90 pages • 3 hours read
Ernest HemingwayThe Sun Also Rises
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1926A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Lost Generation
The term “Lost Generation” is believed to have been coined by Gertrude Stein; in early 20th-century Paris, she was a prominent writer, critic, and art collector. At her home, she hosted a salon attended by many famous writers and artists, including Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises popularized use of the term, in part, because in the epigraph Hemingway quotes Stein as saying: “You are all a lost generation.”
The Lost Generation, who came of age during World War I, were greatly affected by mechanized warfare and the way it led to mass death and destruction. In the years following the war, members of the Lost Generation are characterized as being aimless drifters who do not adhere to traditional forms of belief and structure.
Throughout the novel, the horrors of World War I linger in the background, contributing to the characters’ life philosophies—or lack thereof. In the war, millions were killed or wounded. Nationalistic fervor led to bloodshed. Traditional institutions either retreated or were used to further the destruction. Now, Jake and his companions have a hard time believing in anything. They wander drunkenly and often appear lost.
Foreignness
In the 1920s, scores of now-famous artists flocked to Paris to live and work as expatriates; Hemingway was one of the most well-known. In the book, the character who represents Hemingway, Jake, has taken up residence in Paris. He has a job as a correspondent, but spends most of his time getting drunk with other writers. This lifestyle of constant drinking and socializing is easily romanticized, but expat life doesn’t easily translate to happiness or career success. Throughout the novel, Jake writes very little. The novel’s most successful writer, Bill, only visits Paris, and still resides in New York. Bill criticizes Jake’s expat lifestyle. He says, “Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing” (120)—an ironic assertion in a novel that was written by an expat and went on to be one of the most successful novels of the 20th century, although at the time, Hemingway was not yet the success that he would become.
As Bill says to Jake, “You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see?” (120). Throughout the novel, it does seem that no one is actually working; everyone lives a hedonistic life. A strong example of this is Harvey Stone, an American living in Paris who is drunk, broke, and always idle. Nevertheless, he has strong opinions of other writers and doesn’t hesitate to be highly critical of them.
Relationships
Jake often views relationships as transactional rather than essential. While drunk and trying to sleep, Jake attempts to find a sort of life philosophy. He thinks about Brett and notes that he “had been getting something for nothing […] [which] only delayed the presentation of the bill” (152). In his complicated relationship with Brett, he believes that they cannot be friends for friendship’s sake. Services are accounted for in a ledger that must eventually be paid.
After the fiesta, Jake stays at a hotel in Bayonne and is glad to be back in France because, unlike in Spain, “if you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money” (237). For Jake, this simplifies relationships and makes it easier to know where one stands.
Jake isn’t the only character who views relationships as transactional. His companions use sex as social currency as they navigate the turbulence of their relationships. Another character, Frances, expects to receive financial assistance from her relationship with Cohn. When Cohn is “sending” her to England, she claims that, at first, he was only going to give her 100 pounds, but then she makes him give her 200.
Masculine Identity
In the war, Jake served in combat and endured a wound that rendered him impotent. He admires men, such as Romero, who, in his view, live heroically because they directly and honestly confront death.
In many ways, Jake embodies traditional masculinity, though his masculinity is interwoven with fragility and tenderness. If not for his impotence, he would’ve been sexually involved with Brett. He loves her, but his emasculatory wound prevents them from being together. This deeply hurts him. After a night out with Brett, he thinks about her and, in a rare outward displays of emotion, he “all of a sudden start[s] to cry” (39).
The fishing trip with Bill is largely a traditionally masculine endeavor. There are no women present, and they go deep into nature to find and kill their food. When Jake layers the dead fish and the ferns in the bag, he arranges a bouquet that marries the masculinity of the slaughtered fish to the femininity of the fragile fern fronds.
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By Ernest Hemingway
