thesunalsorises

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Since April 8, 2001

The Sun Also Rises (taken from home.cwru.edu/~beb10/ books.html)

The Sun also Rises is a novel by Ernest Hemingway which was written in 1926. This novel is also known by the name Fiesta. It relates the story of several adults living in Europe. For the most part they are expatriates who are disillusioned with society. During this time period this was reasonably common since many people coming back from the war found society to be amoral, and these people were just lost. These members of the Lost Generation were often cynical and disillusioned. This story talked about the lives of a few as told by Jake Barnes. The people in this story led aimless lives. The plot of this story showed just that by taking us threw a few days in their life. They were living their lives for no apparent reason, no end goal. The characters seemed to be rather jaded by their experiences, most notably the war. Most of the characters drank excessively and just went on living their lives without a real plan. They did acts like drinking to waste time. In other words they did not drink to enjoy the pleasures of drinking, but to get drunk so they could forget their emotional depravity. The Great War, or World War I had this effect of taking away previous values that were hold dear such as morality, and faith. The people of this jaded generation who were involved in the war just lost faith in many respects. They were essentially lost souls both mentally and physically. As stated earlier, many characters were expatriates in Europe. They decided to stay there perhaps to find themselves, and discover what life meant. These characters seemed to have their lives revolve around social interaction with one another and went partying and drinking together often. After all this however they were still as lost as before, if not more lost. They did not want to contemplate the meaning of life, and continued to live aimlessly. This was the most prevalent theme in the story. Other themes often revolved around this. The men in this story were rather insecure. In fact the one thing they all seemed to desire was love. They searched for this pursuit. In fact at one instance when one of the characters was engaged, the others seemed to be to a degree jealous. The men seem to feel a bit unmasculine, and easily reclined to failure. The example is with Lady Brett. When each has a relationship with her, and loses here they just move on. This is untrue of only one character, Robert Cohn. He happens to also be the only character not involved in the war. All the male characters have a sense of hatred toward Cohn largely based on the previous fact (he is not part of the veteran group), and that because he is a Jew. They seem to feel that he thinks that he is superior. The story as a whole can be taken as an account of the general feelings of the Lost Generation, and the aimlessness of their lives.