Student: Stefan Cvetkovi

Professor: Ivana uri-Paunovi

American 20th Century Novel
January 14, 2014

THE SUN ALSO RISES: LIVES AND LOVES OF THE LOST GENERATION

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INTRODUCING THE LOST GENERATION
That's what you are. That's what you all are, Miss Stein said. All of you young
people who served in the war. You are a lost generation (A Moveable Feast 38).
Even though Hemingway himself later disregarded this claim, he was undoubtedly an
important part of this movement. His first novel The Sun Also Rises tells us a story about
people of this generation, their lives, relationships, problems and passions.
In the 1920s, writers from America started seeking refuge in Europe. They didnt like the
country America was becoming, with its infatuation for progress, growing money-loving culture,
the shift from production to consumption, prohibition, political mishmash and the rise of the
stock market. They also believed in art as a self-fulfilling lifestyle, which also explains their
alienation. At the start of the century, the American arts had almost no artistic confidence, no
certainty of direction or guiding tradition, no strong aesthetic feeling and no pride in the creative
past. (Ruland, Bradbury 239). They wanted to kill what was left from the 19th century and
revolutionize literature. It was the age of innovation, film, music, technological advancements.
Those new, young writers had a completely new view of the world because of the World War I,
which took the faith in humanity from them and left them disappointed and lost. The horrors of
war and mass murders of the WWI had a major impact of aesthetic sensibility of young writers
who served in Europe, resulting in their staying and searching for themselves and their new
literature, voice, style, revolution. A lot of them went to Paris with no real purpose, but because of
its low cost of living, which became the experimental laboratory for young American writers.

Their prolonged apprenticeship in Europe enabled them to view American life from the
perspective not only of distance but of opponent cultural values. A sense of purposelessness,
decadence, cultural emptiness and political failure interweaves the American fiction of the
1920s.
Hemingway was born in Michigan and fulfilled his parents expectations. He was a good
student, wrote for the school paper and a literary magazine. Long before he went to Europe, he
was looking for a way to escape the decadent and materialistic America. He moved to Kansas
and began his journalist career, but left it and went to France where he drove an ambulance car
for the Red Cross. He was then transferred to Italy in 1918. where he was badly wounded in both

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legs. After the war he tried to write in America, where he met and married his first wife Hadley
and shortly after their wedding they left for Paris, where they spent 6 years.
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever
you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. (A
Moveable Feast, Hemingway to a friend 1950)
There he worked as a journalist but after a certain time he quit that job in order to become
a full-time writer. He referred to himself and his family as being poor, but the dollar was strong
enough to enable them a fine life with a small amount of money (only 5 dollars a day was
enough for them to live comfortably). In A Moveable Feast he wrote about their life there, how
they spent their days and how much they loved each other. We ate well and cheaply and drank
well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other (A Moveable Feast
56). Drinking lots of different wines, enjoying food and scenery, travelling, horse races, romantic
evenings, fishing in Seine, the winter and the spring which evoke all kinds of feelings. Writing in
cafes early in the morning, socializing with writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James
Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evan Shipman and others, meeting many interesting people who were
expatriates just like Hemingway. He was slowly becoming an excessive drinker as the rest of the
artists there and even witnessed drug abuses (the poet Robert Cheever Dunning and his opium
addiction). They were trying to survive, to live in that time and have every minute of it. The
Sun Also Rises was written in a two-month period after he and Hadley made their second trip to
Pamplona and this period of Hemingways life provided the material for it. All the themes of his
latter writings (which he later separated and expanded) are included and condensed in this novel.
Eventually he broke up the marriage with Hadley, falling in love with Pauline, Hadley's
"temporary best friend," and eventually marrying her, thus shattering the happiness associated
with "the first part of Paris". life in Paris changed the young man from Oak Park; he plunged
into the ego-driven, crass competitiveness of an international literary scene and found himself
simultaneously tantalized by the prospect of a love affair. (Donaldson 199)
"To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like
Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was
like having a great treasure given to you" (A Moveable Feast 56).

