
what he characterizes as “Hemingway’s nearly absolute devotion
to what is true” (64)—seems to be purpose enough for Baker.
The Sun Also Rises is also a guidebook to the ritual of the writer’s life. In
the first chapter of A Moveable Feast,Hemingway describes one of his writing
routines. When the weather was cold, to avoid the expense of buying
firewood and the risk that a cold chimney might not draw, he would walk
to a favorite café along a particular route:
I walked down past the Lycée Henri Quatre and the ancient
church of St.-Étienne-du-Mont and the windswept Place du
Panthéon and cut in for shelter to the right and finally came out
on the lee side of the Boulevard St.-Michel and worked on
down it past the Cluny and the Boulevard St.-Germain until I
came to a good café that I knew on the Place St.-Michel. (4–5)
Hemingway challenges himself to “write the truest sentence that you know”
and his efforts to record the truth in The Sun Also Rises led to the novel’s popularity
as a succès de scandale (A Moveable Feast 12). The titillation of loosely
masked real Left Bank personalities helped promote the novel. Baker notes
that those who frequented the cafés mentioned in the book “were alleged to
own a key which would admit the bearer to the ‘real’ identities of the fictional
people” (78). Hemingway’s itineraries function beyond verisimilitude as
guides to the lifestyle of his “club.” Yet by the time Hemingway was writing The
Sun Also Rises, the particular streets, cafés, bars, and people he mentions had
become synonymous with the expatriate artist lifestyle described in travelogues
such as Paris with the Lid Lifted and Paris on Parade.
“It’s Done in Paris!”
In Pages from the Book of Paris (1910), Claude Washburn writes himself
into French literary history as a witness to the most famous cab ride in
French literature, transplanted by Washburn from Rouen to Paris:
In the long vista a fiacre, still far away, appeared somehow taller
and more shadowy than the others; as it approached it resolved
itself into one like the rest, but the hood of which had been
raised.Within were a couple exchanging the most frantic kisses
I had yet remarked, and with such desperate rapidity that one
thrilled at the thought of the number they would have achieved
by the time they reached the Place de l’Étoile. I lay back on my
cushions and laughed and laughed. For do you think they had
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 98
raised the hood in an attempt at concealment?…Not only does
it disguise nothing, but the fact of its being up in fine weather is
the signal for a close and curious inspection by all within range.
No, this superlatively amorous pair had raised it in the pretense
that they believed they were doing something wrong, and did
not want to be seen; in the effort to realize the intoxicating impression
of secret sin.12 (185–6)
Washburn’s fiacre scene, Reynolds’s itineraries, and Hemingway’s street-bystreet
accounts of Jake’s promenades recall Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in
which Emma Bovary takes to the streets of Rouen in order to fulfill her libidinal
desires with Léon.13 Upon leaving their rendezvous at the Cathedral,
Léon engages a fiacre, a horse-drawn carriage, to provide shelter for
the lovers. Hesitant, Emma resists and Léon appeals to her urbane affectations,
“It’s done in Paris!” (255). The narrator uncovers her failing resistance,
“And that word, with its unassailable logic, decided her” (255). Paris
and its urbanity are excuses for transgression and the streets of Rouen provide
the couple with the only privacy they can enjoy. As the fiacre speeds
through the town, Flaubert traces its path street by street:
It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, across the Palace des Arts,
along the Quai Napoléon, over the Pont Neuf, and pulled up
sharply before the statue of Pierre Corneille.
“Keep on!” came a voice from inside.
The cab started off again, and gathering speed down the hill
beyond the Carrefour La Fayette, drove into the station yard at
full gallop.
“No! Straight on!” cried the voice again. (255)
And the tour continues all through the streets of Rouen until six in the
evening when the tour that began before noon ends with Emma descending
from the fiacre down a side street in the Beauvoisine quarter.
In his 1919 Paris of the Novelists, Arthur Bartlett Maurice notes that this
cab ride through Rouen was “linked with a network of streets” that enhances
both reading the novel and visiting Rouen (89). Maurice writes,
“Despite the many changes which took place during the latter half of the
last century, the visitor in Rouen may without great trouble follow, as the
Pilgrim has followed, the streets indicated in that celebrated journey” (221).
The equally impossible love of Jake and Brett also causes them to seek
privacy in a cab, driving through the streets of Paris:
The waiter came and said the taxi was outside. Brett pressed
my hand hard. I gave the waiter a franc and we went out.
“Where should I tell him?” I asked.
“Oh, tell him to drive around.”
I told the driver to go to the Parc Montsouris, and got in, and
slammed the door.
[…. ]
The taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on
into the dark, still climbing, then leveled out onto a dark street behind
St. Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt,
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 99
passed the trees and the standing bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe,
then turned onto the cobbles of the Rue Mouffetard.
(SAR 32–33)
Emma Bovary’s labyrinthine ride through Rouen is recreated, albeit more
chastely, by Jake and Brett. Unlike Flaubert’s tragic couple, Hemingway’s
pair cannot consummate their passion, and their cab ride ends at the Café
Select in Montparnasse. Hemingway’s invocation of Madame Bovary, although
perhaps inadvertent, befits an expatriate American writer. Emma
gives in to Léon’s supplications in order to shed her provincial naïveté, just
as, according to Cheryl Wall,American writers in Paris “wished to grow less
provincial, not less American” (65).
Like Emma and Léon, Brett and Jake also have their scene in a church.
Their visit to the chapel of San Fermín in Pamplona’s church of San
Lorenzo is cut short when Brett refuses to stay because the church “makes
me damned nervous” (212). Emma Bovary, the young provincial housewife,
seeks sanctuary in the cathedral, fearing the licentious streets of Rouen.
Brett, on the other hand, can only curse the “damned” sanctity of the quiet
space and rush outside where she and Jake cathartically “walk along” (212).
Their walk away from the church and ensuing discussion of the wind (“it’s
liable to go down by five o’clock”) ease Brett’s discomfort, countering the
frightening stillness inside the church with motion and the mundane.14
Conclusion: Experiential Travel
The relationship between Hemingway and tourism makes it fitting that
Hemingway himself has become a destination of sorts for literary critics
and curiosity seekers. John Leland’s A Guide to Hemingway’s Paris with
Walking Tours offers the literary-minded traveler a Hemingway-inspired
introduction to the city. For Leland, Hemingway’s appeal to the American
traveler is that “he was only and always a visitor there, and gave us, exclusively
and passionately, an outsider’s view” (viii). Unlike the “insider’s”
guides of the 1920s, Leland’s guide is predicated on the shared outsider status
of Americans in Paris.
It is also fitting that the bal musette located on the ground floor of Hemingway’s
first home in Paris at 74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine was transformed
into a pornographic theatre in 1975 (Gajdusek 9).15 If the guidebooks
discussed above and The Sun Also Rises can be understood as examples
of experiential travel writing, then they can also be considered in the
context of sex tourism in modern literature. From Flaubert’s 1849 licentious
journey through the Middle East to Michel Houellebecq’s 2001 novel Platforme,
travel provides an environment for sexual behavior unthinkable at
home.Away from Prohibition and puritan prudishness, expatriate Paris becomes
the city for experience,with tourists seeking such experience turning
to lifestyle guides like Reynolds’s and Wilson’s, complete with the “naughty
places” of Paris. But as in The Sun Also Rises, both sexual excess and
tourism’s frantic insistence on perpetual experience have the unavoidable
consequence of making sex seem banal and travel boring. Tourists, expatriates,
and Hemingway’s fictionalized comrades alike are iterations of Emma
Bovary and Léon, seeking the sheltering space of foreign streets.
On the other side of “Gay Paree” is the alcoholic self-destructiveness of
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 100
Hemingway’s haunted expatriates, their lifestyle rationed by the banality of
rote itinerary. Like a Parisian prophetess, Gertrude Stein had the last word
before Hemingway became an icon when she observed that Hemingway
“looks like a modern and…smells of the museums” (qtd. in Aldridge 121).
Hemingway wrote of experience and contributed to the experiential travelogue,
but has himself become a monument.
