Daniel Villines's Reviews > The Sun Also Rises

This is my fourth time reading The Sun Also Rises, and my familiarity with its details allowed my mind to sort of slip between the lines.

This time through, I could see the main character, Jake Barnes, as the symbol for a 'lost generation' of men that served as soldiers during WWI. In truth, he’s a symbol for any soldier of any war that has served and been deeply affected by combat. I was able to see the pain of Jake’s injury, which is hidden just below the surface of everything that he shows to the world. It all seemed very analogous to the psychological stress of combat that plagues so many of our veterans even though we never see it. Jake moves through life with his silent handicap and in doing so constantly fights a battle between who he wanted to be and who he has become.

Along these same lines, I saw Lady Ashley, Brett, as symbolic of the benefits brought about by the sacrifices made by Jake and the veterans of WWI. She is taking the new, war-free Europe by storm and abandoning all the old traditions. She loves Jake but does not offer any sort of commitment to him or gratitude. Her grasps for the moment eliminate any sort of retrospective perspective. She is carefree and symbolizes the spirit of the Roaring 20s.

The very end of the novel suggests the incompatibility between Jake and Brett. In doing so, it also suggests the incompatibility between the carefree times of the 1920s and the solemn nature of the former soldiers that survived the war and brought those times into being.

---

This is my third reading of The Sun Also Rises with each reading being about ten years apart. In looking back, I find that I latched on to a different element of Hemingway’s story each time.

In my 30's I loved the stoic code-hero character represented by Jake Barnes. Chaos happens all around Jake. His friends are a personal embarrassment who are all bad drunks. He is a respected aficionado of bullfighting in its native land and yet his fellow Spanish comrades of the sport hold his friends in contempt. And the girl that he loves dismisses him out of hand. Yet, he keeps his cool and never behaves badly. He acts out the meaning of grace under pressure.

In my 40's I loved the rustic travel elements of the novel. Hemingway brought to life the simple pleasures of sitting in a cafe in Paris. Where drinks with friends, under an awning overlooking a street, could be a complete slice of life all on its own. The old-world Spanish setting of Pamplona is made real complete with the hot sun, but also tempered with the contrasting coolness of both shade and breeze. And he assures us that staying in a modest but well-cared for hotel can evoke the feeling of being at home in a place that is far from home.

Now in my 50's I found the relationships to be my focus. An entire mix of hopelessness, jealousy, raw attraction, and desperation all plague these characters. The men in the novel all take a turn at dancing with the idealized and deeply flawed Brett Ashley. And one by one, their individualized dreams of relationship perfection are all shown to land far from reality. There is one man, however, that ultimately comes to see a life with Brett Ashley for what it would truly be. For him, the sun also rises.

The complexity of this novel combined with its brevity shows how hard Hemingway worked to produce his literary diamond; where all the fluff is cut away leaving a book that feels inviting to the imagination. As it is, it seems slightly too long for being so short of a book. As such, I wonder what I’ll find next in it while reading it in my 60's.