Foreword

Introduction

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography

Characters and Plot

Settings in the Sun Also Rises

The Differences Between France and Spain

Delbert E. Wylder

The protagonist/narrator Jake Barnes travels annually from Paris to Pamplona, Spain, with the conviction due a religious pilgrimage. To Barnes, France is as dead and simple as Spain is alive and complicated

Jake ``Wins'' in Spain at the End of the Sun Also Rises

Donald A. Daiker

Though most critics see the book's conclusion as bleak, Jake's final encounter with Brett is triumphant: He demonstrates a new sense of purpose and self-control gained from his experiences in both countries

Paris and the Characters of the Sun Also Rises

David Morgan Zehr

Of all Hemingway's expatriates, only Jake has a rounded perception of Paris, fits in there, and appreciates it properly as a living, energetic city. The rest simply wander aimlessly from one cafe to the next in an endless quest for ``amusement.''

Confused Chronology in The Sun Also Rises

J. F. Kobler

Though the dates and times of the novel's event's are exhaustively reiterated, they do not add up. Such lapses are highly unusual for a trained journalist like Hemingway

Characters in the Sun Also Rises

The Character of Robert Cohn

Robert E. Meyerson

Cohn is a Jew, the race of ``great sufferers,'' but he alone among the novel's characters has escaped suffering from the Great War. Consciously jaded as they are, Jake and the others also resent Cohn's prewar notions of romantic idealism

In Defense of Brett

Roger Whitlow

Brett Ashley has generally been considered unfeeling by readers and critics for over seven decades. Such simplistic labeling is unjust when taking into account everything brett had been through and the behavior of her male counterparts

The Primitive Emotion That Drives Jake Barnes

Ernest Lockridge

Jake ``pimps'' Brett to Romero the bullfighter not out of love for Brett but hatred of Cohn. Jake is deeply anti-Semitic, as evidenced by the slack he cuts Brett's numerous other suitors

Good Old Harris in The Sun Also Rises

Jane E. Wilson

Harris, the Englishman Jake and Bill go fishing with in Burguete, is the only pleasant presence in the entire narrative. Harris represents values in stark contrast to Jake's ``real'' friends

Themes in The Sun Also Rises

The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises

Mark Spilka

The book is rife with symbols of thwarted love. Jake's wound has made him (and by extension his entire generation) into an unhappy cross between the ineffectual Cohn and the virile Romero

Alcoholism in The Sun Also Rises

Matts Djos

All the characters in the novel are world-class alcoholics. As the story progresses, they reveal themselves as spiritually bankrupt manipulators and rebels

Money in The Sun Also Rises

Patrick D. Morrow

Jake and the other characters use money as a way of controlling each other's friendship and, in Jake's case, to compensate for his wound and exert the only reliable power he has left

Social Class in The Sun Also Rises

Marc D. Baldwin

The notions of class and ``good breeding'' play an important role in determining a person's worth among Jake's crowd. As the bulls gore the ``lesser'' horses and steers in their jostle for dominance, the characters skewer one another on the basis of genetics and income level

The 1920s and The Sun Also Rises

Michael S. Reynolds

Though not originally written as such, it is important to consider the novel as a historical artifact; its sensibilities about race, feminism, and the almighty dollar are grounded in the surprisingly hysterical era in which Hemingway lived

Hemingway's Style in The Sun Also Rises

Hemingway's Writers in The Sun Also Rises

Robert E. Fleming

It is no coincidence that two major characters in Hemingway's first novel are writers like himself. Both Jake and Cohn represent polarized aspects of the craft hemingway was examining even while he was learning it himself

Humor in The Sun Also Rises

James Hinkle

Though written humor is not considered Hemingway's forte, a surprising number of jokes are buried in the novel's text, many of them subversive

The Art of Repetition in The Sun Also Rises

E. Miller Budick

Hemingway repeats phrases, dialogue, and entire scenes but alters the context to accentuate changes in Jake's mental state, though Jake himself seems unaware of the pattern

Narration in The Sun Also Rises

Terrence Doody

Jake Barnes, as the novel's only narrator, has occasional lapses of omniscience. Hemingway allows Jake to see outside himself when the plot calls for it but seems more to be holding up a mirror to his own prejudices

Chronology

For Further Research

Works by Ernest Hemingway

Index