[Book] The Sun Also Rises

Set in post-WWI, The Sun Also Rises is the story of post-war expatriates who wander through places as they wander through an existence without meaning and purpose. The novel centres around the character Jake Barnes, who has been rendered impotent (both literally and metaphorically) by his participation in the war. He lives in Paris working as a journalist and fills his day with work and night with drinking and clubbing. Through his eyes, the reader sees the general and overall impotence of his generation - "the lost generation" - of people who go about life seeking pleasure and alcohol to numb an existence without any purpose and spiritual depth.

Hemingway's language is simple and the narrative is intentionally superficial. The first person narrative of Jake never touches on the deeper meaning of things simply because he's incapable to or unwilling to go beyond the surface. The most emotional Jake is described is when he cries at night:

I was thinking about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by and down the street, and then I went to sleep.

Even in his most vulnerable, Jake is incapable of feeling the depth of his misery. Every character in the book is constantly drunk, which they call it being "tight" or "blind." Alcohol therefore acts as a sort of anaesthetic that helps the characters go on with their lives and be jovial and carefree while they indulge themselves in the physical pleasures of life. The vivid description of night life in Paris and Bullfighting in Spain masks the inherent spiritual emptiness of the individual participants and of their relationships with each other. When the fiesta's over and the morning comes, however, there is a brief moment of sobriety that soon will disappear again as the characters plunge right back to the drinks and the superficiality of human interaction.

The Sun Also Rises is a story about alienation and loneliness, and Hemingway conveys effortlessly the general sense of frustration at that time period through its ambivalent and emotionally "blind" characters. It's an easy read language-wise, but the novel is much more than what appears on the surface.

8/10