Introduction
Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, remains, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “a romance and a guidebook.” It also became, in the words of critic Sibbie O’Sullivan, “a modern-day courtesy book on how to behave in the waste land Europe had become after the Great War.” The Sun Also Rises successfully portrays its characters as survivors of a “lost generation.” In addition, the novel was the most modern an American author had yet produced, and the ease with which it could be read endeared it to many. But for all its apparent simplicity, the novel’s innovation lay in its ironic style that interjected complex themes without being didactic. Generally, the novel is considered to be Hemingway’s most satisfying work.
The material for the novel resulted from a journey Hemingway made with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and several friends to Pamplona, Spain, in 1925. Among them was Lady Duff Twysden, a beautiful socialite with whom Hemingway was in love (the inspiration for the novel’s Lady Brett Ashley). There was also a Jewish novelist and boxer named Harold Loeb (source of Robert Cohn) whom Hemingway threatened after learning that he and Lady Duff had had an affair. Lady Duff’s companion was a bankrupt Briton (like Mike Campbell). The trip ended poorly when Lady Duff and her companion left their bills unpaid. The ending of the novel is only slightly more tragic, yet it recovers those precious values which make life livable in a war-wearied world: friendship, stoicism, and natural grace.
A Definition of Modernism
The most basic meaning of the term modern is that which is contemporary or characteristic of the present moment in time. In traditional literary discussions of twentieth-century literature, the term modern has frequently been (miss)used more or less synonymously with the terms modernist and modernism, and even then in a rather narrow range of meanings of what might count as modernist thought and writing. We see this, for example, in Harmon and Holman’s A Handbook to Literature, where they define modern according to the negative connotations passed down by some of the canonical writers of the period:
For much of its history, "modern" has meant something bad. . . . It is not so much a chronological designation as one suggestive of a loosely defined congeries of characteristics. Much twentieth-century literature is not "modern" in the common sense, as much that is contemporary is not. . . . In a broad sense modern is applied to writing marked by a strong and conscious break with tradition. It employs a distinctive kind of imagination that insists on having its general frame of reference within itself. It thus practices the solipsism of which Allen Tate accused the modern mind: It believes that we create the world in the act of perceiving it. Modern implies a historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, loss, and despair. It rejects not only history but also the society of whose fabrication history is a record. It rejects traditional values and assumptions, and it rejects equally the rhetoric by which they were sanctioned and communicated. It elevates the individual and the inward over the social and the outward, and it prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious. The psychologies of Freud and Jung have been seminal in the modern movement in literature. In many respects it is a reaction against REALISM and NATURALISM and the scientific postulates on which they rest. Although by no means can all modern writers by termed philosophical existentialists, EXISTENTIALISM has created a schema within which much of the modern temper can see a reflection of its attitudes and assumptions. The modern revels in a dense and often unordered actuality as opposed to the practical and systematic, and in exploring that actuality as it exists in the mind of the writer it has been richly experimental. (325-26)
This definition of modern/modernism stems in part from a traditional (and I think limited) reading of T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land. By that, I don’t mean to suggest that this definition isn’t helpful, or that I don’t find The Waste Land a richly compelling modernist text. (First published in 1922 and edited by Ezra Pound, Eliot’s The Waste Land is perhaps the most famous modernist poem—a long, fragmentary poem which, according to Cary Nelson, should be read as both a "revolutionary, code-shattering text, the poem primarily responsible for making disjunctive collage central to the modern literary sensibility," and as a "conservative, even reactionary, [formalist] text, one that evokes the multiplicity of modern life only to condemn it and urge on us some reformulation of an earlier faith" (Repression and Recovery 239-240).) Rather, my objection to the narrow sense of modernism as defined by Harmon and Holman is against the way that that definition was disseminated by academic critics and teachers from the 1940s through the 1960s, who took this generally conservative reading of a very few modernist texts and proceeded to delineate a modernist canon around those terms, defining retrospectively the whole modernist period as a brief flowering of philosophical angst and formal experimentalism between the end of World War I and the Great Depression.
With the rise of literary theory and revisionist literary history in the 1980s, new generations of literary critics have been rethinking the terms modern and modernism. They have sought to rethink the negative, disparaging tone and cultural conservatism adopted towards modernity and mass culture in canonical modernist literature and literary criticism. And this has largely been achieved by revisiting much of the literature from 1910 to 1945 which had previously been excluded from the traditional modernist canon—works by "New Negro" or "Harlem Renaissance" novelists such as Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes, as well as works by women and working class novelists such as Anzia Yezierska, Fielding Burke, Mike Gold, and Jack Conroy, just to name a few. Not all modernist works (that is, works engaging the conditions of twentieth-century modern life) were written in radically disjunctive experimental styles, and not all modernist works express a personal, moral alienation towards the state of modern, urban industrial existence. In fact, much of the work produced from the 1910s through the 1930s that is socially or aesthetically revolutionary expressed a conflicted ambivalence towards modern mass society and its failure to live up to the promises of the American Dream, and many works expressed the opposite of alienation: a utopian belief that it is the world of modern technology and mass culture that will make possible the ushering in of new societies capable of achieving unimaginable social, cultural and philosophical heights.
The term modernity, more recent critics now suggest, should be used to distinguish between the historical, cultural, economic and political conditions of the time and modernism, which signifies the literary and aesthetic representations of (or responses to) those historical conditions. Modernity defined in this way becomes the historical and cultural conditions of possibility that make modernism both necessary and possible in the first place. One way to think about it would be to say that the mass availability and rising popularity of the automobile from the 1910s through the 1920s is a condition of modernity, whereas car metaphors and the use of the automobile as a symbol of mechanical reproduction frequently appear as tropes in modernist writing. If, however, you allow that authors and artists (like everyone else) must to some degree be the product of the historical and cultural conditions of their own times, then you can see that this distinction between modernity and modernism is partly a rhetorical abstraction full of inevitable slippages and gray areas.
Nevertheless, distinguishing between modernity and modernism can be a productive starting place. Take the character of Brett in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Critics tend to agree that Brett is Hemingway’s representation of a "modern woman." But what specifically is it in the text that signifies her as such? To what conditions of "new woman" modernity does the text explicitly allude through her character? Or are some of those conditions only present as narrative subtexts unconsciously reflected through her outward character traits? And finally, what attitude towards those conditions of modernity does the text (not necessarily Jake the narrator) express through its treatment of Brett? If these questions sound too complicated or obscure, wait till we get to the opening scenes of the novel and we’ll work to clarify them when we look at the textual details describing Brett's entrance as a character. If these questions sound too obvious and straightforward, I would suggest that they are not. The way The Sun Also Rises represents modernity is symbolically complex and what this text ultimately says about the various modernities it invokes may turn out to be quite contradictory. But that can also be a good thing. For, in deciding how we as readers respond to Hemingway’s modernist narratives, we may become more self conscious regarding our own value judgments about our times and our modernity—which, if Richard Powers is correct, is very much the grandchild (or perhaps the time-warped twin) of their modernities in the Futurist moment of 1914.
