The sun also rises 1

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises.

At the beginning of the book we get to know more about the main character’s best friend Robert Cohn who is an unsuccessful writer. His former wife left him a couple of years ago, when he was still living in America. After that he decided to move to Paris and that is where he met his current girlfriend Frances.

While trying to focus on his work, Jake meets a beautiful woman, Brett, who enchants him and totally blows him away by her beauty. Later on Jake finds out that she is going through a divorce and that she is moreover engaged to an another man. This makes Jake uncertain about their relationship, even though she keeps telling him that she loves him and he asks himself over and over again if she really does. Jake has a strange feeling, that they have met before and a feeling that everything he is going through with Brett, has happened before.

The book doesn’t tell me much about what’s going to happen, because it doesn’t really have a specific story yet. I found it a little bit boring at the time. Hemingway focuses more on Jake’s relationship to Cohn and Brett, whom we got to know quite well in the beginning. He describes Jake’s feelings very thoroughly. You can really see that Jake feels sorry for his friend Cohn, however, he cares too much about him to confront him about it. Instead, he just tries to help him as much as possible and tries not to think about the fact that his friend has changed a lot since he returned from America.

“Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slip- over jersey sweater and a tweet skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.”  Page 19

This is from an extract at a bar where Brett catches Jake’s eye for the first time, and as you can see, he’s very fond of the way that she looks, which we think is the reason that he stays with her even though the circumstances. At the time it seems more like he likes the idea of having her by his side, more than he actually loves her, as an accessory.

The three first lines:

“Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Priceton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He vared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as Jew at Priceton.”

The first three lines caught my attention immidiately, I found the topic very interesting but I also really wondered why Cohn boxes when he disliked it. In addition I was curious how Cohn could be a champion even if he didn’t cared for boxing. Often, people that are winners and champions love and enjoy what they are doing. Furthermore I thought this book would be about Cohn and his life, whereas later on it turned out to be about someone and something else.

The Sun Also Rises

The Exposition 

”Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. ”

This is the first sentences of the book ”The Sun Also Rises”, written by Ernest Hemingway. Just by these three lines one understand that this Robert Cohn has a very good friend who knows his history and possibly also possessing extraordinary observation abilities. The protagonist is Jake Barnes, an American journalist living in Paris in the 1920’s. His friendship with Robert Cohn was formed in college. The first chapter is dedicated Cohn as Jake explains how Cohn is unhappy in his marriage, wants to travel to South America with Jake, and struggle with people’s opinions about his religion. It is obvious that Jake cares a lot about Cohn, but doesn’t really respect him. Furthermore, he describes him as a stubborn man whom as a young chap had low confidence and anxiety problems. Cohn’s wife, Frances, doesn’t exactly make the feelings any less obvious. On the contrary, she is mean and bitter.

As for the narrator, Jake, he is an impotent man (probably from an injury he got in the war), madly in love with the sassy Lady Brett, a British aristocratic woman. Jake has developed substantial insecurity about his manhood because of the impotence, which he never speaks of. There is a scene in the beginning of chapter three where Jake, in company with a prostitute named Georgette, sits in a cab and Georgette makes a pass at him. Jakes says that she shouldn’t bother and he feels mortified.

Well, the beginning of this book is not particularly exciting. However, I am familiar with the plot of the book since earlier, (even though it is roughly reduced) and may therefor have some kind of overview of what might happen next. As I understand, this is a love story, perhaps a quite destructive and sad one, but nevertheless a love story. Why the book is titled “Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises”, is not very clear yet, but the first specific word “Fiesta” in the beginning of the title indicates that the plot will move from its location in Paris to a hotter country in the south. In addition, one or two bullfighting moments further in the book, should not be precluded. 

Reading log 1

Reading log 1.

The sun also rises.

In the beginning of the book an unknown narrator speaks of his first impressions of Robert Cohn and during the following three pages or so the reader is presented with the brief story of Robert Cohn’s life. This leads the reader to believe that the plot will revolve around Cohn, which in fact is not the case. The narrator is given a name shortly after the Cohn-phase is finished, and his name is Jake Barnes. The reader will observe the flow of events through Jake’s eyes, and he functions as the main character.

Jake Barnes is an American journalist living and working in Paris. He and his friends live a somewhat bohemian life, frequently engaging in sessions of heavy drinking and partying. Amongst his friends Jake seems rather stable, unlike many of his friends, but they all have very few permanent ties allowing them to travel on the slightest impulse. He appears to be one of the most intelligent amongst his friends as well as one of the subtlest. In this circle of friends Jake assumes the role of the observer, using his insight and intelligence to describe those around him. However, by describing others Jake reveals a lot about himself. Jake is very clearly in love with a woman called Lady Brett Ashley, and she loves him as well. Even though they are in love they cannot be together due to Jake’s injury. Now, Jake’s injury is interesting, he got it during the First World War in which he fought just like many of the male characters in the novel. His injury is spoken of in detail, however one can make the assumption that the injury has left Jake unable to engage in sexual intercourse. Due to his impotence and the fact that Brett is not willing to give up sex, the two of them have a very complicated relationship, which leaves the both of them emotionally hurt several times. Apart from Jake’s issues with impotence and love he seems confused about life. He almost wanders through the world without knowing in what direction to head, stuck in a sort of moral vacuum left behind after the war. Jake is a typical member of the lost generation, a generation of mostly young men whose experiences during WWI left them unable to believe in justice and morality leading to them living an aimless life with a lack of true emotion. Hemingway himself was a part of this generation and Jake Barnes might very well be based on Hemingway.

Lady Brett Ashley is a very independent woman and strikingly beautiful. She charms almost all of the men in her presence and wields great power over them. However, she is not able to commit to one man leading her to have many fleeting relationships and/or affairs. The one man she has shown any true feelings for is Jake, the one man who cannot satisfy her physical needs. So, she wanders between men much like Jake and his friends wanders between bars. She frequently complains to Jake about how miserable she is, she claims that her life is aimless and unsatisfying much like Jake. She is stuck in the same vacuum as Jake and many of their friends, constantly moving between social appointments, constantly drinking and seemingly never having a conversation with any real substance. In short, Jake, Brett and their friends live a life devoid of meaning, lacking direction and emotional connections.

“Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt being treated as a Jew at Princeton”

These are the first three lines of the novel. Reading these first lines I feel intrigued by Robert Cohn as a character. Becoming champion in a sport, which you dislike simply to counteract feelings of inferiority, that is the groundwork of an interesting character in my eyes. I assumed that the novel would be about Cohn and that it might be about his life and challenges as a Jew or some other difficulty.

Why did Hemingway choose the title The sun also rises? For me that is an easy question. It refers to the lifestyle of the characters, they live their life without meaning, without emotional bonds but no matter what they do or where they are the sun will always rise and it will always set. It is a certainty in their uncertain lives, a contrast to the characters in a sense.