Notes
1. J. Gerald Kennedy describes the Paris of A Moveable Feast as “an imaginary city, a mythical
scene evoked to explain the magical transformation of an obscure,Midwestern journalist into
a brilliant modern author” (128). Paris as an “imaginary city” is a function of Hemingway’s nostalgia,
a longing to return to a mythical past in a “fantastic place” (Kennedy 130).
2. Wilson remarks that the numbers seem larger because Americans are “so flattered and deferred
to” and “so much in the fore in post-war Parisian life” (276). The police counted 30,000 Americans
in Paris yet the Chamber of Commerce only unearthed 10,000.Wilson attributes this discrepancy
to the failure of the police to accurately count foreigners entering and exiting the
country (276–7). By 1927, there were 15,000 official American residents in Paris and 35,000 by
the estimate of the Parisian police (Lynn 149).
3. By chapter thirteen,Wilson has forgone his earlier discretion and writes, “In the back room of
Harry’s New York Bar in Paris the expatriates hold forth on their grandiose schemes” (302).
4. Wilson tells his Prohibition-era readers, quite charmingly: “And among the French, at least,
drinking in a café carries no obloquy with it. French women visit the neighborhood bars almost
as much as men—honest virtuous women of the community—housewives , store keepers, and
shop girls and stenographers pausing on their way to and from work to snatch hot coffee” (120).
Despite implying that the primary draw of the cafés is “hot coffee,”Wilson goes on for several
pages to describe the various types of Parisian aperitifs unavailable, at least legally, in America,
and includes a complete chapter on experiencing French wine. Anecdotally, some of Wilson’s
advice for this 1924 readers is as useful now as it was eighty years ago, such as his advice for
catching the attention of an evasive garçon: “Get up as if you were going to leave without paying.
Then he will dart from his hiding, a model of smiling courtesy, and will add up your
amount, give you your change, thank you for the tip, and bid you au revoir as if there had been
no unpleasantness about it all” (134).
5. Here, Reynolds’s assertion that the trip will be “very, very select” is certainly an allusion to the
Café Select.
6. Ford Madox Ford’s role, according to Wilson, is in the publication of “a terribly dull magazine,”
the transatlantic review (244).
7. For a detailed discussion of the first draft of the novel, see William Balassi,“The Trail to The Sun
Also Rises: The First Week of Writing.”
8. In the manuscript draft of the novel, Hemingway opens with a description of Montparnasse. J.
Gerald Kennedy notes that “to suggest the torment of his characters,Hemingway created a nocturnal
city, a nightmarish whirl of bars, cafés, taxis, restaurants, and dance halls” (97).
9. For a thorough discussion of Hemingway’s “mental map of Paris,” see J. Gerald Kennedy’s
Imagining Paris, chapter 3.
10. Neither Reynolds nor Wilson provides maps of Paris in his guidebook.
11. Baker notes, however, that the two supposedly opposing camps, the serious artists and the
“wastrels and adventurers” did commingle in the Left Bank cafés (20).
12. Washburn includes this scene illustrating the city’s hypocrisy and paradoxical values as part of
an odd defense of polygamy, though he concedes that (at least in 1910) “we have a long way to
go before a satisfactory system of polygamy can be established” (187).
13. Hemingway certainly read Madame Bovary and cited Flaubert as one of his favorite “dead”writers
(Griffin 99). John Aldridge notes that Hemingway and his cohort of writers of the 1920s were distinguished
from previous generations “by their dedication to the Flaubertian ideal of the artist,
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 101
their sense of belonging to an aristocratic fraternity of talent” (111). Likewise, in Green Hills of
Africa,Hemingway notes that Flaubert was “one that we believed in, loved without criticism” (71).
14. This scene is foreshadowed in chapter three when Jake and Georgette leave the Café Napolitain
in a “slow, smoothly rolling fiacre” (23). Unlike Léon, Jake rebuffs Georgette’s advances and tells
the cocher to stop (24).
15. More recently, the space has become an avant-garde cinema (Gajdusek 62).
Key Facts
full title · The Sun Also Rises
author · Ernest Hemingway
type of work · Novel
genre · Modernist novel; travelogue; novel of disillusionment
language · English
time and place written · Mid-1920s, Paris
date of first publication · 1926
publisher · Charles Scribner’s Sons
narrator · Jake Barnes
point of view · Jake tells the entire story from his own point of view.
tone · Somber, detached, ironic, nostalgic
tense · Past
setting (time) · 1924
setting (place) · The novel begins in Paris, France, moves to Pamplona, Spain, and concludes in
Madrid, Spain.
protagonist · Jake
major conflict · Jake is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, but they cannot maintain a relationship
because he was rendered impotent by a war wound. Jake loses numerous friendships and has his life
repeatedly disrupted because of his loyalty to Brett, who has a destructive series of love affairs with
other men.
rising action · Jake, Brett, and their friends pursue a dissipated life in Paris; Jake introduces Brett to
Robert Cohn; Brett and Cohn have an affair; Cohn follows Brett to Pamplona.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 102
climax · The jilted Cohn beats up Mike and Jake, and afterward Pedro Romero.
falling action · Jake and his friends leave Spain; Jake enjoys the solitude of San Sebastian; Brett wires
Jake to rescue her in Madrid after forcing Romero to leave her.
themes · The aimlessness of the Lost Generation; male insecurity; the destructiveness of sex
motifs · The failure of communication; excessive drinking; false friendships
symbols · Bullfighting
foreshadowing · The behavior of the bulls repeatedly foreshadows the actions of the people in the
novel.
Important Quotations Explained For Academic Exam
1. Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think I am very
much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for
boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the
feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton.
These lines open the novel, as Jake begins a brief biographical sketch of Robert Cohn. This passage
presents many of the themes and motifs that the novel goes on to develop, such as competitiveness
and resentment between men and insecurity. For example, Cohn suffers from feelings of “inferiority”
because he is Jewish, and, as soon becomes clear, nearly every male character in the novel finds
something about which to feel inferior. It is significant that none of the themes in this brief passage is
presented directly; rather, they are all invoked implicitly, demonstrating Hemingway’s style of stating
relatively little but implying a great deal.
These sentences also have a noticeable tone of condescension. As the novel progresses, this
condescension develops into outright hostility and antagonism toward Cohn. Over the course of the
novel, we come to realize that Jake’s hostile and skeptical attitude toward Cohn is bound up with
jealousies and insecurities of his own.
Finally, we learn from this passage that Cohn has an intense need to be accepted. Although he
dislikes boxing, he perfects it in order to better his social position at Princeton. This need for
acceptance proves harmful to Cohn in his relationships with Jake and Brett, who cannot stomach his
insecurities.
2. [Cohn:] “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
[Jake:] “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 103
In this quotation, taken from Chapter II, Cohn verbalizes one of the key dilemmas afflicting the Lost
Generation. In the wake of World War I, many young men and women felt their lives had no purpose
or substance. Cohn worries that he is wasting his brief time on earth. Jake’s comfort is really not
comfort at all. He advises Cohn that “[n]obody” feels fulfilled in their lives, except a small group of
extraordinary people. Of course, Cohn cannot become a bullfighter. Jake implies that Cohn must
learn to live with his feeling of discontent. This advice is demonstrative of Jake’s character: although
he understands the flaws of the world and the people around him, he almost never takes action to
correct those flaws. He simply accepts them, as he advises Cohn to do.
3. “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
Jake says these words to Cohn in Chapter II when Cohn tries to convince him to travel to South
America. Cohn feels dissatisfied with his life in Paris, and he believes that a change of location will fill
the void he senses in his life. Jake knows that such reasoning is nonsense—Cohn’s unhappiness
stems from his outdated values and his decadent lifestyle, which will not be any different anywhere
else. As with the previous quote, Jake demonstrates a unique insight into the problems and activities
of the postwar generation. Many of Jake’s friends, and indeed Jake himself, try to cure their
unhappiness through constant travel, either on a small scale, from bar to bar, or on a large one, from
country to country. Jake shows here that he knows that such travel is futile and ultimately
purposeless. The discontent of the Lost Generation is psychological, not geographic.