As with other literary periods or movements (the Renaissance, Romanticism, etc), "Modernism" is a not only a construction but it is also a site for various contested meanings and interpretations. The notion of modernism is forged out of a multiplicity of cultural and historical phenomena (science, music, fine art, etc--see Butler on interrelations) with perhaps the only common base being a rupture with previous ways of "seeing," or "knowing." It is at bottom an epistemological question--how do we get to "know" the world, or how do we construct our reality--how best do we represent reality? These are perennial questions, but from around the beginning of our century there was what could be termed a crisis in representation and this led to variegated experimentation in the arts in the hope of rendering "reality" in a mode more compatible with the "times" and its new understanding of human nature (this is the main thrust of Woolf's essay). There is also during this period scientific discoveries such as the relativity of "truth" and the findings of Freud, both of which have repercussions, however mediated, on artistic form and content: experiment in point of view and a greater concern with subjective processes. But there is another side to modernism (which might be differentiated from modernist: that is to say, another way to look at a text's implication within modernism other than the purely formalist paradigm, the criterion of experimentalism which finds its zenith in the idea of the avant-garde. (see Concept of Modernism xerox) We can look as well at how a text is implicated in social modernity, how, without necessarily making radical experiments in form, nevertheless concerns itself with the crises inherent in modernity. We can now perhaps begin to reveal the plurality of the title of our investigation in English 179. For our purposes (and why not construct our own notion of modernism) it is best to read this period (from 1910 to about 1930) as being marked by a dual (if not at times dialectical) textual production: on the one hand, texts that respond to modern life with radical experiments in representation, and on the other hand, those which can be read as fictional counterparts to the crises in modern society. The texts on our list, although not specifically chosen with these criteria in mind, do nevertheless offer a spectrum of approaches to the narrativization of modern life. You may want to revise or take a stand with regard to these comments, arguing, for example, that another term is needed for those texts which do not experiment formally with narrative, but whatever that term is it certainly cannot be "modern," because some of the writers Woolf talks about in "Modern Fiction" (Galsworthy, Bennett, etc) were/are modern writers but, in Woolf's opinion, were not engaging in the "stuff" of contemporary life.
Characteristics of Modernism in Literature
• a lack of concern with conventional morality (Woolf, Joyce)
• modern characters constantly contradict themselves; they are guided by irrational betrayals through plots in which nothing very much happens (Woolf, Hemingway)
• a focus on the inner lives of characters and their felt responses to experience (Woolf)
• a lack of concern with chronology (not immediately evident in these stories)
• a disjointed, terse, telegraphic style (Hemingway)
• a sense of radical newness, of the apocalyptic and of destruction and desolation (Hemingway)
• a feeling of alienation (Hemingway)
• motives that are hinted at rather than explicitly explained (Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway)
• symbolism (e.g. Woolf’s animal imagery, Hemingway’s machines)
• shocking themes (Joyce)
Modernism in Visual
Art
In 1913, an exhibition of art works
reflecting the rise of modernism was held at The Armory in New York City. 1250
works were exhibited, and while the event was considered shocking and scandalous
(it did, after all, stand on its head the traditional ideas of what art is), it
also ushered modern art into the world of valid, “serious” work (the purchase of
Cézanne's Hill of the Poor by the Metropolitan Museum of Art signaled an
integration of modernism into official art channels).
Hemingway Biography
Hemingway grew up in the affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Park, the son of a physician father and a musically inclined mother. He accepted the community's conservative universe, and nothing in his youth marked him for a writer whose cynicism and sexual frankness would be the source of dismay for many Oak Parkers. Among the most dismayed were his parents. When his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was due for discussion at her book club, his mother absented herself, unable to bear the shame of it all.
For his part, Hemingway became alienated from both his parents, seeing his mother as overbearing and his father as weak. Those judgments eventually formed the basis of "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," his devastatingly negative portrayal of a marriage.
The Hemingways spent large portions of every summer at their cottage on Walloon Lake in Michigan. There, young Ernest learned early the joys of hunting and fishing. On his third birthday, his father took him fishing for the first time. The expedition proved hugely successful. "He knows when he gets a bite," his mother reported afterward, "and lands them all himself." But the Michigan summers gave Hemingway something beyond his lifelong love of field and stream. Out of his memories of Walloon would come the settings and characters for some of his finest short stories.
The estimation of Hemingway in his high-school yearbook was "None are to be found more clever than Ernie." The observation reflected the respect he had earned for his abilities both in academics and in such extracurricular endeavors as his editorship of the school newspaper. The next logical step following graduation seemed to be college. Hemingway, however, was having none of that. Anxious to be independent, he decided instead to go to Kansas City, Missouri, and become a reporter for the Kansas City Star.
In 1917, the Kansas City Star was among the best newspapers in the country. Its staff boasted many bright and talented writers, and Hemingway's exposure to the intellectual interests of these reporters broadened his own perspectives substantially. Their influence doubtless also fed his nascent aspirations to write fiction. As one Star veteran recalled years later, just about every reporter during Hemingway's tenure on the paper harbored dreams of writing a novel.
In the spring of 1917, the United States became an active participant in World War I, and massive recruitment of American soldiers began. Hemingway wanted to enlist, but between parental objections and an eye condition that would probably have precluded his acceptance, he never tried. Still, he was determined to be part of the war. By early May 1918, he was in New York waiting to sail for Italy as a member of the Red Cross ambulance corps.
His stint with the ambulance corps proved brief, however. On July 8, shortly after midnight, Hemingway was in the frontlines distributing coffee, candy, and postcards to soldiers. Suddenly, an Austrian trench mortar arced down, spewing its metal shards in all directions. Among the wounded was Hemingway, who sat out the rest of the war as a convalescent.
Among the nurses attending to Hemingway following his battle injuries was an American named Agnes von Kurowsky. Before long he was in love with her. More than six years his senior, Kurowsky kept him at arm's length for awhile, but eventually she succumbed to his ebullient charm. Nevertheless, Kurowsky's feelings for Hemingway were never as deep as his attachment to her, and she broke off the relationship in a letter not long after he returned home.
But Hemingway never forgot this romance, and Kurowsky later became a primary model for the heroine in his novel of World War I, A Farewell to Arms.
After returning from World War I, Hemingway worked for awhile as a reporter for the Toronto Star and later as a writer for a magazine put out by the Chicago-based Cooperative Society of America. Two new acquaintances made in the fall of 1920, however, led to a radical shift in direction. One of the fomenters of change was a young woman named Hadley Richardson; the other was writer Sherwood Anderson. While his relationship with Hadley led to marriage, Anderson was the one who convinced him that the best place to start pursuing his ambition to write fiction was Paris. So it was that in the fall of 1921 Hemingway was preparing to sail to France with his new wife.
