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Literature after the second world war
The Sun Also Rises analysis
The sun also rises analysis essay
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Recommended: Literature after the second world war
The Sun Also Rises
"This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper." (T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men)
"…but a whimper.", Eliot was writing of the Lost Generation. The period after World War I were people were disillusioned, wandering through their life lost, not sure what their goal was. In Ernest Hemmingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, the Lost Generation and their inability to cope with the change around them is the focus of the novel. The Sun Also Rises is a beautifully written account of a generation lost in an unknown cause that leaves them abandoned in the end.
Hemmingway wrote this story in a unique fashion. The book is written with no apparent plot, that is, there are not twists, intrigue, or goals for the characters. The plot is simply the story itself. That is what Hemmingway wanted, he wanted the reader to read this story and recognize the loses and struggles the characters encounter through experiences they had.
The Sun Also Rises takes place in France following the First World War. The main character and narrator is Jake Barnes a newspaper reporter and war veteran. His life corresponds directly to that of the Lost Generation, for he is the Lost Generation. Jake lives a very simple life, he gets up and eats, goes to work, goes out with someone for lunch, goes back to work, than goes out with friends to eat supper and drink the night away. Jake's life is very similar to all others of that time; he is not an exception. To prove this Hemmingway shows the bars and restaurants packed at night with people just like Jake and his friends. Jake's long time friend and once lover, Brent Ashley is a very beautiful and unruly woman. She makes her first appearance in the novel as she walks into a bar to meet Jake, she is followed by a group of gay men. This point is very crucial to the novel because it strikes a major point of conflict between Jake and Brett. Jake had suffered an injury in the war and was impotent because of it. Jake is self-conscious of this fact and was very upset when Brett walked in with men that were not impotent and yet failed to take advantage of it.
Although Jake was spared his life in the great war, he lost another part of his life and future. Jack tries to compensate his lack of any real future with Brett or any other women with his passion for bullfighing and other frivalties. In John Steele Gordon’s article, “What We Lost in the Great War” Gordon laments the loss of hope and future the generation of the war felt. The characters of the novel, and especially Jake, exemplify the lack of direction felt after the war. Their aimless drinking, parties and participation in the fiesta is an example of the absence of focus in their life.
There are many short stories in literature that share a common theme presented in different ways. A theme that always keeps readers’ attention is that of death because it is something that no one wants to face in real life, but something that can be easily faced when reading. “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both exemplify how two authors use a common theme of death to stand as a metaphor for dystopian societies.
Throughout The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway paints a tragic picture of young adults being haunted by the lasting effects of post traumatic stress disorder onset by their participation in World War I and the restrictions it placed on their ability to construct relationships.
As Americans, we all have civil rights. After the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, these rights were taken away from the Japanese Americans. They were forced to leave their daily lives (job, house, and friends). These Japanese Americans on the mainland were put into concentration camps and left there for 4 years. During World War II, The Japanese-Americans were withheld from their rights and were forced to leave their homes and relocate to internment camps. During this time, America did not uphold their responsibilities, as the Japanese-Americans were not treated equally.
Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” (Goebbels). Joseph Goebbels along with the Communist Party used this to describe their propaganda scheme to draw a whole nation into their control. This action shows a lapse of responsibility and the ability to escape a problem. Like Goebbels, the characters of The Sun Also Rises and The Hollow Men use excuses to get away from the problem. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are also considered Hollow Men as the group continually refuses to care or make a choice because the characters constantly turn to escapism to forget their problems, seemingly cope with changes in their lives but fail to do so, and regularly flashback to the past show a focus on a life already lived.
The Sun Also Rises was one of the earliest novels to encapsulate the ideas of the Lost Generation and the shortcomings of the American Dream. The novel, by Ernest Hemingway, follows Jake Barnes and a group of his friends and acquaintances as they (all Americans) live in Paris during 1924, seven years after World War I. Jake, a veteran of the United States, suffers from a malady affecting his genitalia, which (though it isn't detailed in the s...