4. [Jake:] “Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?”
[Brett:] “I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody.”
This exchange between Jake and Brett, which occurs in Chapter VII, after Brett shows up at Jake’s
home in Paris with Count Mippipopolous, encapsulates the central conflict of the novel, which is
rarely directly expressed. One must read closely to understand what is at stake and what is being
discussed. As always in Hemingway’s prose, while little is said, much is communicated. Jake begs
Brett to be with him, but she replies that she would always “tromper” him, a French word here
meaning “to commit adultery.” A wound Jake received during the war rendered him impotent, and
he thus cannot satisfy Brett’s need for sex. With her words, she is telling Jake that she would have to
go with other men behind Jake’s back, which she knows he wouldn’t be able to stand. This central,
intractable emotional conflict forms the backdrop for the action of the novel.
5. “Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed
suddenly pressing Brett against me.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
These are the final lines of the novel, presenting Brett and Jake’s final dialogue, spoken in a taxi at
the end of Chapter XIX. Jake has endured an attack by Cohn and helped Brett in her seduction of
Romero. Brett has pushed Romero away and now finds herself alone again. In this concluding
passage, the lament over what could have been is truly poignant, and for many this represents the
novel’s finest moment. Just as Brett voices, one last time, the dream that the two of them could have
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 104
had a relationship, a policeman raises his baton and symbolically signals a halt. The car’s sudden
deceleration presses Brett tantalizingly close to Jake, echoing a number of similar scenes earlier in
the novel, but the barrier between them is quite clear now. Moreover, Jake’s slightly cynical and
bitter reply shows that he has no illusions about their relationship. He seems to appreciate the fact
that a relationship between himself and Brett, if such a thing had been possible, would have been
unlikely to end differently than any of her other failed relationships. Yet Jake’s subtle doubts only
increase the poignancy of the novel’s closing lines. Their relationship is revealed to have been merely
a beautiful dream, a dream that is now slipping away forever.
More Important Quotations Explained For Academic Exam
Quote #1
"Listen, Jake," he leaned forward on the bar. "Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is
going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time
you have to live already?" (2.7)
Here, Cohn brushes upon something resembling an early mid-life crisis. His realization that he hasn’t
done anything significant with his life motivates his desire to act upon something – it ends up being
his infatuation with Brett.
Quote #2
[Georgette] looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away.
"Never mind."
"What’s the matter? You sick?"
"Everybody’s sick. I’m sick too. " (3.4)
Everyone we encounter in the urban space of Paris is sick with something – mostly with the general
sense of malaise that appears to be symptomatic of the postwar condition.
Quote #3
I told the driver to go to the Parc Montsouris, and got in, and slammed the door. Brett was
leaning back in the corner, her eyes closed. I sat beside her. The cab started with a jerk.
"Oh, darling, I’ve been so miserable," Brett said. (3.40)
Despite Brett’s earlier show of high spirits, she can admit her misery to Jake; their intimate
relationship allows her to let down her guard and reveal her feelings to him.
Quote #4
I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I
started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 105
mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I
started to cry. (4.15)
In this rare moment of release, Jake breaks down and gives in to his despair about his hopeless
relationship with Brett.
Quote #5
It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another
thing. (4.25)
Again, Jake emphasizes just how difficult it is to stay tough and rational at night – when we’re alone
in the dark, it’s hard not to think of the things that make us unhappy.
Quote #6
"Have any fun last night?" I asked.
"No, I don’t think so."
"How’s the writing going?"
"Rotten. I can’t get this second book going."
"That happens to everyone."
"Oh. I’m sure of that. It just gets me worried, though." (5.7)
This exchange between Robert Cohn and Jake reveals Cohn’s increasing anxieties about his writing
and his general uncertainty about everything, even how much fun he had the previous night. His
arrogance is beginning to falter as writing grows more and more difficult.
Quote #7
"Oh darling," Brett said, "I’m so miserable."
I had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. "You were happy a
minute ago." (7.30)
Brett’s misery is never too far beneath the surface. Every time she’s with Jake, his mere presence
seems to remind her of her feelings for him, and the impossibility of their situation.
Quote #8
But I could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things
differently from when it is light. To hell there isn’t! I figured that all out once, and for six months I
never slept with the electric light off. That was another bright idea. To hell with women, anyway.
To hell with you, Brett Ashley. (14.2)
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 106
Left alone for the night, Jake’s problems all emerge in full force. He’s definitely right – something
about the night time makes us all a little too introspective at times. Despite his efforts to brush them
off, his emotional issues can’t be ignored forever.
Quote #9
That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. That
was a large statement. (14.6)
In his late night musings, Jake stumbles upon the idea that morality is signified by things that disgust
you after you’ve done them (or perhaps it’s immorality). Either way, this statement provides us with
a definition of a moral code that only functions through the negative reinforcement of guilt or
dissatisfaction.
Quote #10
"Come on," she whispered throatily. "Let’s get out of here. Makes me damned nervous."
Outside in the hot brightness of the street Brett looked up at the treetops in the wind. The
praying had not been much of a success.
"Don’t know why I get so nervy in church," Brett said. "Never does me any good." We walked
along.
"I’m damned bad for a religious atmosphere," Brett said. "I’ve the wrong type of face." (18.14)
Brett can’t take the contemplative atmosphere of the church – her own demons make her too
nervous in such a setting. The "nervy" feeling she gets in church probably has more to do with her
denial of her own unhappiness than with anything else.
Quote #11
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together [...]. (1.2)
In a world of liars and cheats, of course Jake mistrusts people who are up front, since they seem too
good to be true!
Quote #12
So there you were. I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing you could do anything about,
because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he
did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book and I suppose the second came out of a book,
too. (2.8)
Jake comments upon Cohn’s easily impressed mentality; Jake looks down upon this aspect of his
friend’s personality.
Quote #13
[…] as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 107
of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and I regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but
realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while and maybe never, but that
anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time
[…]. (10.21)
Jake, attempting to find some kind of genuine connection to his spirituality, realizes that despite his
longing for faith, he’s not a proper Catholic. His desire to "feel religious" here is understandable –
after all, religion explains the mysteries of life, which Jake is certainly, well, mystified by.
Quote #14
Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of
nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could
forgive anything. At once he forgave me for all of my friends. Without his ever saying anything
they were simply a little something shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in
bull-fighting. (13.24)
For Montoya, aficion is the only element of identity that matters. Since Jake has it, Montoya’s willing
to overlook all his flaws – even his friends.
Quote #15
"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."
"What brought it on?"
"Friends," said Mike. "I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had
more creditors than anybody in England." (13. 31)
Mike admits to his own helplessness; his descent into bankruptcy was apparently totally beyond his
control. This reflects upon his lack of control with regards not only to his business matters, but to his
life in general.
Quote #16
Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The
others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of
the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked
turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he
kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass
him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. (15.52)
Romero’s natural talent reveals a pure and genuine kind of honesty that we don’t see in any of the
other characters – the purity of his style in the ring reflects upon the authenticity of his character, as
well.
Quote #17
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 108
Also Belmonte imposed conditions and insisted that his bulls should not be too large, nor too
dangerously armed with horns, and so the element that was necessary to give the sensation of
tragedy was not there, and the public, who wanted three times as much from Belmonte, who was
sick with a fistula, as Belmonte had ever been able to give, felt defrauded and cheated, and
Belmonte’s jaw came further out in contempt, and his face turned yellower, and he moved with
greater difficulty as his pain increased, and finally the crowd were actively against him, and he
was utterly contemptuous and indifferent. (18.30)
The crowd can sense Belmonte’s inauthenticity, and knows that he is only imitating himself. His
performance has become a parody of his past identity.
