The Sun Also Rises

‘‘‘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?’” 

Following World War I and the influenza pandemic, the Lost Generation of the 1920s appreciate the brevity of life. After a decade defined by suffering and death, they want indulgence and romantic adventure.

“It was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain after Robert had gone, watching it get dark and the electric signs come on, and the red and green stop-and-go traffic-signal and the crowd going by and the horse-cabs clippety-clopping along at the edge of the solid taxi traffic and the poules going by, singly and in pairs, looking for the evening meal.” 

In this scene, Jake observes the café’s surroundings, which keeps him from turning inward. This pattern is common throughout the book, a way for Jake to avoid reflecting on his own wounds. As he spends night after night on the town, he focuses on the exterior environment as well as on his relationships with current friends and associates. 

“She cuddled against me and I put my arm around her. She looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away.” 

This interaction portends Jake’s struggle with physical intimacy, a result of the war injury that has left him impotent. Here, in a liaison that means little, the affliction is merely an inconvenience; later in the story, his impotence plays a significant role in his complicated relationship with 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.” 

Jake is jealous even of gay men because, although he regards them as effeminate, their manhood is still more intact than his. Though Jake is reluctant to explicitly discuss his masculinity, he struggles to come to terms with his impotence.  

“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 trams go by and way down the street and then I went to sleep.” 

So far, Jake has separated himself from his inner turmoil. He has focused his attention elsewhere, making little effort to directly address his wounds. His injury has greatly affected him, especially because he has reconnected Brett and still loves her. Although he maintains a stoic exterior, he feels intense emotion. 

“We went out into the street again and took a look at the cathedral. Cohn made some remark about it being a very good example of something or other, I forget what. It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like Spanish churches.” 

After secretly spending time with Brett in San Sebastian, Cohn meets with Jake and Bill in Bayonne. Jake feels annoyed by Cohn’s presence. His disregard for Cohn’s observation of the cathedral indicates a lack of respect. The phrase “nice and dim” seems to be a dig at Cohn’s character.  

“I was up in front with the driver and I turned around. Robert Cohn was asleep, but Bill looked and nodded his head. Then we crossed a wide plain, and there was a big river off on the right shining in the sun from between the line of trees, and away off you could see the plateau of Pamplona rising out of the plain, and the walls of the city, and the great brown cathedral, and the broken skyline of the other churches.” 

As they approach Pamplona, Cohn sleeps while Jack and Bill look at each other and acknowledge their excitement. This interaction sets the stage for the week-long party that ensues. During the festivities, Cohn is often regarded as a bore, only present because he is obsessed with Brett. Prior to the start of the festival, this dynamic begins to take shape.  

“I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and 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.” 

Despite his indulgent lifestyle, Jake still searches for structure and purpose through a traditional belief system. Though he holds Catholicism in high regard, he cannot commit to it. In the war, he witnessed immense death and suffering, which made him lose faith in humanity and—seemingly by extension—religion. He holds out hope that he will once again have reason to have faith and follow doctrine.  

“I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn—nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.” 

Jake feels a sense of schadenfreude while watching Cohn’s anticipation of Brett’s arrival in Pamplona. Cohn recently snuck away to spend time with Brett in San Sebastian; this provoked jealousy in Jake. This passage portends the alienation of Cohn during the San Fermin festival. 

“Why I felt that impulse to devil him I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had 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.” 

Jake cannot stand that Cohn has been with Brett. Because of his impotence, he already feels inferior. When the woman he loves sleeps with his friend, this insecurity turns into jealousy and anger. He already harbors mild resentment toward Cohn because of Cohn’s privileged upbringing (and perhaps because of his Jewish identity), but his resentment has grown to full-blown hatred.

“The steer who had been gored had gotten to his feet and stood against the stone wall. None of the bulls came near him, and he did not attempt to join the herd.” 

The two steers represent both Cohn and Jake; their castration reflects Jake’s condition, particularly as it affects the competition for Brett. Brett has recently been with both Cohn and Mike; Bill also has eyes for her. The ostracized steer represents Cohn, who remains separate from the human herd.  

“It was like 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. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.”

The wine, once again, intoxicates Jake in such a way that he doesn’t consider the problems that exist within and around him. It instills fatalism and gives him the sense that—because things are beyond his control—he might as well not care too much. Jake’s personality while drinking contrasts with Mike, who is a mean drunk. 

