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With 9,000+ reviews of Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises at this site, one wonders what one could possible add to the commentary. I am neither in the thrall of Hemingway, nor do I completely dismiss his body of work because he had 4 wives, exhibited a "macho" lifestyle or because he developed a very particular & different approach to fiction.



As with so much in the world of art, literature & other areas of exposition, I think that attempting to divorce the Hemingway novel from the Hemingway mystique, allowing the story to hold the reader in its grasp, becomes the key to analysis. Such an objective disposition is not always easy.

The Sun Also Rises was chosen for discussion by a local library group & I decided to devote some time to Hemingway's early novel, in part because I'd never read it, as well as reading biographical commentary on the author's life.

My thoughts on The Sun Also Rises differ from some at this site who appear to despise the work, in part because I did not view the novel as solely a tale of aimless, drunken people on an extended stay in Europe but as a post-WWI story involving a quest for definition or redefinition by a group of mostly young American expatriates, members of the "Lost Generation" that included T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Gertrude Stein & others.

The particular expatriates in this story grope for answers & take solace in each other following the extreme devastation of "the war to end all wars", heading off from Paris on an extended field trip to Spain that includes fishing at Irun, the Fiesta celebration & bull fights at Pamplona + boozy attempts to sort through relationships with each other.



Part of the appeal of alcohol for Americans abroad may have been that it was illegal in the U.S. after the passage of the Volstead Act but there is much more at play in Hemingway's novel than an excess of alcohol.

Similarly, The Great Gatsby is not merely a tale about some rich folks on Long Island drinking to excess & behaving badly in other ways as well, though this was how I viewed Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece at first (required) reading for a college course. Years later, I reread that novel & was astonished to learn how greatly the novel had changed since my initial reading.

Among the things I enjoyed with The Sun Also Rises is the particular cadence of the language, mostly short strokes with little embellishment, as far from the prose of someone like Henry James as one could possibly reach and it seems to me that this feature is as important to the Hemingway story as cadence would be within a play by Harold Pinter or Edward Albee, something that serves to frame the story just as much as do the characters or the settings portrayed. Yes, words like swell, tight (drunk), stoney (broke) are used with some frequency but my guess is that this is how a certain set of people spoke to each other during this period.

There are also offensive racial & ethnic epithets employed with some frequency but also occasionally with a dash of humor, as when someone comments "we call them Jews but they are really Scots." I suspect that at least some of Hemingway's contemporaries in Paris during the 1920s & other Americans as well used language that today would be be considered "politically incorrect".

Jake Barnes is an iconic Hemingway character but is not what one would consider a blustery, macho fellow, even showing a sensitive streak toward Robert Cohn (who was said to have a "hard, Jewish, stubborn streak"), a fellow expat who appeals unsuccessfully to Jake to flee to South America with him & who is very reserved, nervous & much-despised by Jake's other friends.



However, Jake supports him to a degree against the taunts of the group & Robert is portrayed with some depth, having been a boxing champ while at Princeton, a published author, as well as married & divorced at a time when other characters are still in search of something to flesh out their lives. Both Jake & Robert are enamored of the very flighty, wealthy, twice-married Lady Brett Ashley who later becomes attracted to an effete Italian count and then infatuated with a bullfighter.

Jake tells Robert that "nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters". Of course, much is made in this novel about the ethos of the bull fighter, with the bullfight said to reflect Hemingway's fascination with action, ritual & death. In time the elegant young bull fighter Pedro Romero is attacked by Robert Cohn, perhaps challenging Romero as a bull might assault a matador in the ring.

Jake's war wound is central to the novel but I took it to be rather a metaphorical as well as a physical injury, something that emasculated the main character in a way that is never quite specific, while again making him something other than a stand-in for the author's very public identity. Here is an example of what I saw as an interesting complexity within Jake Barnes' character, upon entering a Spanish cathedral in the Basque region while on a fishing trip:

The first time I saw the cathedral I thought the façade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim & dark & the pillars went high up & people were praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt & started to pray & prayed for everyone I thought of, Brett & Mike & Bill & Robert Cohn & myself, and all the bullfighters, separately for the ones I liked, & lumping all the rest.

Then I prayed for myself again, & while I was praying for myself, I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, & that it would be a fine siesta, & that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, & I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, & then I started to think how I would make it.

And all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, & I was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, & regretted that I was such a bad Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about, for at least a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, & I only wished I felt religious & maybe I would the next time; & then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers & the thumb of my right hand were still damp, & I felt them dry in the sun....& I walked back along side streets to the hotel.

In reading a few of the more negative reviews, one quickly notices that some of the reviewers read the novel under duress as a required book in high school or college & have never recovered from this lack of freedom of choice, while others convey an utter intolerance for the persona of Ernest Hemingway & are thus too distracted to compose an even-handed review. Still others mimic, a few in very compelling fashion, or even mock E.H.'s fabled literary style.

Yes, this is the much parodied language of E.H. but for me, it fits in with a particular time & place and causes the characters to come alive, at least from the perspective of expatriate Jake Barnes, who is called a fake, someone who "has lost touch with the soil & become precious". He is accused of drinking too much, of being obsessed with sex, of having let fake European standards ruin him, of talking too much & not working, of hanging around in cafes."

To this Jake responds, "It sounds like a swell life." The Sun Also Rises is definitely not the "great American novel". Rather, it is early Hemingway & placing it within the framework of the author's life, was written at a time when he was uncertain if he was meant to be a middling poet, a struggling journalist, a writer of short stories or something more extravagant & enduring. With this novel, Hemingway seemed to find his voice and like it our not, that voice endures.



In spite of Hemingway's public persona, he remained in touch with the strong biblical foundations his strict parents had enforced on him. Hence, the title's origin: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever....The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose...

*Photo images within my review include Hemingway & matadors at a bullfight; Sculpted bust of the author at Cafè Iruña, Pamploma (Spain) & an E.H. quote about Spanish nightlife. **If interested in a further study of Hemingway, there is an excellent book by Nancy Sindelar, Influencing Hemingway: People & Places That Shaped His Life & Work for Rowenfeld & Littlefield (2014), enhanced by many b&w photos.