Quote #18
During Romero’s first bull his hurt face had been very noticeable. Everything he did showed it. All
the concentration of the awkwardly delicate working with the bull that could not see well brought
it out. The fight with Cohn had not touched his spirit but his face had been smashed and his body
hurt. He was wiping all that out now. Each thing that he did with this bull wiped that out a little
cleaner. (18.42)
Romero, unlike any of the other characters, is able to heal himself. The purity of his passion for the
bullfight allows him to re-center himself spiritually through the act of fighting, despite the physical
damage he sustained in his brawl with Cohn.
Quote #19
"You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch."
"Yes."
"It’s sort of what we have instead of God."
"Some people have God," I said. "Quite a lot." (19.55)
After leaving Romero, Brett finally feels as though she’s done something right, even if it makes her
miserable; this gives her a sense of some kind of spiritual wholeness for the first time, which she puts
in the place of God. Jake, whose faith perseveres throughout the novel, corrects her when she
implies that nobody believes in God in their world.
Quote #20
"I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m not going to be one of those bitches that ruins children." (19.49)
Brett’s affair with Romero (who’s only nineteen) has forced her to confront her conscience for the
first time – yes, she actually has one! Her obsessive wondering in the last two chapters about
whether or not she is a "bitch" reaches its culmination here, where she has apparently made up her
mind not to be one.
Quote #21
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 109
I watched him walk back to the café holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led
him quite a life. (1.10)
Cohn is a likable but emasculated character when we first meet him – Frances has him totally
whipped.
Quote #22
[Cohn] had married on the rebound from the rotten time he had in college, and Frances took him
on the rebound from his discovery that he had not been everything to his first wife. He was not in
love yet but he realized he was an attractive quantity to women and the fact of a woman caring
for him and wanting to live with him was not simply a divine miracle. (2.2)
Cohn’s subjugation by women is at a breaking point here – he realizes in a somewhat dangerous
fashion very late in life that it’s not a "miracle" for a woman to be attracted to him, and that he can
use this to his advantage.
Quote #23
One of them saw Georgette and said: "I do declare. There is an actual harlot. I’m going to dance
with her, Lett. You watch me."
The tall dark one, called Lett, said: "Don’t you be rash."
The wavy blood one answered: "Don’t you worry, dear."
And with them was Brett. I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they
are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one,
anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure. (3.22)
The homophobia that emerges here can be somewhat jarring to contemporary readers (as is the
anti-Semitic strain that runs through everyone’s treatment of Cohn). In this scene, Jake is disturbed
and angered by the homosexual friends that Brett arrives with – "they" are discussed as though they
are all the same (and Jake doesn’t like any of them). He portrays the gay men as effeminate,
somewhat alien, and totally devoid of masculinity.
Quote #24
"When I think of the hell I’ve put chaps through. I’m paying for it all now."
"Don’t talk like a fool," I said. "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never
think about it."
"Oh, no. I’ll lay you don’t."
"Well, let’s shut up about it."
"I laughed about it too, myself, once." She wasn’t looking at me. "A friend of my brother’s came
home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?"
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 110
"No," I said. "Nobody ever knows anything." (4.4)
Brett sees Jake’s ordeal as a punishment for her own mistreatment of men (rather a selfish way of
approaching it). She admits that even she has laughed about a similar situation before it affected her
directly – emasculated men are "supposed" to be comic figures, rather than tragic ones.
Quote #25
My head started to work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded and flying
on a joke front like the Italian. In the Italian hospital we were going to form a society. It had a
funny name in Italian. I wonder what became of the others, the Italians. That was in the Ospedale
Maggiore in Milano, Padiglione Ponte. The next building was the Padiglione Zonda. There was a
statue of Ponte, or maybe it was Zonda. That was where the liaison colonel came to visit me. That
was funny. That was about the first funny thing. I was all bandaged up. But they had told him
about it. Then he made that wonderful speech: "You, a foreigner, an Englishman" (any foreigner
was an Englishman) "have given more than your life." What a speech! I would like to have it
illuminated to hang in the office. He never laughed. He was putting himself in my place, I guess.
"Che mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!" (4.78)
Jake’s impotence is apparently worse than death, if we are to believe the very serious Italian colonel.
This says a lot about the expectations of men at the time; even though Jake presents this
humorously, it’s clearly disturbing to him.
Quote #26
Cohn smiled again and sat down. He seemed glad to sit down. What the hell would he have done
if he hadn’t sat down? "You say such damned insulting things, Jake." "I’m sorry. I’ve got a nasty
tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty things."
"I know it," Cohn said. "You’re really about the best friend I have, Jake."
God help you, I thought. (5.10)
Cohn’s guileless admission of friendship sets the scene for a man-to-man moment of honest affection
– but instead, we (like Jake) just feel embarrassed that Cohn has put himself out there.
Quote #27
"You’re awfully funny, Harvey," Cohn said. "Some day somebody will push your face in." (6.8)
The violent tension that runs just below the surface of all of these male relationships slips out here,
in Cohn’s obvious dislike for Harvey Stone.
Quote #28
"Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public."
(8.10)
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 111
The undaunted party here is Bill. Here, he succinctly and jokingly outlines the number one rule of
masculinity in Hemingway’s world – never be daunted in public.
Quote #29
Why I felt that impulse to devil [Cohn] I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind,
unforgivingly jealous of what happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did
not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that
little spell of superiority at lunch – that and when he went through all that barbering. So I put the
telegram in my pocket. The telegram came to me, anyway. (10.28)
The competition between Jake and Cohn reaches its first peak here, without Cohn even knowing.
Jake’s resentment of his former friend is kicked off by the double whammy of Cohn’s trip with Brett
(and their sexual relationship) and by Cohn’s assumption that he knows Brett better than Jake does.
Both of these things threaten Jake’s already shaky sense of his own masculinity.
Quote #30
"It’s no life being a steer," Robert Cohn said.
"Don’t you think so?" Mike said. "I would have thought you’d loved being a steer, Robert." "What
do you mean, Mike?"
"They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so." […]
"Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?" (13.48)
Mike uses one of the oldest insults in the book here. His taunt that Cohn is like a steer (a castrated
bull), implies that Cohn has no… well, you know.
Quote #31
I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless. (3.25)
We’re not exactly sure what the "positive sense" of drunkenness is that Jake refers to, since people
just seem to get into more trouble when they’re drunk in this novel, but we have a feeling it refers to
the sense of carefree creative flow that emerges later in the scenes between Jake and Bill.
Drunkenness in the wrong social context, however, as in this scene, leans more towards destructive
rather than creative.
Quote #32
"Mr. Barnes," the count poured my glass full. "She is the only lady I have ever known who was as
charming when she was drunk as when she was sober." (7.18)
The "she" here is Brett – of course, we’ve already established that Brett is charming in any situation,
but this seems like a particularly interesting and rather unusual comment from the count. Brett
doesn’t seem to undergo any real change between drunkenness and sobriety, which is kind of an
alarming idea, if you think about it.
Quote #33
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 112
Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice
people. (13.57)
Here, drunkenness is actually an effective mode of distraction for Jake – the language in this quote
emphasizes the artificiality of this distraction. It "seems" that everyone’s nice, but we know that
when Jake’s sober again, he’ll remember what his friends are really like.
Quote #34
Mike was a bad drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bill was a good drunk. Cohn was never drunk.
(14.6)
This concise quote sums up the difference between Cohn and the rest of the crowd (Jake included –
we might as well add "Jake was a good drunk" to the list). Cohn, unlike everyone else, never
surrenders himself to the experience of drunkenness, either because he can’t or he won’t.
Quote #35
The fiesta was really started. 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 as though nothing could have any
consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the
fiesta you had the feeling, even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it
heard. It was the same feeling about any action. It was a fiesta that went on for seven days. (15.8)
The fiesta and its requisite state of constant drunkenness is a time of "unreal" events and chaos – a
time in which our characters let go of any sober sense of right and wrong they might still possess.
Quote #36
"I’m rather drunk," Mike said. "I think I’ll stay rather drunk. This is all awfully amusing, but it’s not
too pleasant for me. It’s not too pleasant for me." (17.42)
Mike finally articulates something we’ve all been wondering about – he’s perfectly aware of his own
abuse of alcohol and its psychological reasons, and consciously chooses to continue it.