In earlier drafts of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway opens with the words: “This is a novel about a lady. Her name is Lady Ashley and when the story begins she is living in Paris and it is Spring.” Though this exposition was later cut from the novel at the suggestion of F. Scott Fitzgerald—one of Hemingway’s contemporaries—nevertheless it still serves to reveal the objective center around which The Sun Also Rises revolves. As an enigmatic amalgamation of feminine charm, unapologetic androgyny, and sexual promiscuity, Brett captivates the attention of all the other characters of the novel—be it Jake Barnes or Mike Campbell or even Pedro Romero—as she attempts to find individual freedom in a society altered by the general disillusionment and psychological malaise after World War I. Though much critical attention has focused upon Brett’s licentiousness and the resulting Victorian ideals that she violates, surely Brett transcends both the sexual function her critics limit her to and the Victorian values they hold her up against. Indeed, Brett’s loose and meaningless romances play an important allegorical role in representing the broader shattered unity and inconsistencies of the modern world—the world of the Lost Generation.
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to work but they still remain a close nit family. In addition, they even manage to stick together after being separated for one of their own. These show how even in the darkest time they still manage to find a glimmer of hope and they pursued on.
This book teaches the importance of self-expression and independence. If we did not have these necessities, then life would be like those in this novel. Empty, redundant, and fearful of what is going on. The quotes above show how different life can be without our basic freedoms. This novel was very interesting and it shows, no matter how dismal a situation is, there is always a way out if you never give up, even if you have to do it alone.
This is an odd little book, but a very important one nonetheless. The story it tells is something like an extended parablethe style is plain, the characters are nearly stick figures, the story itself is contrived. And yet ... and yet, the story is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking because the historical trend it describes is powerful, distressing, even heartbreaking.
The pivotal character of Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises is Jake Barnes. He is a man of complex personality--compelling, powerful, restrained, bitter, pathetic, extraordinarily ordinary yet totally human. His character swings from one end of the psychological spectrum to the other end. He has complex personality, a World War I veteran turned writer, living in Paris. To the world, he is the epitome of self-control but breaks down easily when alone, plagued by self-doubt and fears of inadequacy. He is at home in the company of friends in the society where he belongs, but he sees himself as someone from the outside looking in. He is not alone, yet he is lonely. He strikes people as confident, ambitious, careful, practical, quiet and straightforward. In reality, he is full of self-doubt, afraid and vulnerable.
The lost generation was a group of writers who gained much popularity and grew in their literary expansion post WWI from 1918 through 1930. (Lost Generation) Prior to enlisting in the war, Americans were promised an upbringing of patriotism and honor for serving one’s country. They found returning home that the honor in which they believed to be fighting for was nothing more than witnessing innocent men killed. Upon returning back from WWI the image of patriotism and honor faded when the realism of the after effects of the war and the consequence became apparent in our young men. World War I destroyed the virtuous envision young American men had towards their country when they returned home after witnessing friends dying in battle and many returning home in a state that left them both physically and emotionally impaired. (The Lost Generation: American Writers of the 1920's)
The writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway included biographical information in their novels The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises that illuminated the meaning of the work. Although The Sun Also Rises is more closely related to actual events in Hemingway's life than The Great Gatsby was to events in Fitzgerald's life, they both take the same approach. They both make use of non-judgemental narrators to comment on the "lost generation". This narrator allows Fitzgerlald and Hemingway to write about their own society. Fitzgerlald comments on the jaded old-wealth society of the Eastern United States and the corruption of the American Dream. Hemingway comments on the effects of World War I on the "lost generation" and the hope for the future in the next generation.
In his popular 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway illustrates how war plays a huge role in the real world and character identity. Although the novel features a fresh literary style, enjoyable dialogue, and beautifully constructed meaning, “nothing leads anywhere in the book, and that is perhaps the real point of it” (Young). The characters that Hemingway creates rarely mention the war; nevertheless, it affects everything they do and say. Jake Barnes, the protagonist of the novel, suffers from an emasculating war wound that results “in his frustrated love for an Englishwoman whom time and misfortune have driven into alcoholism, promiscuity, and self-destructive irresponsibility” (Sanderson). Participation in the war is seen as a major conflict as Jake’s impotence renders it impossible for him to have a relationship with Brett Ashley. Along with them, Jake’s friends have also lost their self-identity during the war; in effect, they are always agitated, itinerant, and searching for a constant change of scenery. While they favor to live in America rather than Europe, they have detached themselves from their home country and made themselves expat...
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway’s first momentous literary work. It is a story about the lives of a number of Americans who were living in Europe after World War I. An American World War I expatriate and journalist, Jake Barnes, tell the novel’s storyline. The themes that are depicted by Hemingway in this novel include purposelessness of the ‘Lost Generation’, masculine insecurity, communication breakdown, binge alcohol consumption, and fake friendships. Nonetheless, as essential as the premise and the context of the novel are, the characters are the heart and soul of the Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises