The Sun Also Rises

“Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.’ ‘Yes, Isn’t it pretty to think so?”. Their final discussion is right where they started in the back of a cab. Brett has just dug a hole even deeper into the abyss of disappointment that Brett has already given him. Jake has lost his masculinity in more ways than one. He has to live without Brett, and with his disability, denying him any chance at all with women. He has finally accepted the loveless relationship that has become of them, and will push forward knowing how it will never be.

It is very interesting how the book is structured. It is structured in chronological order according to how this tragic event happened. It starts

1. They must leave because Jake received a letter from Mike stating that they would arrive on Wednesday. He received the letter on a Wednesday and so they took off on the afternoon bus.

The value of monetary exchange extends to his relationships, particularly with Brett: “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” (Hemingway, 152). In this instance, Jake is referencing that his friendship with Brett, has given him the benefits of having as much of a romantic relationship as he can, which makes him feel he has cheated Brett of deserving payment. This explains why Jake supports Brett’s sexual promiscuity, as other men are capable of giving her what he cannot, sexually.

Throughout the entire book of The Sun Also Rises, hardly a page goes by without referencing any alcohol. From the very beginning of the book, the main character/protagonist, Jake meets a young prostitute named Georgette and they have drinks together. She states that, “Everybody’s sick. I’m sick too”. Bars, dance clubs, cafes where alcohol is served seems to be a place of escape for a majority of the characters. Jake Barnes, like the other characters, uses the consumption of alcohol to escape what realities he face at home, his lust for Brett, but also to forget the things of his past.

He goes from thinking about Brett nearly all the time preceding the fiesta to only thinking about her when necessary. While swimming in San Sebastian, Jake observes a couple laughing in the water (239). Jake does not equate the couple’s relationship to his own, a giant leap from his compulsion we observed in previous chapters. When Brett experiences trouble and needs Jake’s assistance he responds. However, in the thoughts Jake expresses after responding to Brett’s letter, he finally understands Cohn’s reasoning for calling him a “damned pimp” (193). Jake realization that he fits the insult begins in the passage when he remarks, “Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back,” (243). This realization prompts Jake’s standoffishness in the car on the last page. When Brett tries to be idealistic he shrugs it off simply commenting, “Isn’t pretty to think so?” (250). The ruckus in Pamplona forces Jake to view Brett in the realm of realism and not in one of

after he served in World War I. It deals with the postwar life of expatriates and veterans

He is constantly drinking to keep his mind off Brett, the love of his life, but drinking eventually leads him right to her. The reality is Jake is extremely self conscious. This has more to do with his impotence which has stripped him of his perception of manhood and resultantly wounded his confidence. He jokes about his impotency and remarks how “what happened to [him] is supposed to be funny. (pg 15)”

But although Brett may have set a role model for other women, she still had her flaws, one of them being that she was very promiscuous and had several affairs, leading men on to think that she cared for them, for so to ditch them for someone else. One very good example of this is her relationship with Jake. She cared deeply for Jake, but kept on hurting him, not necessarily intentionally, by her not wanting to be in a relationship with him due to his impotents. After Jake and Brett depart in Pamplona, Jake goes to San Sebastian, but quickly after his arrival, he receives a telegram from Brett who was in trouble, and needed Jakes help. The telegram said: “Can you come to hotel Montana Madrid, am rather in trouble, Brett” (Hemingway 209). The reason Brett is contacting Jake to help her is because she has decided to leave Romero, her 19 year old lover whom she left to Madrid wit. Brett knows how strongly Jake feels about her, and knows that he will always be there for her when she is in trouble, something that is proven when Jake says: “Well, that means San Sebastian all shot to hell. I suppose, vaguely, I had expected something of

The outcome and brutality of the Great War causes the change and promotion of many things in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises. Some of the most evident changes the Great War causes are the changes in the traditional roles of men and women and in the promotion in the use of alcohol. Hemingway expresses these changes through the actions of some of the books main characters, most notably Jake and Brett. The novel’s characters perform these taboo and abnormal actions in response to the Great War and the war’s impact on the characters.

     Unfortunately, Jake does not undergo a change throughout the book. Jake stays the same uncaring, selfish person from the beginning where Jake said he never thinks about how much he’s wasted his life to Robert Cohn, until the last line where Brett Ashley says, “We could have had such a damned good time together,” and

Author Ernest Hemingway concludes the novel, The Sun Also Rises, with six simple words, “‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (251). Each of these words, when separated from one another, have very little significance to the novel as a whole. However, when these words come together in such a way, a uniform idea is constructed about the previous two hundred and fifty pages and puts meaning behind all of the information which has been gathered. The group of people, in which this novel was written about, are known as the Lost Generation. These six words, “‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”, not only give meaning to the novel, but provide the reader with an understanding about the people who were born immediately following World War 1. Three important ideas

The novel, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic that is put together with thought and purpose. Hemingway is an author that is praised for delivering such novels that deliver a great story while still keeping it simple enough to be read and understood easily. The aspects of The Sun Also Rises that stuck out to me were his ability to describe surroundings with such detail, the language of the novel, and his development of main characters.

In the 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, author Ernest Hemingway gives us an up close look at ‘The Lost Generation’ era. Hemingway demonstrates the detrimental aspects of war through the constant conflicting subjects of love, masculinity and alcoholism.

The Sun Rising is a poem written by John Donne in the late 1590s consisting of 30 lines divided into three stanzas of 10 lines each following the rhyme scheme ABBACDCDEE. John Donne was a leading English poet of the Metaphysical school often considered as the greatest love poet in the English language. If we take into account the rhymes of each stanza, we may note that within a stanza, three units are being proposed : first of all the first unit of the stanza is composed of introverted rhymes following the rhyme scheme ABBA, then the second unit of the stanza is composed of alternate rhymes following the rhyme scheme CDCD, finally the last unit is a couplet with the rhyme scheme EE. The poem is generally iambic but the pattern is occasionally broken by the poet to mark style effects as well as the meters that are irregular, moreover Donne uses many archaisms throughout his poem. In this aubade, the poet complains about the sun that interrupts in the morning the two