Quote #37
"You wouldn’t believe it. It’s like a wonderful nightmare."
"Sure," I said. "I’d believe anything. Including nightmares."
"What’s the matter? Feel low?"
"Low as hell."
"Have another absinthe. Here, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor."
"I feel like hell," I said.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 113
"Drink that," said Bill. "Drink it slow."
It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any
better.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel like hell."
"Have another?"
"It won’t do any good."
"Try it. You can’t tell; maybe this is the one that gets it. Hey, waiter! Another absinthe for this
señor!" (18.53)
Following the Brett-Romero-Cohn drama, the only thing Jake can fall back on is alcohol – however,
this time even booze doesn’t do the trick. What he needs, clearly, is something to cure rather than
simply cover up his problems.
Quote #38
I drank a bottle for wine for company. It was a Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking
slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.
(19.14)
After the fiesta, Jake returns to alcohol, but it’s different – there’s something less alarming to him
about drinking alone, at his own pace, and without the complicating factors of his friends.
Quote #39
"It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you can get in the bar of a big hotel," I said.
"Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite anymore."
"No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." (19.53)
Brett and Jake hang on to an old-fashioned idea of gentility associated with hotel bars (and curiously
enough, horse racing) – in this scene, the hotel bar is a place of refuge from the pressures of the
outside world and the consequences of Brett’s actions.
Quote #40
"Don’t get drunk, Jake," she said. "You don’t have to."
"How do you know?"
"Don’t," she said. "You’ll be all right."
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 114
"I’m not getting drunk," I said. "I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine."
"Don’t get drunk," she said. "Jake, don’t get drunk." (19.58)
For the only time, Brett actually begs Jake to stay sober; she doesn’t want to drink herself, and needs
him to stay with her in her state of honesty and unhappiness.
Quote #41
For four years his horizon had been absolutely limited to his wife. For three years, or almost three
years, he had never seen beyond Frances. I am sure he had never been in love in his life. (2.1)
Despite the fact that he’s been tied to certain women, Jake suspects that Cohn has never really been
in love with them – Cohn doesn’t have an understanding of what love really is, beyond obligation.
Quote #42
"You’re getting damned romantic."
"No, bored." (3.35)
This brief interchange between Brett and Jake (Jake is the bored one) cancels out the possibility of
real romance – it’s just something to pass the time.
Quote #43
"It’s funny," I said. "It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love."
"Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again.
"I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling."
"No," she said. "I think it’s hell on earth." (4.4)
Brett can’t handle her feelings for Jake – she wants him but can’t have him, which creates the
sensation of "hell on earth" for her. Jake, on the other hand, experiences a kind of simultaneous pain
and pleasure in seeing Brett.
Quote #44
"Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?"
"I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it." (7. 7)
Jake attempts to find some kind of unconventional solution to their no sex problem, but Brett knows
herself too well to accept it. Her statement that she’d just tromper (cheat on) Jake with everyone is
true, and both of them know it.
Quote #45
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 115
"He calls her Circe," Mike said. "He claims she turns men into swine." (13.52)
Cohn’s association of Brett with Circe, a seductive enchantress of Greek mythology, is fairly accurate
– she reduces the men who love her to a kind of animal-like state of worship and abjection.
Quote #46
Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a
woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking
about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation
of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of
retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. (14. 4)
Love and friendship here are depicted as "exchange of values," reflecting Jake’s cynical view of
relationships between men and women. The "bill" that always comes is steep – in transactions like
this, someone always ends up paying with unhappiness.
Quote #47
Cohn sat at the table. His face had the sallow, yellow look it got when he was insulted but
somehow he seemed to be enjoying it. The childish, drunken heroics of it. It was his affair with a
lady of title. (16. 32)
Cohn’s love for Brett is more like the idealized notion of love – at this stage, he’s in love with the
concept of an "affair with a lady of title," rather than Brett herself.
Quote #48
"Do you still love me, Jake?"
"Yes," I said.
"Because I’m a goner," Brett said.
"How?"
"I’m a goner. I’m mad about the Romero boy. I’m in love with him I think."
"I wouldn’t be if I were you."
"I can’t help it. I’m a goner. It’s tearing me all up inside." (16. 48)
Brett expresses a marked sense of resignation here; she recognizes that her feelings for Romero are
actually love, or something akin to it, at least, which she links to death ("I’m a goner"). This reiterates
Brett’s earlier claim, in relation to Jake, that love is hell on earth.
Quote #49
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 116
That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go
off with him, now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was all right. (19.37)
After everything’s over, Jake sardonically reflects upon the shameful role he played in the drama of
Brett, Cohn, and Romero – he clearly feels guilty about his intervention, but is also resigned to it.
Quote #50
"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed
suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" (19.60)
This line gets us every time. As the novel closes, Jake doesn’t even have the energy to imagine a
happy ending – he knows that he and Brett can’t be together, and now that this possibility has been
irrevocably cancelled out, he recognizes that it could never have happened, even in the past. The
idea of their relationship is simply a pretty but impossible dream.
Quote #51
"No, I don’t like Paris. It’s expensive and dirty."
"Really? I find it so extraordinarily clean. One of the cleanest cities in all Europe."
"I find it dirty."
"How strange! But perhaps you have not been here very long."
"I’ve been here long enough." (3.14)
This catty little exchange between Frances and Georgette again raises the issue of the dirty or
decrepit condition of Paris – Georgette, like Jake, has the sense that there is something wrong with
the urban space.
Quote #52
In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look welloff and clean… the houses in the villages had red tiled roofs, and then the road turned off and
commenced to climb and we were going way up close along a hillside, with a valley below and
hills stretched off back toward the sea. (10.4)
Doesn’t this just sound like paradise? The closer Jake gets to the real country, the happier he is.
Hemingway indulges in lengthy (and for him, rather lush) descriptions of the Basque countryside to
help his readers appreciate it as much as Jake does.
Quote #53
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 117
It was a beech wood and the trees were very old. Their roots bulked above the ground and the
branches were twisted. We walked on the road between the thick trunks of the old beeches and
the sunlight came through the leaves in light patches on the grass. The trees were big, and the
foliage was thick but it was not gloomy. There was no undergrowth, only the smooth grass, very
green and fresh, and the big gray trees well spaced as though it were a park.
"This is country," Bill said. (12.19)
Bill’s simple statement says it all. He and Jake have no need for discussion – they have found what
they’re looking for.
Quote #54
As soon as I baited up and dropped in again I hooked another and brought him in the same way.
In a little while I had six. They were all about the same size. I laid them out, side by side, all their
heads pointing the same way, and looked at them. They were beautifully colored and firm and
hard from the cold water. It was a hot day so I slit them all and shucked out the insides, gills and
all, and tossed them over across the river. I took the trout ashore, washed them in the cold,
smoothly heavy water above the dam, and then picked some ferns and packed them all in the
bag, three trout on a layer of ferns, then another layer of ferns, then three more trout, and then
covered them with ferns. They looked nice in the ferns, and now the bag was bulky, and I put it in
the shade of the tree. (12.29)
Jake is totally satisfied with the simple chore of packing up his catch – he has the same aura of focus
and straightforward pleasure that we saw in his work at the newspaper office.
Quote #55
Bill took a long drink.
"Utilize a little, brother," he handed me the bottle. "Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not pry in to
the holy mysteries of the hen-coop with simian fingers. Let us accept on faith and simply say – I
want you to join with me in saying – What shall we say brother?" he pointed the drumstick at me
and went on. "Let me tell you. We will say, and I for one am proud to say – and I want to say with
me, on your knees, brother. Let no man be ashamed to kneel here in the great out-of-doors.
Remember the woods were God’s first temples. Let us kneel and say: ‘Don’t eat that, Lady – that’s
Mencken.’" (12.39)
All of this "utilizing" business is silly and fun, but there’s also an edge of something real beneath it.