Eight years his senior, Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, proved unreservedly supportive of his writing aspirations, and it was her income from a trust that enabled him to pursue his literary ambitions in Paris. Although their marriage lasted less than six years, he always regarded her with warmth and gratitude. Hadley returned the compliment, feeling that were it not for his adventurous spirit, her life would have been far more dull and narrow.
When the Hemingways arrived in Paris, they were in good shape financially. Hadley's trust could be expected to yield an annual income in excess of $3,000, and Ernest's agreement to write stories for the Toronto Star promised to add to that figure substantially. At the current rates for Paris housing, they could thus afford a decent place to live. Yet when they went apartment-hunting, they settled on a two-room, fourth-floor walk-up in the oldest part of the Paris Left Bank, costing about eighteen dollars a month. The neighborhood was charmless, with no good restaurants or shopping, and the plumbing and heating were primitive. But the newlyweds indulged themselves in other ways. Immediately after moving into their apartment, they left for a three-week skiing holiday in Switzerland.
Among the most momentous relationships that Hemingway formed during his first months in Paris was his friendship with the avant-garde art collector and experimental modernist writer Gertrude Stein. In contrast to so many who found Stein's prose incomprehensible, Hemingway respected her professional expertise, and he readily accepted her as a mentor. From her he learned much about the rhythm of words and the power of repetition and unembellished direct statement. The friendship, however, had soured by late 1926, and the final chapter in the Hemingway-Stein relationship is a tale of pot-shots fired at each other in their writings.
Ezra Pound was a poet by profession, but he was a generous adviser by instinct, and many a writer, among them T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, benefited from his artistic counsel, encouragement, and editing. Pound met Hemingway early in 1922 and quickly took him on as a protégé. From Pound, Hemingway learned "to distrust adjectives" and received valuable guidance in how to compress his words into precise images. Many years later, Hemingway called Pound "a sort of saint" and said he was "the man I liked and trusted the most as critic."
When Hemingway first met F. Scott Fitzgerald in Paris in the spring of 1925, Fitzgerald had just published The Great Gatsby, and was at the height of his reputation as one of America's leading young writers. Even before they began to talk, Fitzgerald was prepared to like Hemingway, for he had seen in our time and admired it greatly. On the strength of that volume, he had, in fact, recommended its author "as the real thing" to his own editor, Max Perkins, at Charles Scribner's Sons, and thanks partly to his urging, the prestigious Scribner's finally took Hemingway on as one of its writers in 1926.
The daughter of a wealthy Arkansas landowner and banker, Pauline Pfeiffer found Hemingway too coarse for her taste when she first met him in early 1925, and Hemingway was much more taken with Pauline's sister than with her. Pauline's friendship with Hemingway's wife Hadley, however, threw them together and ultimately became a subterfuge for pursuing their own relationship. By early 1926, their initial indifference had turned into strong mutual attraction, and at year's end, with his divorce from Hadley in the works, the two were planning to be married.
Pauline was unflagging in her efforts to cater to Hemingway's wants. But eventually her ministrations were not enough to prevent the disintegration of their marriage in the late 1930s.
In 1923, Hemingway saw his first bullfight in Spain. He was so taken with this ancient blood sport that he soon returned to witness one of the bullfights that highlighted the annual fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona. By the time the festival was over, bullfighting was one of the passions of his life, and his third visit to the Pamplona festival in 1925 became the inspiration for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Ever eager to test his courage, Hemingway himself frequently participated in morning sessions at Pamplona where amateur matadors could take on bulls with padded horns. Here, he can be seen (right of center, in white pants and dark sweater) confronting a charging bull.
Fired with the fictional possibilities that he saw during his visit to the Pamplona bullfights in 1925, Hemingway started translating them into a novel soon after leaving the Spanish town. Within roughly two months, the first draft of what would eventually be titled The Sun Also Rises was done. Although this work is a classic today, one reviewer charged, at its publication in 1926, that Hemingway was hiding his talents "under a bushel of sensationalism and triviality." Many others, however, disagreed. One critic claimed that its "lean, hard narrative prose" put a good deal of "literary English to shame," and yet another noted that the novel contained the best dialogue to be found in contemporary fiction.
Drawn heavily from Hemingway's own experiences as an ambulance driver in World War I, A Farewell to Arms cast its author in a new light. Until its publication in 1929, Hemingway had been seen as a talented writer with great promise. Now, in the wake of reviews trafficking heavily in superlatives, he was a widely acknowledged master of modern prose. After reading Farewell, his friend, poet Archibald MacLeish, wrote: "I am afraid you are not only a fine writer which I have always known but something a lot more than that & it scares me."
In late 1936, the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) asked Hemingway to report on the Spanish Civil War, which had broken out between the Loyalist defenders of the current republican regime and a conservative fascist coalition. The money was good; he had strong sympathy for the Loyalist cause; and being in the thick of war appealed to his appetite for adventure. It was, in short, an offer Hemingway could not refuse. Over the next two years, he would go to Spain three times as NANA's man at the front. In the process, he added a new ingredient to his public celebrity. Besides being an innovative man of letters, bullfighting aficionado, and expert outdoor sportsman, he was now the knowing war correspondent.
In late December 1937, correspondent Hemingway was observing the Loyalists' drive to take the nearby town of Teruel. Also on hand was the Hungarian-born photographer Robert Capa, who was just beginning to make his reputation as one of the great war photographers of this century. Capa saw in Hemingway a promising commercial opportunity, and he was soon focusing his lens on the writer with an eye to marketing the results as a photo story.
The series of pictures began with shots of Hemingway in his hotel room in Valencia, making preparations to report on Teruel. It then progressed to the battlefront, where Capa captured him studying his notes, talking to Loyalist soldiers, and seeking respite from a brutal winter cold around a fire. Among the more striking images was this one showing Hemingway sprawled in the grass, helping a Loyalist to unjam his rifle. The picture spoke volumes about Hemingway's approach to war reporting. Never content to be strictly an observer, he liked being part of the action, and the more directly involved in combat he was the more exhilarated he became.
In late 1936, Ernest Hemingway met writer Martha Gellhorn. She was blond, pretty, and successful, and Hemingway was immensely attracted to her. By early the next year, she had joined him in Spain, where he was covering the Civil War, and there the relationship blossomed into a full-blown affair. In late 1940, soon after his divorce from his second wife, Pauline, became final, he married Gellhorn.
Unlike Pauline, Gellhorn was not willing to dedicate herself almost entirely to catering to Hemingway's wants. That unwillingness created difficulties practically from the start, and by the time Gellhorn divorced him in 1945, the marriage was long over.
As Hemingway filed his news stories on the Spanish Civil War, he was also stowing away memories of the conflict for use in his fiction, and by early 1939, he was drawing on them to create the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Published the following year, the work was a best-seller from the outset, and more than one critic discussed its merits almost as if it was already a classic. One reviewer called it "the fullest, deepest, truest" book that Hemingway had ever written and predicted that it would eventually rank among "the major novels in American literature."
