preview

Compare And Contrast Hemingway And Cohn

Decent Essays

Macho Macho Man
In life, sometimes men act fearless and manly in order to impress the girl to win her over with his masculinity. But what type of machismo attracts woman, the external or internal manliness? Apparently neither method works in the case of Brett in The Sun Also Rises where both Cohn and Jake reflect the two different aspects of this masculinity. Hemingway does have an attitude on which one is preferable, but alas neither of them gets the girl at the end. Throughout the novel, Hemingway creates a negative tone towards Cohn’s external manhood and a positive tone towards Jake internal manhood.
Cohn, a tank of a man who boxed in college, attempts to act tough in front of Brett to attract her into loving him. A prime example of this …show more content…

Due to the war, his injury takes a portion of his outward manliness away as he has the inability to sleep with women. However, in Hemingway’s eyes, he is still more of a man than Cohn. Hemingway shows this by having Brett constantly ask Jake for help because she recognizes how much a man he is on the inside. On page 251 Jake recounts aiding Brett once again and she says, “We could have had such a damned good time together” (Hemingway). Even though Jake cannot win Brett over, her desire to be with him is greater than her desire to be with Cohn. Hemingway thus ends the novel saying that internal masculinity trumps external masculinity.
If Jake was not inhibited from his time in the war, then who is one to deny that he would not have ended with the girl in the end? Yet Hemingway did not write fairy tale endings reflecting sometimes the harshness of reality in his novels. Still, he is able to depict the greater importance of one’s manliness on the inside versus the outside. Hemingway used Cohn, Romero, and Jake to show that to be a real man one must be genuinely masculine internally. One’s looks or false behaviors hold no importance; instead, what truly matters is what one’s genuine character reflects. Word Count:

Get Access