WHY YOU SHOULD READ
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Well, first off, people are always drinking in this book, and isn’t that what kids these days do? Drink all the time, I mean? This is a perfect book to read for those interested in the ‘Lost Generation’ and those of you who want to read more than just Hemingway’s short stories. Also, the narrator is impotent so that’s always a nice plot device. What’s nicer though is that this fact is never like, you know, clearly talked about. You just kind of figure it out. Personally, I wrote a paper on how Jake and Nick from The Great Gatsby seemingly dealt with the aftermath of WWI the same way. If you’ve read both you gotta see the similarities, right? I got a good grade on this, so I’m not making it up, I swear!
Personally, I really like that book because, nothing really truly happens. It’s just guy, going through the motion, and suffering so freakin’ much. He doesn’t say it out front but it’s pretty darn clear too. These characters were so greatly hurt by this war that now they’re trying to patch themselves up but alcohol seems like the only solution. And fishing. Also, you know, there are a few parts worth a laugh in there, especially when I think it’s Bill, but it might be Mike, that talks about pity and irony, (sorry I left my book at my apartment!) Anyway, yeah, by the way, I totally know that the way Cohn was portrayed was pretty anti-Semitic of Hemingway, but dear Ernest was kind of racist and sort of a misogynist and in the end he killed himself, so let’s all agree that he lost, and we win?
Oh also, anyone else agrees that Lady Brett Ashley was in fact dumped by that bull fighter stud?
Quotes: “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
“How did you go bankrupt?"
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
“This is a good place," he said.
"There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”