In late 1933, Hemingway arrived in East Africa with his wife Pauline and Key West friend Charles Thompson to begin a hunting safari. The chief aim of this venture was pleasure. Nevertheless, literary concerns were never entirely out of his mind, and the safari inspired two of Hemingway's finest short stories, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."
Hemingway's passion for hunting and fishing ran as deeply as his passion for writing, and although his literary endeavors were the main source of his fame, his celebrity rested as well on his reputation as an avid outdoor sportsman. By the mid-1930s, he was, in fact, on his way to becoming the best-known fisherman in America. He was also becoming a pacesetter in developing new and more aggressive techniques in deep-sea fishing, which, according to one expert, ultimately transformed the sport.
When the United States entered World War II in late 1941, Hemingway's lifelong relish for things military made involvement in the conflict inevitable. Initially, that involvement took the form of a short-lived adventure into intelligence work and patrolling for German U-boats in waters near his home in Cuba. Ultimately, however, he decided to get closer to the real war. By May 1944, he was on his way to covering Allied operations in Europe for Collier's magazine.
Correspondents and soldiers alike enjoyed Hemingway's company during World War II, but none more so than Colonel "Buck" Lanham, commanding officer of the Fourth Infantry Division's Twenty-Second Regiment. Here, Lanham is seen with Hemingway in late September 1944. The Twenty-Second had a few days earlier been part of a successful drive to penetrate Germany's border defenses, the so-called Siegfried Line, and in the photograph the two are examining a deserted piece of artillery used in those defenses.
Lanham's affection for Hemingway almost seemed like hero-worship sometimes. Writing of a dinner shared near the frontlines, he wrote that "Hemingway, presiding at the head of the table, might have been a fatherly Mars delighting in the happiness of his brood."
Hemingway's marriage to Martha Gellhorn had difficulties from its outset in 1940, and its dissolution became certain when he met Mary Welsh, a member of Time's European staff, shortly after he arrived in England to begin covering World War II. Among Welsh's most alluring qualities was a willingness to flatter and cater to him.
The couple's wartime courtship almost ended in Paris when, in a fit of jealousy over Welsh's estranged husband, a well-lubricated Hemingway shot up a hotel toilet bowl. When Hemingway left Europe early in 1945, however, he and Welsh were planning to be married.
Central in Hemingway’s life was Adriana Ivancich, member of an aristocratic Venetian family. From the moment he met this young girl during his Italian stay in 1948, he was smitten, and for several years he carried on a platonic flirtation. The advent of Adriana marked the end of a dry spell in Hemingway's writing, and their relationship became the basis for the May-December romance portrayed in Across the River and into the Trees. Adriana also seems to have had a part in the making of one of Hemingway's masterpieces, The Old Man and the Sea; it was her stay with the Hemingways in late 1950 that provided the energizing lift that the writer apparently needed to begin this tale.
Hemingway's confidence in his own work was sometimes misplaced, but not in the case of The Old Man and the Sea. Life magazine published the novella in toto in a single issue, and within forty-eight hours, all 5.3 million copies were snapped up. Interestingly enough, the Life publication did not lessen demand for the work in hardcover, and for six months it remained on the best-sellers' list. Perhaps most noteworthy, however, was The Old Man and the Sea's rapid acceptance into the canon of American classics.
Hemingway had by the early 1950s become a celebrity of the first rank. As one
Hemingway student has put it: "He once made news because of what he did; now he
made news because of who he was." One indication of the truth of that statement
was Look magazine's offer in 1953 to defray $15,000 of the expenses
for Hemingway's forthcoming African safari if it could send a photographer
along. For 3,500 words from Hemingway to run with the resulting pictures, it
threw in $10,000 more. The deal was hard to refuse. When Hemingway's safari set
out on September 1, 1953, Look's photographer Earl Theisen was on
hand to record it. And there was much to record of Hemingway on his 1953 safari.
Drinking heavily, he took up with a native girl under the eyes of his own wife;
he shaved his head in the name of "going native"; and, dyeing his clothes a
rusty color to match the hue favored among the local Masai people, he went
hunting with a spear.
The early 1950s yielded a number of noteworthy honors for Hemingway. In May 1953, The Old Man and the Sea earned him the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. The following spring, the American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed on him its prestigious Medal of Merit. Then, in October 1954, word came to him in Cuba that he had won the Nobel Prize in literature. Hemingway had often professed disdain for that ultimate honor, but when it came his way, there was no doubt that he was pleased. Claiming ill health, he said he could not go to Sweden to receive the award. Instead, the Swedish ambassador to Cuba came to his home outside of Havana to present him with the Nobel medal and citation.
On July 21, 1959, Hemingway turned sixty, and to mark that watershed, his wife Mary threw an elaborate party at the spacious home of a millionaire friend who was serving as their host during their stay in Spain. Hemingway enjoyed himself immensely, but the celebration produced some indications that all was not well with him. Among them was a nasty flash of ill temper directed at his frontline pal from World War II, General "Buck" Lanham. Having come from Washington for the party, he left Spain certain that Hemingway was a very troubled man.
Hemingway's stability did not improve over the next few years, and on July 2, 1961, following several rounds of electroshock therapy, he killed himself at his home in Idaho.
The Hemingway Code Hero
Hemingway defined the Code Hero as a “man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.”
The Code Hero measures himself by how well he handles the difficult situations that life throws at him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a person faces death.
The Code Hero believes in nothing. Along with this, there is no after life.
The Code Hero is typically an individualist and free-willed. Although he believes in the ideals of courage and honor he has his own set of morals and principles based on his beliefs in honor, courage and endurance. A code hero never shows emotions; showing emotions and having a commitmnet to women shows weakness. Qualities such as bravery, adventurousness, and travel also define the code hero.
A final trait of the code hero is his dislike of the dark. It symbolizes death and is a source of fear for him. The rite of manhood for the code hero is facing death. However, once he faces death bravely and becomes a man he must continue the struggle and constantly prove himself to retain his manhood.
Dr. Gerald Lucas: Hemingway's Code
Perhaps
more explicitly than Fitzgerald’s, many of Hemingway’s heroes search for a code
— values that give their lives meaning. The artists of modernism turned inward
to find the truth since the external world was one of chaos. As a result, truth
becomes relativistic, subjective, and personal, lacking absolutes. This
fluctuating reality becomes the basis of a modernist interpretation of the
universe: the construction of reality based upon an individualistic and
provisional interpretation of internal values. Hemingway’s “A Clean,
Well-Lighted Place” takes a psychological approach to existence, illustrating a
mature “Hemingway hero” who has developed an approach to life that helps him get
though the day.
With the absence of an epistemological explanation of the universe, the older waiter in “Place” has developed an ontological position that helps him survive. The darkness for the older waiter and his deaf customer represents nada, or nothing: “It was a nothing that [the old waiter] knew too well” (291). This nothing is the existential awareness of the void — something all too prevalent when one is alone in his autumn years and the lights are off. The younger waiter treats the deaf customer with an unsympathetic derision — a sign of existential innocence.
The older waiter attempts to function as the younger waiter’s reality instructor, without much success. Indeed, implies the younger waiter, what does he know about the void: he has “youth, confidence, and a job” — not to mention a wife to go home to (290). By implication, the older waiter has only a job while the old patron has nothing. The younger waiter will have to learn this difficult lesson on his own since now he only wants sleep and not a lesson: “Stop talking nonsense and lock up” (290). What the naive waiter dismisses as nonsense composes a difficult reality for the older waiter. Yet, in a attempt to survive, he has developed a code comprised of compassion and grace under pressure that offers his life meaning.
Dignity is maintained through cleanliness and composure. Even though the old patron is drunk when he leaves the café, the old waiter remarks to himself: “a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity” (291). The waiter knows how difficult this dignity is to maintain, so his compassion for the old man shows his empathy and understanding: “Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café” (290). He realizes through his own experience with nada the importance of a clean, well-lighted place in the fight against the void.
This position for living represents the mature values of the Hemingway hero. In an effort to maintain human dignity in the face of the wasteland, Hemingway shows compassion and empathy in the absence of religious or epistemological understanding. Why is not as important as how when all that one sees in the dark is nada.
Essay- Jakes Barnes: A Hemingway Code Hero?
The portrayal of heroism is an essential aspect of literature, and every writer delineates his heroes through their ability to triumph over adversity. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) consistently defined and distinguished his heroes through an echoing set of characteristics that form a characteristic “Hemingway Code Hero.” A Code Hero is one that distinguishes himself by his ability to demonstrate grace under pressure, to adhere to a strong set of personal values and, most importantly, to live life to the fullest. In Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), the protagonist Jakes Barnes serves as a controversial example of a Code Hero. Jake fits into the category of a Hemingway Code Hero because he embodies the most significant characteristics of a quintessential Code Hero: he demonstrates his manhood through the ability to endure pain with dignity, he imposes order upon his chaotic world through personal values, and he attempts to enjoy the simple pleasures of life to add meaning to his existence.
Hemingway characterized the Code Hero as “a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage, and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful” (Dwiggins). The most essential characteristic of a Code Hero is the capacity to exemplify grace under pressure, and Hemingway continually placed his characters into unfortunate, and often tragic, situations to test their ability to survive. Hemingway’s primary focus was therefore on the strained individual and his response to adversity. He measured and evaluated his characters by their ability not only to overcome the severe crises of life, but also to do so with dignity and perseverance (Gurko 228). Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls is assigned the dangerous task of destroying a bridge in fascist enemy territory during the Spanish Civil War. Like all Code Heroes, Robert improves his environment by fulfilling his duty to the best of his knowledge and skill, though often at his own expense. Ultimately, it is the hero’s task to survive by any means possible, yet only a Code Hero has the capacity to emerge from the experience stoically in order to set a societal example.
The Hemingway Code Hero embodies the personal values of honor, bravery and responsibility, in an effort to impose stability and morality into his disordered existence. Because Hemingway’s struggles are generally within the mind and life of the hero, the hero’s motivation lies in survival rather than public acclaim or societal improvement. Leo Gurko states, “Their behavior is a reaction to the moral emptiness of the universe, an emptiness that they feel compelled to fill by their own special efforts” (236). Characters leave their mark various ways, for instance, in A Farwell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, the protagonists valiantly risk their lives to save their companions. The hero’s values are strictly personal; while he lives meticulously by his code of morality, he does not forcefully impose his values upon others. He then indirectly brightens and improves their existence by living his life by the code of morality.
Lastly, another distinguishing quality of the classic Code Hero is the capacity to truly live life to the fullest by embracing every opportunity and experience. The hero does not submissively watch life pass him by; he is extremely active and often enjoys the sensuous pleasures of drinking, eating, and dancing (Dahiya 90). In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway illustrates the lust for living sensuously by describing the unmistakable hero of the novel, Pedro, “with a big glass of cognac in his hand, sitting laughing between me and a woman with bare shoulders, at a table full of drinks” (Hemingway 180-181). More important than the end result, however, is the character’s effort to enjoy life in spite of his struggle. The hero must have the capacity to serve his duty by living honorably and morally without sacrificing his personal pleasure. The successful execution of this balancing act is the mark of a true Code Hero.
In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway illustrates the hero’s daunting struggle for survival in the face of destruction and moral desolation. Jake, rendered handicapped from World War I, has a close relationship with the “lost generation”: the scarred, aimless and morally bankrupt war survivors. Hemingway clearly distinguishes Jake from his peers by his exemplification of the attributes and values of a Code Hero: intense stoicism, morality, and activity.
Jake suffers acutely from his war injury, yet his ability to display unfailing grace under pressure illustrates his fortitude. In the opening action of the novel, the protagonist is clearly already at a disadvantage, both physically and emotionally. An Italian general alludes to the severity of his sacrifice with his solemn recognition, “you… have given more than your life” (Hemingway 39). Jake’s disability prevents him from ever consummating his love with Brett Ashley in their hopeless relationship, yet he must agonizingly witness the promiscuity of the woman he loves on a daily basis. Gurko emphasizes Jake’s suffering by stating, “Burdened by a handicap that would crush most men, he bears it stoically” (57). Rather than exploiting his injury and relying on it as a crutch, Jake realistically accepts his situation and heroically attempts to overcome it. While his peers hide under the façade of contentment by escaping from reality, Jake embraces it as the only constant in his life. He clings to the brutal truth with desperation; thus achieving a sense of self-knowledge. Hemingway illustrates Jake’s forgone illusions in the final passage of the novel:
“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (Hemingway 251)
Brett still idealistically dreams of a relationship with Jake by living in a fantasy world, but Jake’s response to her delusion reveals his grasp on the bitter truth. While it would certainly be easier for Jake to exist in an illusion where a relationship with Brett is plausible, Jake bravely accepts reality in order to free both Brett and himself from the trappings of fantasy. Even in the face of a physical disability and an emotionally sterile existence, Jake’s perseverance allows him to emerge stoically as a Code Hero by surviving the struggles of everyday life.
Jake’s relentless adherence to the ethical code that he sets for himself not only differentiates him from his morally bankrupt companions, but also sets the standard for others to follow. Among his peers, Jake is notably the only character to display both the responsibility and the commitment of a steady job, and he deeply values financial justice. Abiding by the concept of the “morality of compensation,” Jake characterizes financial debt as a moral failure, so he competently provides for both himself and his friends (Dahiya 73-74). In addition, as in many Hemingway novels, Jake’s continual effort and dedication add to his credibility. Gurko explains, “Living or trying to live with supreme skill is a moral action, and the moral choice lies between doing something indifferently or doing it well” (63). Jake reliably follows through with every action and demonstrates skill in his profession, though many times his effort exceeds the final outcome. Furthermore, in terms of his society, Jake’s adherence to his values of honor and competence influences Brett to her first selfless and moral act. In this, Hemingway demonstrates Jake’s heroic inspiration to those around him.
