Main Themes Of The Sun Also Rises example essay topic

Ernest Hemingway and Symbolism Ernest Miller Hemingway is a well-known American author who wrote in the twentieth century. He has written several novels such as, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. The Sun Also Rises was finished on April 1, 1926 and was published in October of 1926. The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway's expression of his own life.

He had changed the names of his friends and some of the details, but the real identities of the characters were obvious to anyone in Paris. The Sun Also Rises encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I generation, know as the Lost Generation. This poignantly beautiful story of a group of American and English expatriates on a sojourn from Paris to Pamplona represents a dramatic step forward for Hemingway's evolving style. Featuring Left Bank Paris in the 1920's and brutally realistic descriptions of bullfighting in Spain, the story is about the flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes. Ernest Miller Hemingway is an American author who has penned several novels and short stories; one of his works is The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway was raised with the conservative Midwestern values of strong religion, hard work, physical fitness and self-determination; if one adhered to these parameters, he was taught, he would be ensured of success in whatever field he chose. As a boy, he was taught by his father to hunt and fish. When he wasn't hunting or fishing his mother taught him the finer points of music. Hemingway never had a knack for music and suffered through choir practices and cello lessons, however the musical knowledge he acquired from his mother helped him share in his first wife Hadley's interest in the piano Hemingway received his formal schooling in the Oak Park public school system. In high school he was mediocre at sports, playing football, swimming, water basketball and serving as the track team manager.

He also worked on the school newspaper called the Trapeze. Hemingway graduated in the spring of 1917 and instead of going to college the following fall like his parents expected; he took a job as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Hemingway signed up as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross during WWI. He was accepted in December of 1917, left his job at the paper in April of 1918, and sailed for Europe in May. When Hemingway returned home from Italy in January of 1919 he found Oak Park dull compared to the adventures of war. With a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway met some of Paris' prominent writers and artists and forged quick friendships with them during his first few years.

Counted among those friends were Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Max Eastman, Lincoln Steffens and Wyndam Lewis, and he was acquainted with the painters Miro and Picasso. Hemingway was inspired to write different works at different times because of the events that occured in his life. Hemingway died July 2, 1961, at his home, as the result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Ernest Hemingway had a different style of writing than the other authors in his time.

"The Sun Also Rises is the book that established Hemingway as a literary force and it introduced the world to the Lost Generation". The Lost Generation is referred to as the disillusioned that fought in the war. "Two of the novel's main characters, Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes, typify the Lost Generation."This book has a lot of thematic issues, but the reader really needs to think to be able to pick up on all of them". Friendship, stoicism, and natural grace under pressure are offered as the values that matter in an otherwise amoral often-senseless world.

"His mind is set on writing only". The only thing Hemingway thought about was writing and finishing The Sun Also Rises. "The writing is as strong and powerful as a swift kick to the head". This quote is referring to Hemingway's strong and complex style of writing. "Hemingway writes about the dreariness of everyday life but it is interesting at the emphasis on drinking during the age of prohibition."The only failing is that the messages he delivers are a little empty in that we know he delivers them in a way that we like. His morals are hard to understand unless you can achieve his state of mind.

The main characters of the novel are Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, and Pedro Romero. While the characters are realistically drawn, each has a sort of representative quality that defines his or her relationship with the group and with the age in which the novel is set. Jake Barnes has his war wound, which robs him of the ability to have sex though not the desire; he is capable of survival and communication though not regeneration. Robert Cohn's Jewishness marks him for exclusion and underlines the snobbishness of this circle even in its apparent informality. However, he is alienated more by his stubborn chivalry and romanticism, expressed in his constant seriousness and his obsessive attachment to Brett. Brett is the promiscuous femme fatale; Mike is the indiscreet alcoholic; Bill Gorton is the perceptive joker (who makes the sustained reference to stuffed dogs).

The overall plot concern of understanding is summarized by the minor but important character of the count:" That is the secret. You must get to know the values". He has searched for meaning all of his life and has found it in understanding the values. Most of the other characters have yet to find the values.

Jake is still stuck in the past, unable to get beyond the permanence of his war wound. Yet, he can still envision of future with Brett. Brett, who will always remain in her conquests' memories, is trying to forget herself in drink and meaningless sex. In spite of this, she can clearly and accurately visualize the improbability of any future with Jake. One of the main themes of The Sun Also Rises is impotence.