Out in nature, Bill and Jake have an exuberant sense of liberty and exhilaration. Bill’s mock-sermon
encourages his audience to utilize the products of the earth and celebrate them, and even while he’s
mocking organized religion, he’s setting up the idea that we should worship nature instead of any
manmade gods.
Quote #56
We stayed five days at Burguete and had good fishing. The nights were cold and the days were
hot, and there was always a breeze even in the heat of the day. It was hot enough so that it felt
good to wade in a cold stream, and then the sun dried you when you came out and sat on the
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 118
bank. We found a stream with a pool deep enough to swim in. In the evenings we played threehanded bridge with a man named Harris, who has walked over from Saint Jean Pied de Port and
was stopping at the inn for the fishing. He was pleasant and went with us twice to the Irati River.
There was no word from Robert Cohn nor from Brett and Mike. (12.48)
This is an idyllic break from everything that stresses Jake out; he’s in the country, living the simple life
with pleasant companions. The lack of correspondence from Cohn or Mike is the icing on the cake.
Quote #57
We walked back down the road from Roncesvalles with Harris between us. We had lunch at the
inn and Harris went with us to the bus. He gave us his card, with his address in London and his
club and his business address, and as we got on the bus he handed us each an envelope. I opened
mine and there were a dozen flies in it. Harris had tied them himself. He tied all his own flies. "I
say, Harris – " I began.
"No, no!" he said. He was climbing down from the bus. "They’re not first rate flies at all. I only
thought if you fished them sometime it might remind you of what a good time we had." (13. 69)
The strong bond that we see between Bill and Jake in their time in the country is also reflected in
their relationship with Harris. Even though they don’t know each other very well, all three clearly feel
that a true friendship has emerged in their common appreciation for the country life – here, Harris
touchingly expresses his gratitude for this in the form of flies (hilarious, but genuinely sweet, in our
opinion).
Quote #58
It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in
the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt
good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything
on a day like that. That was the last day before the fiesta. (14. 12)
Jake’s mood is influenced by the beautiful weather; as we’ve noted before, his feelings are often
connected to his environment.
Quote #59
In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea. You could not see
the tops of the mountains. The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the
houses were changed. I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather. The bad weather
was coming over the mountains from the sea. (16.1)
Yet again, the weather signals a change that is to come – the fog is coming, and with it a whole lot of
negativity.
Quote #60
I undressed in one of the bath-cabins, crossed the narrow line of beach and went into the water. I
swam out, trying to swim through the rollers, but having to dive sometimes. Then in the quiet
water I turned and floated. Floating I saw only the sky and felt the drop and lift of the swells….
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 119
The water was buoyant and cold. It felt as though you could never sink. (19.28)
Alone in San Sebastian, Jake can commune with nature and recuperate. The sensation of never
sinking that he experience is one of tranquil hopefulness. For poor Jake’s sake, we wish this could go
on for longer…
Quote #61
"Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You
can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that." (2.7)
Jake opens up inadvertently here – we learn that he went through a stage of wandering simply to
escape himself, also.
Quote #62
We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte’s restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with
Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it on the American
Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we
had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. (8.21)
Jake’s disgust with his compatriots and with their rather sheep-like adherence to travel guides
emerges here – he sees himself as totally different from the American tourists.
Quote #63
"You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards
have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your
time talking, not working. You’re an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés."
‘It sounds like a swell life," I said. "When do I work?"
"You don’t work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you’re impotent."
"No," I said. "I just had an accident." (12. 13)
Bill’s diatribe against expatriates (in itself a mockery of the typical American perspective), touches
upon all of the stereotypes of expat life – it’s a caricature that’s recognizable, and, like so many
things, it’s funny because it’s true.
Quote #64
"Hurray for Wine! Hurray for the Foreigners!" was painted on the banner.
"Who are the foreigners?" Robert Cohn asked.
"We’re the foreigners," Bill said. (15.6)
Cohn, with characteristic confusion, doesn’t get that they are the outsiders in Spain – his selfcentered vacation mentality is that Spain is there for their use.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 120
Quote #65
"They’re a fine lot," I said. "There’s one American woman down here now that collects bullfighters." (16.8)
Again, Jake separates himself from the other Americans – he’s not limited to their view of the world.
If anything, he’s disgusted by it.
Quote #66
Big motor-cars from Biarritz and San Sebastian kept driving up and parking around the square.
They brought people for the bull-fight. Sight-seeing cars came up, too. There was one with
twenty-five Englishwomen in it. They sat in the big, white car and looked through their glasses at
the fiesta. (18.1)
Jake feels alienated from the tourists who come to watch the bull-fights from a distance; this
difference makes it impossible for him to identify with them.
Quote #67
The Biarritz crowd did not like it. They thought Romero was afraid, and that was why he gave that
little sidestep each time as he transferred the bull’s charge from his own body to the flannel. They
preferred Belmonte’s imitation of himself or Marcial’s imitation of Belmonte. (18.36)
The American tourists visiting from the resort town of Biarritz are laughable in their
misinterpretation of Romero’s style, and Jake can’t contain his disdain for his fellow countrymen yet
again.
Quote #68
I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France. I felt I was a fool to be going back into Spain.
In Spain you could not tell about anything. (19.17)
France, for Jake, is a safe place – after the botched fiesta and Jake’s role in getting Brett and Romero
together, perhaps France is a refuge simply because it’s free from these guilty associations. We
wonder if that’s how he ended up in Paris in the first place.
Quote #69
"I got hurt in the war," I said.
"Oh, that dirty war."
We would probably have gone on and discussed the war and agreed that it was in reality a
calamity for civilization, and perhaps would have been better avoided. I was bored enough. Just
then from the other room someone called: "Barnes! I say Barnes! Jacob Barnes!" (3.9)
The banal discussion of the war that Jake and Georgette narrowly escape is one that’s unsatisfactory
and not comprehensive. We get the feeling that there’s a lot more to be said about the war, but
nobody knows how to communicate it yet.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 121
Quote #70
"When did she marry Ashley?"
"During the war. Her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery."
"You talk sort of bitter."
"Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to give you the facts." (5.8)
A lot of things happen in wartime that should not otherwise come to pass – in this case, the marriage
of Brett to Lord Ashley. We have to wonder if Jake’s telling the whole truth… we know that he is in
fact Brett’s "own true love" (in her words and his) and that she can’t marry him because of his
handicap. Hmm…
Quote #71
"My dear, I am sure Mr. Barnes has seen a lot. Don’t think I don’t think so, sir. I have seen a lot,
too."
"Of course you have, my dear," Brett said. "I was only ragging."
"I have been in seven wars and four revolutions," the count said.
"Soldiering?" Brett asked.
"Sometimes, my dear. And I have got arrow wounds. Have you ever seen arrow wounds?" (7.18)
The count’s definition of "seen a lot" is associated with war – as though war is the only real
experience a man can have.
Quote #72
"What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back."
"Don’t be an ass."
"Were you in the war, Mike?" Cohn asked.
"Was I not."
"He was a very distinguished soldier," Brett said. "Tell them about the time your horse bolted
down Piccadilly." (13.28)
Mike’s questionably sarcastic wish that the war was back is telling. Can it be that the war gave him a
sense of purpose that he’s now lacking?
Quote #73
It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, a
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 122
feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. (13.57)
Obviously, the feeling of warfare (now psychological) carries over into this postwar period; now that
the actual fighting is over, the battles are on the emotional level.
Quote #74
Mike started toward him around the table. Cohn stood up and took off his glasses. He stood
waiting, his face sallow, his hands fairly low, proudly and firmly waiting for the assault, ready to
do battle for his lady love. (16.32)
Cohn, who never experienced the real horror of war, still clings to the romantic notion of chivalrous
battle, a concept that World War I destroyed for everyone who participated in it.
Quote #75
"The bulls are my best friends."
I translated to Brett.
"You kill your friends?" she asked.
"Always," he said in English, and laughed. "So they don’t kill me." (16.57)
Romero voices an idea that runs through the entire novel – his relationship to the bulls is a parallel to
the relationships of Jake and his friends. Everyone is engaged in a constant state of barely-disguised
warfare.