Finally, Jake’s admirable effort to overcome his disability so as to truly embrace life exemplifies his commitment to the Hemingway code of action as a means of attaining honor. While Jake cannot participate in the fiesta of Pamplona, he is a passionate aficionado: a true lover of bullfighting. While his aficion does not bring him the public acclaim equal to that of a bullfighter, its authenticity and purity provides identical satisfaction and honor under the Hemingway code (Gurko 58). Jake seems happy only when the fiesta is in full swing, when he can become swept up in the eating, drinking, action and excitement of the moment. Because his injury limits the satisfaction that he can experience, Jake savors and enjoys every opportunity to increase his “selective pleasure” (Gurko 62). Even when Jake cannot personally experience a situation, he serves as a catalyst who introduces pleasure into the lives of others. In spite of the mounting obstacles, Jake’s unyielding hunger for life reveals a celebration of life that spreads joy to those around him.
Pointing to Jake’s emasculation as a sign of weakness, some critics argue that Pedro Romero is the sole embodiment of the Code Hero in The Sun Also Rises. While his undeniable bravery and prowess classify Pedro as a hero, his existence does not prevent another, hidden character to also personify the Code Hero. Jake certainly cannot compete with Pedro’s overwhelming masculinity; however, his injury serves as a manifestation of the hardship and misfortune that Jake must overcome. Leo Gurko asserts that, while both Pedro and Jake embody “grace under pressure,” Pedro’s comes with ease, while Jake’s relative grace under severe pressure carries significant verification of heroism (64).
In his novels, Hemigway plots the hero against daunting odds to test the strength of his character. In the face of harsh reality and adversity, only those with the ability to bear their burden stoically can emerge successfully. The capacity to demonstrate grace under pressure, to adhere to a personal moral code, and to embrace every opportunity to its full potential are the vital characteristics that typify a Code Hero. Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises relentlessly strives to set the societal standard through his stoicism, morality, and action; therefore, his exemplification of these qualities characterizes him as a true Hemingway Code Hero.
Ideas to consider:
Consumership:
All the characters are consumers of something:
Brett consumes men, Bill and Mike consume alcohol, Robert Cohn consumes himself, in a sense, in the gradual dismantling of his manhood. Robert ostensibly possesses all the traits of a “man,” yet in reality these are sham. He is aboxer, but he cannot rely on brutality without asking for forgiveness. He is a writer, yet he cannot produce after his initial work. He falls in love with a woman who immascualtes him, and he makes himself pathetic. In fact, Cohn is fuzzy. There are no absolutes, and so his tory is not finished for the reader.
Emasculation:
Jake Barnes is in reality emasculated, but, perhaps because he is thus insulated from Brett’s destructive nature, he is ironically the most manly in the novel. He is the code hero, and he is the moral center. It is Jake’s story that is completed for the reader, and it is only Jake at the end who rises above Brett.
Morals and Morality
Reflecting on his friends and especially on Robert Cohn, who is becoming a major annoyance, Jake reflects on his moral code, “That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality.” Jake is more interested in his own concerns and, secondarily, Brett’s. Cohn was fortunate enough to have a holiday with Brett but he is not smart enough to accept that it meant nothing. Because Cohn cannot create his own version of the group’s code, he becomes the subject of persecution. Jake is bothered by it but he is more disgusted when he knowingly violates the code of aficionado by setting up Brett with Romero. This disrupts his friendship with Montoya and with Cohn. Respect is betrayed and lost. The garbage that is visible at the end of the fiesta only compounds his self-disgust. However, instead of leading to an epiphany he simply decides to develop his own code of style more thoroughly. That style is a hard-boiled self-centeredness.
Brett is lost throughout the novel. She is disgusted with herself and those around her, especially Jake—through no fault of his own. The only moment she exerts herself in terms of morality is to get rid of Romero. Throughout the novel, Brett defies conventional morality by having short, meaningless affairs. Because of her self-centeredness and unhappiness, she is unable to stop this self-destructive behavior and is often passive to events. The affairs are meant to escape her unsatisfactory relationship with Jake, whom she truly loves but who is unable to physically consummate their relationship.
Meaning of Life
The theme of life’s meaning turns from the question of essence, “what it was all about,” to existence, “how to live in it.” However, the reason for this polarity is the inability of the main characters to rise above that mediocrity. They must reject the life of the hero as impossible for themselves. “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.” To which Cohn replies, “I am not interested in bullfighters. That’s an abnormal life.” Cohn’s idea of life is romantic—a life of literary fame and adventure with a beautiful mistress who happens to have a title. But the group despises Cohn’s notions and Brett finally judges that he is “not one of us.” Instead, the key to life is a development of one’s ability to wisely utilize the full worth of one’s money. This can take many forms but only Jake, the Count, and to a certain extent Bill Gorton, are able to do this. Brett, and especially Mike Campbell (who is ever an “undischarged bankrupt”), will never be happy even if they become rich because they are incapable of utilizing money well.
Bill relies on exchange value and use. When he first enters the narrative he wishes to buy Jake a stuffed dog, “Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.” Bill’s philosophy is to use money to buy moments as well as to show one’s stature. His motto is “Never be daunted.” Possibilities for bliss, such as a pub or a bottle, must be utilized to their full potential.
Jake, meanwhile, is developing a more sophisticated attitude full of tabulating expenses which keeps his mind off his main problem of impotence. “I paid my way into things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in.” Then he adds that he might change his mind in five years. In other words, “the lost generation” can get their kicks by a wise expenditure of money (even if they are not rich) until a semblance of reality has been reconstructed and the war is in the past. A possible future philosophy is hinted at when Jake reads Turgenieff and knows he will remember what he reads as if it was his experience. That is, Turgenieff writes truthfully about experience in a way Hemingway agreed with. “That was another good thing you paid for and then had.” But payment here is the effort of reading literature which you can then use to recover from war.
Related to this theme is the concept of the loss of ontological ground.
Historical Background
When Hemingway went to Paris in 1921, he experienced a culture shock. Gertrude
Stein’s phrase “lost generation” referred to the prevalent attitude of the day.
The phrase came into usage because “all maps were useless and . . . they had to
explore a new-found land for themselves—this generation was lost” (Mizener 122).
In essence, these people could accept nothing about current attitudes.
They wanted to begin over through experience to work out a code of conduct to live by and respect. Members of the Jazz Age included painters, writers, rioters, artists, and the idle rich all living decadent lives. These people were American expatriates who had come to Paris as a haven for creativity and Bohemian lifestyles.
