How Does Hemingway Use Alcohol In The Theme Of Alcohol

Jake Barnes drinks a significant amount over the course of the novel. At points he drinks to simply feel drunk and not to enhance his experience. The modernist uses alcohol to leave the pain behind, to dull the body in attempts to free themselves mentally. Jake is literally a man who drinks to get drunk, “I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless” (Hemingway, 29). Jake is mirroring his sense of lethargic emotions with his torpid body. He wallows within his suffering with little to no attempt to leave his emotional pit. Jake drinks to lose his body and his senses, even if he claims otherwise: “I’m not getting drunk,’ I said. ‘I am just drinking wine. I like to drink wine’” (Hemingway, 250).

Within the first book in the novel, Brett uses alcohol to make her dates bearable “‘You don’t remember anything about a date with me at the Crillon?’ ‘No. Did we have one? I must have been blind.’ ‘You were quite drunk, my dear.’ said the count” (Hemingway, 61). Despite her tendencies to suffocate the unsatisfactory parts of suitors by liquoring herself up, Brett eventually leaves or is left by all of them with the exception of her return to Mike at the end of the third book. She constantly drinks without enjoyment to make her situation bearably: “‘This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with wine like that. You lose the taste.’ Brett’s glass was empty” (Hemingway, 66). While this pattern works for Brett, Jake attempts of drinking to survive social encounters, does not make him any happier. In the end Jake cannot bury his own emotions under his drinks. “We had another absinthe.[…] ‘I feel like hell,’ I said […] ‘I [still] feel like hell,’ ” (Hemingway, 224-225). Jake is gimped by his own depression; absinthe cannot drown his problems for his mind cannot escape his own thoughts. Whether or not he accepts the fact, Jake is an alcoholic though and through, he has become numb to his numbing agent. He continues to drink without its full effect, Jake’s original crutch no longer

What does not kill us makes us stronger. Alcohol is literally a poison that renders the body incapable of controlling itself, reaction times, cognitive functions as well as dexterity all fall to the wayside was more alcohol is consumed. Jake uses alcohol socially to assert his masculinity due to his sexual impotency. “Western civilization has been primarily patriarchal and this tended to extol the masculine and devalue the feminine” (Murfin 197). The grasping of masculine identity is the only thing that gives Jake purpose. When he is around Brett he does not use alcohol in numb the mind and body, but to support his masculine image. “Brett never ate much.[…] I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of rioja alta” (Hemingway, 249). Drinking is his form of conquering the masculine image. Not everyone can drink three bottles of wine with a meal; Jake 's drinking habits are his expression of power and of his masculine persona. He drinks not solely to get drunk, but he drinks to succeed in the vision for