Quote #76
"[…] Ashley, chap she got the title from, was a sailor, you know. Ninth baronet. When he came
home he wouldn’t sleep in a bed. Always made Brett sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got
really bad, he used to tell her he’d kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver. Brett used
to take the shells out when he’d gone to sleep." (17.46)
Brett’s ex-husband, Lord Ashley, was clearly driven to madness by the war… though she never talks
about him. This is just another way in which Hemingway shows us the impact of the war on every
individual life it touched.
Study Questions & Essay Topics For Academic Exam
1. How does Hemingway show that Jake is insecure about his masculinity early in the novel?
Jake does not mention his insecurities directly. We must search for information about them in his
reactions and descriptions of others. Jake takes a condescending attitude toward Cohn. His
descriptions cast Cohn as a weak, inexperienced man. Jake’s contempt seems to arise partly from
Cohn’s feminized status. He characterizes Cohn as timid and easily controlled by a strong woman like
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 123
Frances. This emphasis on Cohn’s lack of masculinity can be seen as a reflection of Jake’s own
insecurities about his manhood. Also, Jake resents the group of male friends with whom Brett dances
at the club. His statements about them subtly imply that they are homosexuals. Brett can “safely” get
drunk around them, for instance, because they have no interest in having sex with her. Jake realizes
that he should be “tolerant,” but admits that he is in fact “disgusted” by them. His irrational disgust
likely stems from his perception of them as unmanly, illustrating his worries about his own
manliness. Thus, Hemingway uses Jake’s contempt for Cohn’s feeble masculinity and his reaction of
abhorrence toward Brett’s homosexual friends to reveal his anxiety about his own masculinity.
2. Compare Jake’s relationship to Brett with Cohn’s relationship to Frances.
Jake adopts a patronizing attitude toward Cohn, especially when he describes Cohn’s interactions
with women. Early in the novel, Frances dominates Cohn, and her wishes overrule his. Because of
Frances’s domination of Cohn, Jake seems to lack respect for him. But Jake’s relationship with Brett is
actually quite similar to that between Cohn and Frances. Jake is willing to do anything for Brett. He
allows her to lean on him for emotional support and then abandon him for other men. He even helps
facilitate her affair with Pedro Romero. Cohn eventually breaks with Frances; despite her verbal
abuse, he is able to end his relationship with her. Jake, on the other hand, is too attached to Brett to
ever let go of her, despite her mistreatment of him. Thus, in some ways, Cohn is stronger in his
relationship with Frances than Jake is in his with Brett.
3. How is Count Mippipopolous like Jake and his friends? How is he different?
Like Jake and his friends, the count has seen a great deal of violence. He has survived seven wars and
four revolutions. He is also an expatriate, a Greek man living abroad. Furthermore, he loves to seek
pleasure, as do Jake and his friends. However, unlike the members of the Lost Generation, he seems
to genuinely enjoy these pleasures. Jake and his friends are all engaged in an attempt to forget the
war and their unhappiness by drinking themselves into oblivion while filling their spare time with
social appointments. The count, on the other hand, delights in food, wine, and spending time with
friends. These things satisfy him and make him happy. He covets Brett, but this desire does not
torment him as it does Jake, Cohn, and Mike. He is content to enjoy her company when he can. Thus,
while the count has essentially the same lifestyle as Jake and his friends, he derives joy from it while
they do not, and he is not a victim of their disillusioned cynicism.
4. How have Jake and Cohn changed by the end of the novel?
By the end of the novel, Jake's world has mostly fallen apart. He has discovered how much like Cohn
he really is, through the exposure of how little his own feelings seem to matter to Brett and how
poorly he measures up against either Cohn's physical prowess or Romero's self-contained greatness.
His drunken illusion of being back on the high school football team when returning to the hotel and
confronting a crying Cohn further clarifies this parallel.
Jake must also deal with his own pathetic connection with Brett. He realizes, when she wires him in
San Sebastian, that he has been complicit in her sexual liaisons with other men, and that he still
maintains a naive hope that this connection might amount to something. He realizes that his
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 124
willingness to help Brett get what she thinks she wants might be hurting her, when he must comfort
her in the Hotel Montana. And, in the last line of the book, he seems to admit that their connection is
only a pretty fantasy that can never be tested. He might know that the greatness of men like Romero
offers some hope, but he must also realize that he is not in any way responsible for that greatness,
and has even compromised his respect for it through allowing Brett to run away with Romero. If
there is hope in Romero, it is not because of anything that Jake has done.
As for Cohn, by the end of the book, he has been destroyed as the naive, romantic hero. He has faced
the meaninglessness of physical love with Brett, and he doesn't seem able to recover.
5. Discuss Robert Cohn's role, especially the meaning of his fight with Pedro Romero.
Cohn is, first, the romantic hero of the novel, in the sense of a chivalric romance, with knights and
villains and quests. His naive quest for true love with a woman of nobility (Brett) seems to satisfy the
fantasies that he gets out of the books that he reads. He consistently tries to construct the events
around him as parts of that quest. His boxing ability gives him a physical skill with which to measure
his manhood, as a knight might do, in combat with another man. He seems to actively seek
confrontation with Romero as a way to prove his superiority.
When Cohn confronts Romero, he is faced with a concept of manliness that doesn't fit his
understanding. Cohn seems to want to fight to prove himself to other people; he doesn't fight for
himself, the way that Romero both fights for himself and in the presence of others. Cohn is easily
able to knock Romero down, but Romero won't stop getting back up. It doesn't seem to matter that
he can be knocked down because he can't be made to stay down, and because he won't give up.
Cohn seems unwilling to prolong the fight when he knows that Romero won't stop trying to get up
until he is dead, and Cohn doesn't want to kill him. Neither Romero nor Brett, who is watching, will
shake his hand, refusing the convention of gentlemanly combat.
Cohn and his attachment to Brett present the older, more traditional way of understanding
manhood, achievement, and moral value. The physical act of love between Cohn and Brett does not
become a token of romantic love; instead, it becomes either a meaningless act of charity for a
woman who doesn't attach any value to it, or a way for Brett to cope with her frustrated love for the
impotent Jake. Cohn's impressive abilities with his fists make no lasting impression on Mike or Jake,
much as Cohn and his quest cannot make an impression on the world. And Romero's ability to
overcome Cohn's unmatched skill as a boxer demonstrates Romero's strength, which, unlike Cohn's,
transcends physical skill.
6. Describe the role of Catholicism in the novel, especially for Jake and Brett.
The question of Catholicism and its relevance (or otherwise) is touched upon several times. Jake is
aware that Catholicism does not meet his needs. For example, the evening after his first encounter
with Brett in the novel, he thinks about how the Catholic Church tells people to avoid sex by not
thinking about it. This proves to be woefully inadequate to his situation.
However, the vast number of pilgrims on the train makes it clear how many people still adhere to
Catholicism. Their firm belief in God draws attention to the lack of such beliefs in Jake and Bill.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 125
There are several instances of Jake and Brett entering the church in Pamplona. It appears that Jake
still goes to confession, although apparently without much belief in it. As for Brett, her motivation in
their first visit seems more curiosity than religious feeling. She wants to hear Jake at confession.
The last time Brett and Jake enter a church is on the last day of the fiesta, when they try to sit and
pray for Romero, but Brett gets uncomfortable and asks that they leave. She later expresses
skepticism about religion, saying that prayer has never done her any good, since she has never
gotten anything she prayed for.
The last, and perhaps most important, reference to religion comes in the final scene of the final
chapter. In this scene, Brett says of her decision to let Romero leave, "You know it makes one feel
rather good deciding not to be a bitch," and then adds, "It's sort of what we have instead of God." In
other words, for people to whom religion no longer means much, choosing a moral standard for
oneself is an acceptable substitute. Indeed, Brett implies that the pleasure of being responsible (or
doing the right thing) is the only substitute for God that is available to them.