Actually, many were escaping conservative American attitudes. After World War I, politicians seemed untrustworthy, and Prohibition was politically popular. There was an upsurge of fundamentalist ministers, book and movie censorship, and groups like the KKK. Paris streets, in contrast, were filled with silent movie stars, beautiful people, and lots of liquor.
Days of cars, installment loans, and refrigerators had changed women’s roles, too. They now sported short skirts, sheer dresses, bobbed hair, and lipstick. Instead of binding their waists, they now bound their breasts. This was the first generation of women to drink, smoke, dance wildly, and deal with marital problems by divorce.
Paris provided those quick divorces and diversions for this “lost generation.” Writers of the time had “energy and optimism” (Mizener, 122). They were idealists who scorned conservative, American attitudes. They were dissatisfied with their own country and preferred to live elsewhere. It is said all writers eventually passed through Paris because the European world allowed them “to discover the possibilities in themselves as Americans” (Mizener, 124).
Narrative
The first-person narration of Jake Barnes is sometimes referred to as a “roman à clef.” A roman à clef is a story understandable only to those who have a “key” for deciphering the real persons and places behind the story. The story of Jake Barnes resembles the real events of the summer of 1925 in the life of Hemingway and his friends. Still there is enough difference that no “key” is needed for understanding. That is to say, the novel stands on its own whether or not the reader knows on whom the character Lady Brett Ashley is based. In addition, Jake Barnes is not Hemingway because in real life Hemingway was married when he went to Pamplona. Jake is a blending of several real people as well as a fruition of Hemingway’s theoretic code-hero. There is enough similarity for comparisons but the novel is in no way an autobiographical event. It is a story attempting to speak truths to the present generation.
Dialogue
Hemingway’s dependence on dialogue is just one mark of his modernity. Henry
James, for example, felt dialogue was the climax of a scene and was to be used
sparingly. Hemingway creates whole scenes solely from dialogue. However,
Hemingway’s dialogue made the story an easy and fast read with effects similar
to news writing. The author seems to disappear as the narrator allows his
contact with others to balance out the story. It becomes a group conversation
rather than a narration. Hemingway’s ability with this feature delighted many
critics. Conrad Aiken remarked, “More than any other talk I can call to mind, it
is alive with the rhythms and idioms, the pauses and suspensions and innuendoes
and shorthands, of living speech. It is in the dialogue, almost entirely, that
Mr. Hemingway tells his story and makes the people live and act.” The use of
dialogue is one of the key features of Hemingway’s style.
Hero
Hemingway’s solution to the ennui, or disillusioned nausea, that marked his
“lost generation” was the encouragement of each person in their path to being a
hero. However, as is clear in the novel, his theory did not include bravery in
war or sport but insisted that the individual create a moral code. One must
“never be daunted.”
Jake Barnes and friends are the best examples of Hemingway pursuing his theories. Succeeding Hemingway heroes do have the humanity to inspire our sympathy and imitation. This code-hero was defined eloquently by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks while discussing Hemingway’s “The Killers.” They said that the code-hero “is the tough man . . . the disciplined man, who actually is aware of pathos or tragedy.” Lacking spontaneous emotion, the code-hero “sheathes [his sensibility] in the code of toughness” because “he has learned that the only way to hold on to 'honor,' to individuality, to, even, the human order . . . is to live by his code.” Romero provides the clearest example not through his bullfighting but through his ability to ignore the bruises Cohn gives him in order to perform as he is capable. The success of the fiesta depends on his ability to do so. Brett and Jake also satisfy this definition. Brett decides she cannot corrupt the young bullfighter but will continue to live in style hiding her frustrated love. Jake decides he has to live according to his own code with the help of his stoicism.
Idiom
The heavy use of dialogue, the terse, staccato sentences, and the minimalist
tightness that characterizes descriptions and emotional expenditure are the
marks of the style or idiom that Hemingway made his own. According to this
idiom, carefully chosen language can relate fictional authenticity in such a way
that it will never ring false, the goal being to carefully construct a world
that has certitude and leave the uncertain unsaid. Thus the language appears
often to refer to ideas beyond what is actually written. However, only the
written words are to be trusted and only they are true. The effect of this new
style is similar to Biblical genesis: reconstruct from the rubble of war a
civilization of beauty and simplicity.
The bareness of the intention is best revealed on the fishing expedition, “Once in the night I woke and heard the wind blowing. It felt good to be warm and in bed.” Two sentences were used where previous writers would have expended chapters. Furthermore, it is an incredibly simple and stark contrast to the sleepless nights of Paris and it directly calls to mind the howls of the “Waste Land.”
The Lost Generation
Writers, horrified by the stranglehold of business and the uselessness of
Prohibition, expatriated to Paris where the favorable exchange rate enabled them
to work for a newspaper or magazine. Yet these writers usually spent most of
their time sitting in cafes lost in the aftermath of a war for which they
refused responsibility. Disillusioned, they discussed their inherited
nineteenth-century values and the provincial and emotional barrenness of
America. Fortunately, they found comfort in an older generation. Hemingway,
armed with letters of introduction by Sherwood Anderson, joined this group who
flocked to Gertrude Stein’s Salon, Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company
bookstore, the apartment of James Joyce, the transatlantic review offices
of Ford Madox Ford, or Samuel Putnam’s office. The older writers cultivated the
members of what Stein labeled, after overhearing her mechanic, as “the lost
generation.” Of the elders, Stein, who was the bridge between past and present,
and Ezra Pound, whom Hemingway tried to teach boxing in return for tutelage,
were the most important influences on Hemingway.
“The Lost Generation” succeeded in poking through the rubble of civilization and manufacturing art anew. From war’s negation comes affirmation as a means to live with disillusionment. T. S. Eliot wove the old myths together into a poem of epic influence, “The Waste Land.” A new poetry was created by e. e. cummings. F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, and Glenway Westcott were members of this generation who helped rejuvenate the arts. The most important contribution of “The Lost Generation” was to prove the resiliency of culture and set it moving again with the hopeful idealism that would mark American literature in the 1930s.
The Roaring Twenties
In the Europe of the mid-1920s, life was returning to normal and cities were
being reconstructed after the devastation of World War I. Tensions, which still
existed between France and Germany over border issues, were quiet, as France
became isolated. The French war effort had depended on American loans and their
repayment depended on reparations from Germany. These reparations were recovered
with difficulty because Britain and the United States were hesitant to force
matters. Still, Germany was potentially the most powerful nation in Europe and
was quietly being given favorable loan terms by the United States. The French
economy worsened when the franc was stabilized at 20% of its pre-war value. This
had the effect of making France a collector of gold and brought
adventure-seeking Americans, with moderate sums of dollars, to take advantage of
exchange rates.
