Thursday, June 14, 2018

How are loss and salvage presented in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises?

The most obvious example of loss in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is that suffered by narrator and protagonist Jake Barnes. He is rendered impotent after an accident sustained during his combat in World War I.
Loss of one's home is another's example of loss manifest in the novel. The main characters—Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, and Lady Brett Ashley—are all expatriates who meet in Paris. Paris was a receptacle for disenfranchised or disillusioned Americans in the post-War period. Several of the characters express an aversion to the city. Robert claims, "I don't care for Paris" (6) and tells Jake he wants to go to South America. Jake Barnes asks his female escort, Georgette, "Do you like Paris?" to which she answers, "No." When he asks why she doesn't go somewhere else, she claims "[there] isn't anywhere else." Though she never expounds on this, Georgette's comment betokens a tangible reality for the American expatriates: that losing one's home is, in some sense, irreversible.
The theme of "salvage" to be found in The Sun Also Rises is represented by Brett's relationship to her fiancé, Mike, whom she leaves to cavort with a nineteen-year-old bullfighter, Romero. She announces to Jake, "I'm going back to Mike.... He's so damned nice and he's so awful. It's sort of my thing" (127). Brett, who very much represents the New Woman of the 1920s for her sexual promiscuity and independence, manages to salvage a conventional relationship with a well-respected man. Concurrently, Jake is able to salvage an occasionally frustrated friendship with Brett, as he is the one who comes to her aid in Madrid, where she is left alone after a series of courtships.
That salvage should be such an integral part of the novel is in keeping with its post-War moment. Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises followed relatively closely on the heels of World War I, which left many Americans disillusioned and bereft of loved ones.

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