These references to religion suggest, first, that religion no longer works for these characters. Jake
admits that many people still believe in and follow God (as the pilgrims on the train do), but his
religion does not help him deal with his impotent love. Second, these characters (especially Jake)
seem to need something instead of religion. They don't merely reject religion and forget about it;
they return again and again to the church, and keep talking about it. Jake is looking for something to
substitute for religion, though he doesn't seem willing to let go of his Catholicism (because, he seems
to think, it does seem to work for some people). He seems to find what he seeks in nature, fishing,
the landscape, perhaps the Basque peasants, and sometimes in bullfighting. But these things don't
seem adequate for some reason.
In the end, Jake's Catholic faith, because he can't decide to embrace or discard it, becomes another
way of describing his failure.
7. How does World War I play a part in this book?
The most significant impact of the war on the book is Jake's wound. Jake is unable to consummate
his feelings for Brett, and it could be argued that Jake's frustration is the driving force for the entire
novel. A more pessimistic interpretation of the same idea could be that Jake's inability to give Brett
what she so readily gets from everyone else becomes the reason that Brett's feelings for Jake don't
disappear, and this frustration in Brett leads to the affair with Cohn, the strangely permissive
relationship with Mike, and the fascination with Romero. In this way, the war, through Jake's wound,
destroys the social conventions that make a traditional romantic plot possible.
Brett's relationship with the war is more complex, though, than just her relationship with Jake and
his wound. Brett lost her "own true love" in the war to dysentery, and she married Ashley after that.
She met Jake in the hospital as he was recovering from his wound. As a volunteer in the war, Brett
could be said to be the third important character with experience in the war, in addition to Jake and
Mike. Brett's motivation for seeking sexual relationships with multiple men might stem from her own
experience in the war, apart from her encounter with Jake and his wound. Perhaps, like Jake, she
sees Romero's value all the more clearly because of her experience in the war, and she appreciates
him as a genuine source of hope all the more because of this experience. And, perhaps her decision
to let him go stems from that experience as well.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 126
The epigraph to the book, a quotation of Gertrude Stein ("You are all a lost generation") seems to
cast the book as an attempt to characterize a generation. Ostensibly, the senseless and massive
killing of millions of people in what was then called the Great War, through the newly deployed
technologies of mass murder (chemical weapons, tanks, machine guns, planes) changed the world,
and made it difficult to believe that any of the old truths of religion or morality had any relevance.
These people are "lost" because the old ways of life are not available or are not meaningful anymore.
Because the war is the reason that they are "lost," it is one of the reasons for the novel.
8. How does Hemingway's language affect the meaning of the book?
Hemingway's famous style is simple and straightforward, with minimum punctuation and without
superfluous words and phrases. Hemingway also believed that it was not necessary to verbalize
everything or write about everything, and that many things were better left out of the text. Often
people will think that this means that Hemingway's ideas, plots, and characters are simple. But this
would be a mistake. There are often unpleasant and complex emotions below the surface, and
Hemingway trusts his reader to see those things through what he does put on the page.
Hemingway's tendency to evoke rather than describe things allows him to indirectly talk about topics
that his contemporaries were having books banned for. Brett has sex with three different characters
in the book; Jake hires a prostitute who tries to have sex with him in a taxi; Brett makes her initial
entrance among a crowd of homosexuals. Hemingway's sparse prose allowed him to get these books
published even in a climate of censorship.
But Hemingway's language has other effects. The reticent narrator becomes an effective mouthpiece
for a narrative of personal suffering. Jake does not shed light on several incidents, including much of
his interaction with Brett, and the restraint he shows makes the few scenes between them more
poignant, and makes Jake's rare emotional outbreaks more significant.
More Study Questions & Essay Topics For Academic Exam
1) Compare Jake and Cohn. How does the fact that Jake went to war and Cohn did not make
them different from each other? What qualities do they share with the rest of their
acquaintances? Is it safe to call them both outsiders?
2) Bill tells Jake that “[s]ex explains it all.” To what extent is Bill’s statement true of the novel
The Sun Also Rises?
3) Discuss the characterization of Lady Brett Ashley. Is she a sympathetic character? Is she a
positive female role model? Does she treat her male friends cruelly?
4) Read closely and analyze one of the longer passages in which Hemingway describes bulls or
bullfighting. What sort of language does Hemingway use? Does the passage have symbolic
possibilities? If the bullfighting passages do not advance the plot, how do they function to
develop themes and motifs?
5) Analyze the novel in the context of World War I. How does the experience of war shape the
characters and their behavior? Examine the differences between the veterans, like Jake and
Bill, and the nonveterans, like Cohn and Romero.
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 127
6) Why is Cohn verbally abused so often in the novel? Is it because he is Jewish? Why does
Mike attack Cohn but not Jake, whom Brett actually loves? Why does Cohn accept so much
abuse?
7) Discuss the problem of communication in the novel. Why is it so difficult for the characters
to speak frankly and honestly? In what circumstances is it possible for them to speak
openly? Are there any characters who say exactly what is on their mind? If so, how are these
characters similar to each other?
8) How effective or ineffective are the unconventional opening chapters of The Sun Also Rises?
9) Compare and contrast the protagonist, Jake Barnes, and his foil, Robert Cohn.
10) Ernest Hemingway's writing has been accused of sexism. Is Brett a believable, threedimensional character? What about the other female characters (Frances, Georgette, Edna)
in The Sun Also Rises?
11) Suggest three reasons why Jake chooses the matador Romero as his proxy, or stand-in, with
Brett.
12) Hemingway mentions churches in both the French and Spanish sections of The Sun Also
Rises, and the fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona is, of course, a religious festival. Discuss the
use of religion in the novel. What is Jake's religion, and how does it manifest itself? What
about Brett, Cohn, and the other major characters?
13) Write an essay discussing Hemingway's use of phallic symbolism in The Sun Also Rises.
14) Discuss Hemingway's use of sports — boxing, fishing, and bullfighting — in the novel.
15) Bullfighting is near the center of the action of The Sun Also Rises. Write an essay in which
you argue that bullfighting should be made illegal throughout the world.
16) Compare and contrast the value systems of France and Spain, as presented by Hemingway in
The Sun Also Rises.
17) Write an essay in which you disagree with the truism that the essential Hemingway style is
typified by short, declarative sentences.
18) Explain the lifestyle of the "lost generation" living in Paris as described in the novel.
19) What is the physical wound that Jake has? Explain how it affects in the course of the novel?
20) How does Jake become entangled with Brett Ashley?
21) Compare/contrast Robert Cohn to Jake Barnes.
22) What is the meaning of the word "aficionado"? Explain how the terms relate to Jake and to
Montoya.
23) Explain the Hemingway code. Why is the bullfighter such a perfect code hero for
Hemingway.
24) Brett Ashley has several "loves" in Pamplona. Explain who they are and what the
relationship really is.
25) Why does Cohn call Jake a pimp? What is Jake's reaction to the insult?
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 128
26) Why would Brett Ashley say that love is hell on earth?
27) Contrast Jake's stay in the fishing village of Burguete to his stay in Pamplona.
28) Fully explain the Festival of San Fermin.
29) Explain what things Jake and Brett have in common.
30) Compare and contrast the performances of Romero and Belmonte.
31) Why does Brett call for Jake at the end of the novel?
Prepared by…..
Cell no:01722884155
Md.Sarowar Parvej.
Department of English
University of Rajshahi.
Email no:rohanedru07@gmail.com
For Downloading More Study Guides please visit this website-
Rainbow of Soul
www.spr07.wordpress.com
©2013[all rights reserved by RAINBOW OF SOUL ]
Md.Sarow
ar Parvej
Rohan.
Digitally signed by Md.Sarowar
Parvej Rohan.
DN: cn=Md.Sarowar Parvej Rohan.
gn=Md.Sarowar Parvej Rohan.
c=Bangladesh l=BD o=RAINBOW
OF SOUL ou=Personal Website
e=rohanedru07@gmail.com
Reason: I attest to the accuracy and
integrity of this document
Location: Bangladesh
Date: 2013-05-09 14:46+06:00
RAINBOW OF SOUL-www.spr07.wordpress.com
Page 129