“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.” 

Jake ponders his friendship with Brett and figures he will eventually have to pay for it. This thought process illustrates the way he sometimes views relationships as transactional. He also suspects that his thoughts are flawed and that he may be overthinking his dynamic with Brett. He hopes that he can learn to enjoy the present moment in relationships without concerning himself with potential consequences. 

“Before the waiter brought the sherry the rocket that announced the fiesta went up in the square. It burst and there was a gray ball of smoke high up above the Theater Gayarre, across on the other side of the plaza. The ball of smoke hung in the sky like a shrapnel burst, and as I watched, another rocket came up to it, trickling smoke in the bright sunlight.”

After two days of calm, the bursting of rockets sets the stage for the fireworks that soon erupt between Jake and his companions. The comparison of the fireworks to shrapnel signifies that this festival will be not only joyous but also wounding. Though Jake’s word choice alludes to war, he does not seem unnerved. 

‘‘‘Yes,’ I lied. I had read the accounts of his two appearances in Madrid in the bull-fight papers, so I was all right.” 

A typically truthful person, Jake feels compelled to lie because of his desire to impress Romero, a testament to the high regard with which Jake holds the young bullfighter. When Jake lies to Romero, it is ironic: Romero’s honest bullfighting style is what Jake finds so admirable.  

“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 theater. It was all different. I felt as I felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game. I was carrying a suitcase with my football things in it, and I walked up the street from the station in the town I had lived all my life and it was all new”

After being knocked out by Cohn, Jake feels a sense of novelty in familiar surroundings. The reference to childhood suggests a return to innocence, implying that Jake felt he deserved the punishment from Cohn and now feels a sense of atonement.

“The beer came. Brett started to lift the glass mug and her hand shook. She saw it and smiled, and leaned forward and took a long sip.” 

Despite Brett’s attempts to appear calm and collected, her shaking hand gives away that she is troubled. She feels overwhelmed by her relationships with her various companions. The shaking is also a physical symptom of alcoholism; after she has a drink, the shaking stops.

“So he had two small, manageable bulls without much horns, and when he felt the greatness again coming, just a little of it through the pain that was always with him, it had been discounted and sold in advance and it did not give him a good feeling.” 

Despite his former status as a bullfighting hero, Belmonte is now stripped of his glory. This circumstance parallels Jake and his companions, who survived the war but are now drifting drunks. They used to face death with honesty and without compromise, but now they take measures to avoid directly confronting their own mortality. 

“Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside, and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too. But he did not do it for her at any loss to himself. He gained by it all through the afternoon.” 

When Romero fights, he does it foremost because it is his passion, rather than a means to impress Brett. This devotion contrasts him with her other suitors, who try hard to impress her; in turn, she loses interest in them. By staying true to his passion for bullfighting, Romero turns the tables and becomes Brett’s object of desire. 

“There was a little jolt as Romero came clear, and then he was standing, one hand up, facing the bull, his shirt ripped out from under his sleeve, the white blowing in the wind, and the bull, the red sword hilt tight between his shoulders, his head going down and his legs settling.”

After putting on a mesmerizing performance, Romero slaughters the bull. Because he is in such rough shape from Bill’s beating, he appears even more heroic upon this victory. Hemingway was known to say, “Courage is grace under pressure.” Here, we see Romero exhibit these qualities, which exalts him in the eyes of the narrator. 

“Outside in the square the fiesta was going on. It did not mean anything.”

On the last night of the festival, the party reaches its climax. Because Brett has left with Romero, Jake feels dejected. Though Bill and Mike are still there, their friendships feel superficial compared to his deep connection with Brett. He knows they cannot be together, but now that she has left, the reality fully takes hold. 

“It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone.” 

Without the company of his drunkard companions, Jake’s attitude toward alcohol shifts. He tries to enjoy wine simply for the sake of enjoying it, rather than using it as a social tool or means to suppress internal struggles. This attitude also connects back to his time with Count Mippipopolous and Jake’s admiration for how the count truly savored fine wines. 

“Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.” 

This passage crystallizes Jake’s preference for transactional relationships. He sounds cynical, believing that money can purchase friendship as easily as it can purchase a drink. San Sebastian is a respite from his complicated, rivalrous relationships with his Pamplona companions.