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LIVES AND LOVES IN THE NOVEL
In the first draft of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway had used the names of those reallife friends who had traveled from Montparnasse to Pamplona in 1925, including Ernest and
Hadley. But reworking his opening pages, he changed the names: Duff Twysden (the seductive
barfly from Great Britain) - with whom Ernest had flirted impertinently in Pamplona - became
Brett Ashley; her bisexual companion, Pat Guthrie, became Mike Campbell; Hemingway's
fishing pals Don Stewart and Bill Smith merged to form Bill Gorton; and belligerent Harold
Loeb became first Gerald and then Robert Cohn. Hemingway became Jake Barnes, and Hadley
vanished from the novel.
Hemingway wrote only about what he knew and what his first-hand experiences were,
and being a part of the lost generation, he transferred his experiences into the novel. The
narrator in the novel, the (anti) hero, Jake Barnes, is an expatriate. though he claims the opposite
(according to him expatriates are those who do nothing except drink, socialize and wander
around the city of Paris). The only thing that differs him from the others is that he works as a
journalist in Paris (just like Hemingway did), socializing with people similar to him, expatriates,
writers, socialites, businessmen, sportsmen, etc. Jakes and his friends days come to the same
plan (if there is one): wake up, do a small amount of work, have lunch, drink, meet somebody,
drink, go to a caf, drink, go to a club, drink, go home, drink, go to sleep. They persist in going
from one place to another, constantly meeting people, always drinking large amounts of alcohol,
seemingly never having conversations of any substance. Existential education in the right
drinks, the right places to go, the right level of feeling and sensibility. The characters seek a
"damned good time" but also a purity of action and being at the point of maximum exposure
(Ruland, Braudbury 305). Jake and his friends are contemptuous towards the booming
consumerism of the 1920s.
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
with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You
hang around cafes (Hemingway, 60)

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Robert Cohn is a failed writer who came from America with his girlfriend, a Jew from
Princeton who suffered a great deal of discrimination resulting in him starting to box in order to
boost his self-esteem and to fight the feeling of inferiority. He is a man who followed the social
stigmas and trying to become a part of the new, progressive society. The reason for leaving his
repressive girlfriend was that because the people will talk about him having a mistress. He wants
to travel and is concerned that he is not living his life to the fullest, but is actually trying to run
away from himself.
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? (Hemingway 6)
The novel's anti-Semitism tells a good deal about America in 1926. In the twenties this
attitude was so prevalent that it was an almost unconscious response. Jake bends over backward
to be nice to Cohn - almost reverse discrimination. Jake is hurt when Brett takes Cohn with her
for a week at San Sebastian, and he does not bait him, but his friends do. Bill asks, "Why didn't
she go off with some of her own people?, and Mike says, "Brett's gone off with men. But they
weren't Jews". They can forgive Brett's promiscuity, but not her running away with a Jew. He
gets constantly disrespected.
Brett Ashley was a nurse during the WWI and thats where she met Jake, nursing his
wounds. They began a relationship, but when Jake discovered that he is impotent, the
relationship was over because they couldnt consummate their love. The man Brett loved died
from dysentery and that is perhaps one of the reasons that she doesnt get attached to another
man. We see her as a socialite, an immoral woman who gets involved in affairs with different
men during the novel. Her character is based on Duff Twysden, a woman who was with
Hemingway in Pamplona and with whom he flirted, but didnt become her lover due to his moral
code which he brought from his family. At the beginning of the novel, Brett Ashley arrives with
a crowd of young men. She states that she can safely get drunk around these friends, which
means that they are homosexuals and will not take advantage of her while she is drunk, and Jake
reacts with hostility to Bretts male friends. The female role was undergoing a transformation in
the male dominated world, from private creature to an individualist in pursuit of new