New Leaders
Though a long way off, the leaders who would play a large role in World War II
came to power. Josef Stalin assumed his 27-year dictatorship in the Soviet
Union. He de-emphasized world revolution in favor of repressing and terrorizing
Soviet citizens and Russian neighbors. The Politburo, meanwhile, expelled Leon
Trotsky and Grigori Zinoviev. In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumed control of the
country and the Fascist party became the party of state without opposition.
Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Sun Yat-Sen and began to unify China. In Japan,
Yoshihito died and his son became Emperor Hirohito (a role which he retained
until his death in 1989).
Economics
For members of the upper middle class or the rich, the twenties were indeed the
era of prosperity, debauchery, and bootlegging. For the rest of humanity, life
was still a struggle. The 1921 musical “Ain’t We Got Fun” encapsulates the
period saying, “The rich get richer, and the poor get children.” Coal miners in
America stretched their meager 75-cents-per-hour wages (roughly $7.50 in 1995
dollars) to feed their families. Public-school teachers made slightly less at
$1000 a year. Labor movements were met with brutal force but there were few
improvements. The Ford Motor Company introduced an 8-hour day and a 5-day week.
The picture for blacks in America was especially hard with 85% of blacks living
in the segregated south and 23% of them illiterate. Great numbers of blacks
began migrating north to the cities with lasting demographic effects.
Meanwhile, labor relations in Britain were tantamount to class war. A general strike crippled the nation as coal miners belonging to the Trade Union Congress demanded, “Not a penny off the pay; not a minute on the day.” Many workers sympathetic to the miners (railwaymen, printers, dockworkers, construction workers, and others) went on strike as well. At the root of the problem was the decision by Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill to return to the gold standard. That decision had the effect of cheapening import prices and thus forcing mine operators to cut wages so as to compete with German and Polish imports. Economist John Maynard Keynes considered Churchill’s decision “silly.” Matters nearly erupted in violence as the Royal Navy trained its guns on strikers who tried to prevent the off-loading of ships at the docks.
Already prepared for his style by the short story collection In Our Time and the subject matter by a short story, “The Undefeated,” Hemingway’s readers asserted that The Sun Also Rises more than satisfied expectations. The novel was appreciated for its modern “ease” and quickly became the novel of the “lost generation.” More recently, the novel has helped rejuvenate Hemingway’s reputation. Critical attention to the novel can categorized as follows: early surprise and discussion of plot (focusing on the bullfighting, Europe, or “the lost generation”); the alternative morality Hemingway provides in the face of disillusionment; the facts of impotency and gender in the novel; and finally, where the novel fits into Hemingway’s reputation.
Except for Allen Tate’s, the first reviews were glowing, congratulatory, and painfully aware of the ubiquitous war fatigue. Conrad Aiken, in the New York Herald Tribune, was struck first and foremost by the bullfighting which he compared to “half a course of psycho-analysis.” “One is thrilled and horrified; but one is also fascinated, and one cannot have enough.” Aiken observes that the novel “works up to, and in a sense is built around, a bullfight.” In addition, he is unaware of anyone using dialogue better than Hemingway does. A reviewer for the New York Times Book Review said, “It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts mere literary English to shame. Hemingway knows how . . . to arrange a collection of words which shall betray a great deal more than is to be found in the individual parts.” Lawrence S. Morris, in The New Republic, saw the novel as “one stride toward that objectification” which the current generation needed after rejecting its inherited myths. Tate wrote negatively, in The Nation, that the significance of Hemingway’s subject matter “is mixed or incomplete.” Furthermore, the habit of throwing stones at the great “is disconcerting in the present novel; it strains the context; and one suspects that Mr. Hemingway protests too much. The point he seems to be making is that he is morally superior . . . [to] Mr. Mencken, but it is not yet clear just why.”
James T. Farrell wrote a 1943 reaction, in the New York Times, to a novel that was supposedly “the definite account of a war-wearied lost generation.” He explained the novel’s popularity as a result of the pacifism of the post-war generation ready to challenge those values that had brought that war. Hemingway’s novel, therefore, was right on time. “He arrived on the literary scene the absolute master of the style he has made his own; his attitudes were firmly fixed at that time, and he said pretty much what he had to say with his first stories, and his first two novels.” Philip Young was more succinct, saying the novel is “still Hemingway’s Waste Land and Jake is Hemingway’s Fisher King.”
Criticism became more analytical through the 1950s and gradually dissected Hemingway the man. Mark Spilka, in Twelve Original Essays, tried to find the moral of the story by focusing on its love theme. He concluded that Pedro is the hero of the story. Therefore, the lesson is that a hero is someone “whose code gives meaning to a world where love and religion are defunct.” Carlos Baker focused on the geography because “place and the sense of fact . . . [as well as the] operation of the sense of scene” is Hemingway’s style, nothing more. Earl H. Rovit felt otherwise, in Landmarks of American Writing. He likened the novel to a “Newtonian world-machine” which rendered the metaphor of our age—which is explosion—conscious for the first time. For this reason the novel continues to “provoke our thought.” Terrence Doody, in The Journal of Narrative Technique, was moved to say Hemingway did not know what he was doing with his narrator Jake Barnes. He added that the “naive contact with the world” the Hemingway style enables is clearly not sufficient since Faulkner and Fitzgerald are now preferred.
Sam S. Baskett picked up on the debate over Jake Barnes for his review in The Centennial Review, asking what sort of moral center Hemingway, spokesman for a generation, had come up with. Baskett answered this question by noting the value that characters have for themselves is a function of their regard for Brett—their godhead. Thus, Jake is the hero because he understands how to “live as a moral being” through writing his story and ignoring Brett. Andrew Hook’s review, in Ernest Hemingway: New Critical Essays, is also interested in the moral center which is imposed, contrary to the novels that follow where the hero makes the choice, on Jake. Hook found that in this novel Hemingway “risks challenging the very codes and values” of the rest of his fiction and his life.
Criticism of the 1980s summed up Hemingway or discussed issues of gender. Nina Schwartz, in Criticism, analyzed the novel as an attempt to return “man to the center of a humanistic universe” by allowing Jake to control the sigmfiers. The crucial act here is Jake’s displacement of his own desire to his favorite hero, Romero. Woman, or Brett as love object, assumes the most powerful position as castrator of “the very mythos of castration.” The woman becomes the author of the men and the Bull of their ritual. Suknta Paul Kumar more simply declared woman as the hero of the novel, not Jake or Romero. Kumar said the novel “paves the way for complete androgynous relationships through an acceptance and absorption of the new values as well as the new female ideal.” Sibbie O’Sullivan’s article, in Arizona Quarterly, defended Hemingway against charges of misogyny: he respected the new woman being created in the 1920s. O’Sullivan took inspiration from Jake’s idea that you had to love a woman to befriend her and showed that Brett “is a positive force . . . who makes an attempt to live honestly.”
Lastly, John W. Aldridge summarized up Hemingway’s modern reputation in The Sewanee Review. The dark side of the author is forgiven