Not only Jake's physical impotence, but also the powerlessness of the bull in the face of its imminent cruel death, the characters' barrenness of emotion and lack of sensitivity, their ineffectiveness, alcoholism, and failure to work out some sort of meaningful "personal philosophy" and an "exhausted cynicism". Hemingway shows war wounds as the destroyer of love: Jake pursues love without sex and Brett pursues sex without love. Other themes found under the umbrella of impotence are: lack of family, rootlessness, nihilism, and alienation, being from somewhere else and being cut off from the past. It is the cyclical nature of the novel, heralded in the second epigraph (from Ecclesiastics): "One generation pass eth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abide th forever... The sun also rise th, and the sun goeth down...

All the rivers run into the sea... unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again". The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway's best-selling novel and is still a popular book today. The Sun Also Rises was about the events that were taking place in Hemingway's life. The Sun Also Rises can be related to real life by accepting the fact that it was written from a man's real life experience. The symbolism in A Farewell to Arms is very much apparent. Ernest Hemingway has always been one who is big on the symbolism of night as being bad.

To the main character in Hemingway's novels, nights have always been a sign of death, or something negative to happen. Another one of the symbolisms in A Farewell to Arms is when Henry tries to escape from the Italian army by jumping off one of the ships the army was traveling on and running away from the army. This symbolism was the water that he jumped into was a symbolism of the new, clean life that he was going to live from now on. At this time, Henry goes off and finds his wife to be. The material objects that Hemingway uses to convey the theme are beer, the good and bad hillsides, and a railroad station between two tracks. The beer represents the couple's, "the American" and "the girl's", usual routine activity they do together.

This bothers the girl because "that's all [they] do... look at things and try new drinks". This shows that the girl is tired of doing the same thing and wants to do something different, like having a baby and a family, instead of fooling around all the time. She wants to stop being a girl and become a woman. Hemingway then presents the reader with two contrasting hills. One hill on one side of the station is dull, desolate, and barren; "it had no shade and no trees", very desert like. However, the other hill on the other side of the station is beautiful, plentiful in nature, and had "fields of grain and tress along the banks of the Ebro River".

Also on each side of the station where each hill is, there is a train track. These objects are symbolic devices prepare the reader in realizing that the characters are in a place of decision. The railroad station is a place of decision where one must decide to go one way or the other. The tracks symbolize either decision that the girl must make.

By the looks of the environment around each track, it is clear what kind of destination each track leads to. This proves that the girl must decide whether she wants her body and life to become barren and desolate or plentiful and beautiful. If she chooses abortion, then, of course, she will choose the track with the desolate hills because her body will become a barren desert where no life will abide. On the other hand if she wants to have the baby, she will choose the track which is surrounded by the plentiful and beautiful hills, because her body will be a genesis.

Either way, this clearly conveys the theme of abortion by showing that the girl must make a life or death decision. Along with symbolic objects, three symbolic characters further develop the theme of abortion. The three characters are "the girl", "the American", and "the woman". The girl symbolizes youth, innocence, and naivety. She is ignorant to her final decision of having an abortion, because she is so young and is still in the prime of her life, experiencing new things everyday. Hemingway uses her to show a young pregnant girl trying to decide if having the baby will ruin her youthfulness, ruin her relationship, or in contrast make her a woman.

She is getting tired of the same old routine, mentioned before, so her choice is to do something different, to have the baby, to become a woman, and leave her childish ways for good. The only thing that stands in her way of her decision is "the American". The American symbolizes an individualist who wants to do things his way. Usually Americans have a laid back attitude and don't want to mess with anything complicated, as does the American in this story.

The American supports the theme by opposing the girl and saying that the baby "is the only thing that bothers" them. He talks of a certain simple "Operation" in which the doctors will simply "let the air in."The American ['s]" talk of the "Operation" further justifies abortion as the theme because the doctors putting the air inside of her, refers to taking a fetus out of her womb. The man is more concerned with the effects of the baby ruining his life more than hers due to the fact that the man says the baby is the only thing that "bothers [them], when in actuality the woman approves of the baby. This also proves the "Operation" is an abortion because the usual case of abortions is: a woman gets pregnant, then the man gets scared, and tells the woman to get an abortion because the baby will ruin both of their lives. Next is the character of the woman who shows contrast, and supports the qualities of "the girl". She is called "the woman" because she is older, and the reader is to assume, wiser, and experienced.

The "girl" talks about "having a fine time" and "trying new drinks" which shows that she is still young, living a life of ease, experiencing a lot of things, where as the woman brings these "new drinks" to the girl. This displays the woman as mature, older, and experienced because she is working instead of "trying new drinks", and "having a fine time". She is no longer found leisurely trying new drinks, she is working trying to earn a living. She is an indirect supportive device of the theme in that she the opposite image of what the girl is. The woman further defines the symbolic qualities of the girl, in other words.