Lady Brett Ashley In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

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Recommended: The background of the lost generation

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, the post-WWI European culture, recovering from destruction and filled with loss of many kinds, shapes a few of Lady Brett Ashley's key traits - especially her independence and restlessness. During this era, the world now seemingly without values, Brett is somewhat liberated, able to do what women hadn’t traditionally done before; yet post-WWI Europe also affects negatively Lady Brett Ashley as she desperately (and in vain) searches for true happiness and peace. Ultimately, the post-WWI broken and yet enchanting surroundings hammer home what The Sun Also Rises is about (destruction of ideals, values, and structures), especially with Lady Brett Ashley typifying the entire “Lost Generation”.
After the war, Europe especially lost sight of traditions, ideals and trust in the previous established values; just as Europe rejects conformity, so does Brett, remarkably independent and confident in doing as she pleases. When Brett is first introduced, she’s described as more …show more content…

People became really aware of how fucked up the world was, especially in Europe where they often witnessed it first hand. Lady Brett Ashley’s character is really formed by her post-WWI surroundings, her borderline desperate need for independence and constant restless/careless behavior both resulting from a world filled with the destruction of ideals, values, and structure. In the end, Lady Brett Ashley might be a symbol for the entire lost generation and the 20’s themselves - full of anxiety, disillusionment, futile searches for fleeting happiness and love and life despite the horrific, irreversible loss of innocence. Loss of their belief in the ideals, structures, and nationalism that drove self-identity in the time before the WWI, they seem to have lost some core of themselves. The characters are always restless, always wandering, looking for a constant change of scenery, as if looking for an

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