Critical Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
“’Oh, Jake,’ Brett said, ‘we could have had such a damned good time together.’
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway has long been regarded as one of the greatest authors of our time-the fact that many of his books are still in print is evidence of his longstanding popularity-and he has been the target of controversy since he was first published. His style is considered manly and straightforward, which was appreciated mostly by youth and other modernist writers of the time but also faced controversy for the same reasons. It was particularly disparaged by authors who preferred more the traditional, lengthy, or romantic styles. Like the rest of his works, Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” has been the subject of heavy and numerous literary criticisms since its first publication.
Written in 1926, the novel itself has been heralded as the greatest of accomplishments and is a staple of the modernist literary era. It is a story based upon many of his own experiences, traveling the world with his friends and family a few years after World War I. Disenchantment with the allure of the United States was something very widely felt with contemporary youth, and it is one of the main themes of the book along with lost love, lust, guilt, nature, heroism, masculinity, femininity, and disability. In 1926, these sentiments and themes had the so-called “lost-generation” clamoring with appreciation. However, along with the applause came an equal amount of scathing criticism.
Regardless of the varieties of cri...
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..." Critical Insights: The Sun Also Rises (2010): 314-330. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Evans, Robert C. "Critical Insights: Ernest Hemingway In His Time (and Later): Ernest Hemingway's Critical Reputation." Salem Press. Salem Press, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Fore, Dana. "Life Unworthy Of Life? Masculinity, Disability, And Guilt In The Sun Also Rises." Critical Insights: The Sun Also Rises (2010): 331-348. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.
Kaye, Jeremy. "The "Whine" Of Jewish Manhood: Rereading Hemingway's Anti-Semitism, Reimagining Robert Cohn." Critical Insights: The Sun Also Rises (2010): 294-313. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Neilson, Keith. "The Sun Also Rises." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-4. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014
From the beginning, Robert Cohn’s name defines himself－he is essentially a conehead in a society where concealing insecurities and projecting masculinity is paramount. Although he tries in vain to act stereotypically male, Cohn’s submissive attitude and romantic beliefs ultimately do little to cover up the pitiful truth; he is nothing more than a degenerate shadow of masculinity, doomed for isolation by society. In the incriminating eyes of people around him, Cohn is a picture-perfect representation of a failure as a man. Through Cohn, Hemingway delineates not only the complications of attaining virility, but also the reveal of another “lost” generation within the Lost Generation: those living without masculinity and the consequences they thus face.
One observation that can be made on Hemingway’s narrative technique as shown in his short stories is his clipped, spare style, which aims to produce a sense of objectivity through highly selected details. Hemingway refuses to romanticize his characters. Being “tough” people, such as boxers, bullfighters, gangsters, and soldiers, they are depicted as leading a life more or less without thought. The world is full of s...
Svoboda, Frederic J. Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises: The Crafting of a Style. Kansas: The University Press of Kansas, 1983.
In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1208-1209. Hemingway, Ernest. A.
Donaldson’s publication syndicates Ernest Hemingway’s biography with literary criticism, and in doing so, delivers a sense of the foremost themes in Hemingway’s life, and work, by drawing on biographical material, extracts from Hemingway’s letters, and different works published fiction. I will be utilizing this source to further discuss and support Hemingway’s writing styles throughout A Farewell to Arms.
other writers. He adds that the later novels seem more “mannered” and have less “impact” (p. 3). Comley and Scholes (1998) suggest that literary critics agreed that Hemingway’s style has undergone several changes. Cowley (1962, p. 46) argues that “by the early 1930’s Hemingway’s technique, apparently simple in the beginning, was becoming more elaborate”. Epstein (1982, p. 557) agrees that Hemingway was reduced to having produced only one good novel The Sun also Rises, some good short stories, and “the originator of once elegantly simple prose style that over the years dried up and flaked off in self-parody”. While Assadnassab (2005, p. 19) maintains that Hemingway uses “long plain words”, other critics such as Young (1966, p. 203) claim that Hemingway prefers to use short words.
Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Raison in the Sun.” taken from “The Norton Introduction to Literature (11th ed.) By Mays, Kelli J. (2013) New York: Norton (Pgs. 1471 – 1534)
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
" American Literature 58.2 (May 1986): 181-202. Wright, Richard. A.
THE SUN ALSO RISES & nbsp; & nbsp; The book THE SUN ALSO RISES By ERNEST HEMINGWAY contains 251 pages filled with sadness, devastation and lost love. The plot is based on real people the Hemingway knew and that angered a lot of his friends, if any. Robert Cohn, the main character, is feeling inferior because he is Jewish and starts a boxing career to feel better about himself. He married the first girl he met out of college.
When a writer picks up their pen and paper, begins one of the most personal and cathartic experiences in their lives, and forms this creation, this seemingly incoherent sets of words and phrases that, read without any critical thinking, any form of analysis or reflexion, can be easily misconstrued as worthless or empty. When one reads an author’s work, in any shape or form, what floats off of the ink of the paper and implants itself in our minds is the author’s personality, their style. Reading any of the greats, many would be able to spot the minute details that separates each author from another; whether it be their use of dialogue, their complex descriptions, their syntax, or their tone. When reading an excerpt of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast one could easily dissect the work, pick apart each significant moment from Hemingway’s life and analyze it in order to form their own idea of the author’s voice, of his identity. Ernest Hemingway’s writing immediately comes across as rather familiar in one sense. His vocabulary is not all that complicated, his layout is rather straightforward, and it is presented in a simplistic form. While he may meander into seemingly unnecessary detail, his work can be easily read. It is when one looks deeper into the work, examines the techniques Hemingway uses to create this comfortable aura surrounding his body of work, that one begins to lift much more complex thoughts and ideas. Hemingway’s tone is stark, unsympathetic, his details are precise and explored in depth, and he organizes his thoughts with clarity and focus. All of this is presented in A Moveable Feast with expertise every writer dreams to achieve. While Hemingway’s style may seem simplistic on the surface, what lies below is a layered...
" The Hemingway Review. 15.1 (Fall 1995): p. 27. Literature Resource Center -.
...n & Co., Inc., 1962); excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3, ed. Carolyn Riley (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1975), p. 526.
Heller, Joseph. The Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism. Twentieth-Century American Literature Vol. 3. New York. Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Waldhorn, Arthur. Ernest Hemingway: A Collection of Criticism (Contemporary Studies in Literature). Chicago: Syracuse University Press, 1978.