Same Old Jake, Now With Less Friends!

Over the roller coaster ride of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, our knowledge about the characters deepens, and consequently, so does our understanding of the characters.  I would like to talk about how Jake and his social circle changes as the story goes on as the book comes to a close.

I want to discuss how Jake changes through the end of the book, but actually (and this is perhaps in part due to the short time frame that the book covers – only a few weeks as far as I am aware) Jake doesn’t develop a whole lot.  Many of his fundamental views and behaviors remain unchanged.  He’s still more or less in love with Brett Ashley, remaining quietly jealous when a man he doesn’t approve of so much as looks of her. (His behavior toward her slightly changes, though – more on that later) He still rips into Robert Cohn whenever he can find a good opportunity.  And so that everything remains bottled up (ha ha) he still drinks so much that one might wonder how his liver looks.  However, recently we got the opportunity to see a relaxed and much happier Jake, the American aficionado who avidly watches the bullfighting and has Montoya’s appreciation – A Jake who truly belongs somewhere.  I think that this attitude is the biggest change to Jake over the entire book.  I liked this happy Jake much more than the usual gloomy one.

Jake’s friendships are sort of a mixed bag in a sense: some turn sour, like with Cohn and Montoya, while others remain the same, like with Mike and Bill.  It seems that the main catalyst for all of the drama and the bad dynamic that develops between members of the group is Brett, which didn’t really surprise me in the slightest.  After Cohn develops an attachment to Brett, all of the men act much harsher toward him, particularly Mike who can’t seem to control his foul mouth.  Additionally, when Jake introduces the bullfighter Pedro Romero (I like him, he seems like a decent fellow) to Brett, he loses his hard-earned rapport with Montoya, and the other bullfighters look upon him with scorn.  He gave up his place of belonging in mere hours.  With Brett, however, the situation is much more ambiguous.  On one hand, Jake appears to be trying to free himself from her grasp, as evidenced toward the much more detached attitude he adapts when talking with her at the very end.  On the other, the last sentence is very ambiguous.  “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”  Was he being sarcastic, or genuinely wistful?

In the end, I think that Jake’s social circle changed a lot more than he did himself.  Do you think that Jake changed in any significant way as the story went on?  Do you think I missed something?  

Sympathizing With Jake Barnes

I like writing about characters that I find to be interesting, and Jake Barnes from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is one of them.  Jake is quite a contrast from the narrators who guided us through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine.  The differences in his character are made more pronounced by Hemingway’s writing style, which also differs greatly from that which was used in the other books.  Hemingway’s short and terse, but meaningful style of writing (following the Iceberg Theory) helped me sort of wear Jake’s shoes while not leaving me completely at the mercy of the narrator’s train of thought. 

From what we’ve read so far, Jake immediately comes off as sort of a macho man (This seems like sort of a parallel to Hemingway himself, who was described as being very masculine - holding an interest in fishing, hunting, being a womanizer, etc.) who holds men with less manly traits in a considerably lower regard.  For example, in the beginning of the book he describes his friend Robert Cohn to us, the readers, and he certainly doesn’t mince words.  His tone is sort of biting and carries a certain mocking undertone.  I’d even go so far as to describe it as venomous in a way, which is certainly not the way people typically describe their friends. 

Staying true to the Iceberg Theory, not much is directly revealed about Jake’s character, or even Jake’s past even as the story goes on.  Jake leaves many of the details out of the story he tells.  However, many inferences can be made from the minute (and sometimes trivial-sounding at first glance) pieces that are included in the story in order to fill in the missing details.  Probably the most important of these is the injury Jake suffered to his genitalia during the war, since although the damage is undetectable in plain sight, it affects him deeply even after the war, and is a major obstacle standing in the way of a happy relationship with Brett.

Jake’s injury gives him more depth as far as I am concerned – it sort of turns him from a jerk who can’t seem to find any flaws in himself with an unsettling hate for select other people into a much more complex character with a reason (how justified the way he treats other people is could be debated) for acting the way he does.  He, feeling as though he lost his masculinity, feels frustrated with others who have what he doesn’t but are ‘wasting their potential’ such as, in his mind, Cohn.  This frustration is exacerbated by the fact that it is a deal-breaker for Brett, and even though they love each other, they feel the need to stay apart. 

Once we are exposed to more and more of these small details, a broader and more vivid picture begins to form.  After seeing his weaker and more vulnerable side, I feel much more inclined to sympathize with him.  Also, given that his bitter side stays below the surface and doesn’t really present itself when he interacts with his friends, I feel more comfortable feeling this way.  Do you agree?

Septimus' Lens

I found Septimus Warren Smith, from Virginia Woolf’s work Mrs. Dalloway, to be a very interesting character.  When we are first introduced to him, we aren't immediately plunged into the inner sanctum of his mind - we first get the opportunity to view him as a non-omniscient bystander would.  The first description we get suggests that Septimus is quite different from the people passing him by on the sidewalk.  A sense of paranoia and strange behavior uncharacteristic of your average Londoner alludes strongly to a mental illness, but we don’t learn much about his circumstances until later – all that is evident initially is the abnormality in his thought process and the way he seems to see the world.

Septimus’ thoughts exhibit a markedly different style from the other characters.  Compared to Clarissa Dalloway and other more “normal” people, Septimus tends to spend more time fixating on the minute details and sensations present in each scene, and express them to himself with his characteristically elaborate description.  This difference in the ‘lens’ that Septimus uses to look at the world is probably due to his original profession as a poet – and it likely would have made him successful if he hadn’t had to abandon poetry during the war.  Even after his traumatic experience, which caused his mental illness, he has retained this lens, and it allows him to immerse himself in wondrous experiences such as viewing the plane as it wrote letters in the sky.  However, this trait seems to turn against him at times.  Suffering from hallucinations and delusions that twist the reality that others see, the lens forces him to focus on and experience such bizzare scenes like a dog turning into a man, and his friend rising from the dead.  

These things feel very real to Septimus – as real as anything else in his environment, and as such he has no idea that part of his world is constructed in his own head.  He can’t explain his feelings and thoughts to anyone else – even his own wife finds him inscrutable, and very different from his old self.  He finds himself unable to even get his thoughts across to his dismissive listeners.  This is his plight, to be privy to whispers and visions that no one else can comprehend.  Only if you look at the world using Septimus’ unique lens can you snag the messages he is trying desperately to convey to the rest of the world.