The Sun Also Rises

Set in the 1920s era of aimless decadence, the novel focuses on a group of American expats, many of whom were WWI veterans, during their travels to the Spanish bullfighting festival in Pamplona. For this cast of characters, the war had destroyed and warped all of their traditional values of beauty, bravery, masculinity, femininity. This ‘lost generation’ of Americans turned to alcohol, sex, gambling, exotic travels, inane parties, and superficial friends to try to make sense and make numb of their world and themselves. At the same time, the novel features the life-affirming, primal force of nature that is the Spanish bullfighting sport that shows how life could be so violently beautiful and pure, and a stark counterpoint to the Americans’ dissipation. An odd mix of themes, but they ultimately make the book carry a bittersweet aftertaste full of grief and still quietly hopeful.

The narrator of the book, Jake Barnes, lives a hellish existence: his war injury prevents him from having sex, but he happens to be in love with the sexually insatiable Lady Brett Ashley. Jake’s emasculation in being unable to satisfy Brett coupled with Brett’s uncontrollable and careless promiscuity and seeking out sex from other men together create the central tragedy of the story. As the reader, we’re in Jake’s head 100% of the time and get to see the quiet ressentiment, seething anger, the nights Jake spends crying in his bed wrapped up in delirium of what he could never have. This feeling of wanting yet not having the power to get something is central - nay, essential - to the human experience. The context behind impotency in the novel is that it’s a metaphor of the impotency of humans against war and its aftermath, the impotency of flesh against machine gun bullets. Present-day, I feel a little lost being a little person in a big city, one person against powerful institutions and powerful technologies; it was what made me pick up the book in the first place. That impotency and powerlessness is a reality of life, at times to be overcome and at times to be accepted. Just like Jake who carries on with his life with a resigned optimism toward the end, the story affirms this feeling and says ‘it is ok’, and that just as the sun had rose over today, so it will rise again tomorrow.