The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

628 Words2 Pages

The lives of the people that resided in the time of the Lost Generation felt as though their existence had no meaning, as if life was completely purposeless. Everyone seemed to go through the motions, using routine and cyclical forms of living. If people are unhappy with where they are in life, they stay there anyway because they feel stuck. Although the title of the novel, The Sun Also Rises, expresses consistency and most of the characters go unchanged, falling into a repetitious pattern, Jake Barnes is able to overcome this pattern of the transience of society by learning how to resolve his personal despair.
At the beginning of the novel, Jake Barnes is a typical spokesperson for the members of the lost generation. His experience in World War I damaged most of his beliefs in love and manhood, which made him live aimlessly, being content with being unhappy with life, thinking that you can never change it. The war had left Jake impotent, which also caused him to become insecure about his masculinity. Jake reminisced on the time the liaison colonel came to visit him in the hospital...

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