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experiences. She was sitting on a high stool, her legs crossed. She had no stockings on. She
invites attention and the bare legs unmistakably signify her sexual freedom.
This is not a question of what kind of mothers will flappers make or where is
bobbed hair leading us. This is about something that is already finished. For whatever is
going to happen to the generation of which I am a part has already happened
(Hemingway, an unpublished forward to the novel).
They dislike the tourists who invade Europe every summer with their money and their
arrogance. However, they are obsessed with money themselves. Jake is the one of two characters
who work, as a successful newspaper man. Work separates the amateurs from the professionals.
Pedro Romero is a professional, who gives his best performance no matter what the
circumstances are. Ironically, Georgette, the prostitute, is also a professional. She works her
trade without compromising her standards. Robert Cohn is a failed writer but he lives off whats
remained from the 50.000 $ he inherited; Lady Brett Ashley is getting divorced and already got
engaged to another man, because she must depend on someone financially. The other character
who has a career is Bill, but he is only there on vacation. But Jake is someone who has genuine
passion and aficion, and that allows him to get some distance from the dissolute world he resides
in. This is expressed through his love of bull-fighting, fishing, and the natural world. It is this
difference that allows him to see through the brittle and insincere relationships and attitudes of
the people around him. Jake and Bill's fishing expedition states a contrast to whatever
disturbance they had experienced in the war. Nature and sincerely enjoying it gives a moment of
purpose to Jakes life.
During his years in Paris, Jake has managed to learn how to live in a man's world. He
devoted himself to his work, to friendships, sports (tennis, swimming, fishing and observing
boxing, bicycle racing, bullfighting). His wound has not changed his relationships with men, and
he makes friends easily. He loves Paris, is satisfied with his profession, and he knows how to
enjoy the simple things in life - the streets and buildings, historic locations near his apartment on
the Boulevard St. Michel. To the extent that he lives in a man's world, his life is satisfying
enough, but his deepest feelings are for Brett Ashley. His love for her, and his pain and
disillusionment at the impossibility of their having a life together, underscore everything he
relates.

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The characters in the novel seem to drink excessively, thus we must pay attention the
background of their excessive indulgence. In America there was the prohibition and consuming
alcohol was forbidden. Jake has lived long enough in a foreign country to drink without making
it a political statement. In Paris, he is never drunk. On the other hand, Bill Gorton, who is
visiting from America, seems continually tipsy - the American abroad who has to catch up with
the newly acquired but brief freedom to drink. At Burguete, Bill and Jake get a bit drunk but it is
not until the festival begins that the heavy drinking starts. In Pamplona, the average American
drinker will be surprised by the flowing alcohol. Before the festival is finished, he will have
either joined the crowd or not enjoyed the experience. Drinking serves as an escape mechanism
that Jake uses to avoid thinking about his condition or the disaster taking place around him. In
Madrid, when he no longer has the excuse of the festival, Jake gets extremely drunk while Brett
tells him that there is no need for it. But there is a need, because he knows that hes bankrupt and
he got back to reality, flat broke in spirit and again was facing the same problems as before.
This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed. (Hemingway 6)
The World War I certainly left marks on these peoples lives, especially Jakes. Besides
physical scars he also carries mental ones that represent a hard burden for him. He got wounded
in the war and left impotent. Since then, Jake was incapable of having sex but still had his sexual
desire, his anxiety regarding his masculinity becomes more urgent. He becomes the symbol of
decreased masculinity. She gets involved with different men throughout the novel, with men who
are not in love with her and who dont want her in the right way, like Jake does, but hes the only
one who cannot have her and cannot consummate the love. Bill is also a postwar veteran, but
didnt lose as much as Jake did and he provides an important contrast to Jake. While Jake is
generally tight-lipped and hesitates to express what is on his mind, Bill takes a different approach
to communicating his feelings: he jokes constantly, using humor as a coping mechanism. Jakes
impotence keeps him in a tight world of men without women, of the things one cannot lose. The
only people who know about his problem are Brett and Bill. He had a relationship with Brett, but
she cannot be with him because she doesnt want to give up sex. Robert Cohn is overly romantic
with Brett to a point where it becomes pathetic, but Brett feels sorry for him and even he has an
affair with her, in San Sebastian.

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Hemingways negative portrait of Robert Cohn, for example, is skewed by his bitterness
at the time of the telling, for it is clear that the two men had been good friend s in Paris, before
Cohn got involved with Brett Ashley (Donaldson 90).
In the male-female relationships there are also major changes compared to the Victorian
period regarding the interference of women in the male-dominated society, and the already
mentioned imasculinity, which can be seen through Jakes eyes. The people in the novel are
disoriented and the unable to connect, especially regarding love relationships. Jake wants Brett,
whenever she calls him he goes to her, to comfort her when she is desperate or to get her out of
trouble, even though she doesnt want to be with him. At one point he asks her to live with him,
but she says that she'd just tromper you with everybody and he wouldnt be able to stand it.
They love each other, but feel there is nothing they can do about it, and it would be painful for
them to be together. Brett tries to break free of patriarchal control, she often wavers between the
extremes of self-renunciation and self-gratification, and her relationships with her two former
husbands, as well as with Mike Campbell, Robert Cohn, and even Jake, are filled with
ambivalence, anxiety, and frequently alienation. Jake loses the most because of this. He was
respected by the hotel owner, Montoya, but after he introduced Brett to Pedro Romero and they
started an affair, thus interfering with the matadors purity, Jake demonstrates that his loyalty to
her is stronger than his commitment to the code of the aficionado.
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 it all right. I went in to lunch. (Hemingway 125)
He suffers all kinds of humiliations by simply watching the woman he is in love with go through
affairs with others, hooking her up with men and then fixing the trouble which was created out of
that mess. He has a brief episode with a prostitute, Georgette, and at the same time Brett is in the
company of homosexuals. Jake is offended by the effeminate manner of Brett's companions, and
she taunts him about his date. From the beginning, the world is out of sexual order. In order to
preserve his appearance, while leaving the club he sends money to Georgette, even though hes
impotent, appearance is what he has left.

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Brett Ashley, with her liberated attitudes, today seems like our contemporary, but in that
time she was not the new wave. In 1925 she was on the leading edge of the sexual revolution that
produced two types of the "new woman": the educated professional woman who was active in
formerly all - male areas and the stylish, uninhibited young woman who drank and smoked in
public, devalued sexual innocence, married but did not want children, and considered divorce no
social stigma.
What about Robert Cohns and Mike Campbells affection towards Brett? They also can
be perceived merely as puppets in their relationship. Robert Cohn is an overly romantic man, a
representative of the old gentleman manners for which there is no need in Bretts life. Mike
Campbell doesnt have the same feelings as Jake does, and he sees her in a sexual way. Jake
observes Brett's legs, noticing that she wears no hosiery. Mike is more direct, commenting
repeatedly that Brett is a lovely "piece". He knows that Brett cheats him, but doesnt seem to
mind, and doesnt try talk her into a monogamous relationship. When in Pamplona, we see her
get attracted to a young matador. She is intrigued by the ritual violence in the ring, a
counterpoint to the sexual violence all around her, but she is even more attracted to Pedro
Romero, the nineteen-year-old bullfighter (Donaldson 97). But the leading emotion would seem
to be lust, not love, because before she ever speaks to him she has decided to seduce him. And
there we also have a woman interfering into the male world of corida. Just as Romero stabs
(penetrates) the bull with his sword, Brett penetrates that world, and makes Romero her pray.
Jake and Brett are two different worlds, and the same is with the young matador, who is the most
pure character of them all, young, unspoiled, with a purpose and meaning in life. But eventually
she leaves him because she realizes that she is spoiling him and there comes her moment of truth.
"I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children. (Hemingway 127)
Jake realizes how unbelievable his love for Brett has been, and even when she makes
overtures to him after Romero has gone, he treats her cold and avoids any further involvement.
The concluding scene of the novel is famous for its understatement:
"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was amounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The cars

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lowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. "Yes", I said."Isn't it pretty to think so?
(Hemingway 129)
For the first time in the novel, Jake's great love for the mysterious, boyish Brett, begins to
diminish. His belief that he and Brett will work through their problems and come to live happily
has ended. He is on a verge of liberation from one thing that has tormented him all those years.
He is impotent in more ways than one, caught in his times, his value system jerked from beneath
his feet. He is the pre war man stripped of all defenses, deprived of values, seduced and
abandoned by his times. If at Botin's he gets a bit drunk listening to Brett, perhaps we can
forgive him, for Jake realizes that he is a most unfortunate man in a most unpromising place. A
member of the lost generation and its clear epitome.

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References:
1. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954. Print.
2. Ruland, Richard and Malcolm Braudbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism. New
York: Penguin Books, 1992. Print.
3. Donaldson, Scott, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996. Print.
4. Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. Ed. Hemingway, Sen.
New York: Scribners, 2009.
5. Elliott, Emory and Cathy N. Davidson, ed. The Columbia History of the American Novel.
New York : Columbia University Press, 1991. Print.