Novel: The Sun Also Rises

Overview

Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises follows a group of disillusioned American and British expatriates drifting between Paris and Spain in the mid-1920s. Narrated by Jake Barnes, a wounded World War I veteran and journalist, the novel blends boisterous travel and hard drinking with a quiet study of loss, desire, and the search for meaning after catastrophe. Its cool surface, clipped dialogue, and unspoken depths sketch the alienation of the so-called Lost Generation while evoking the enduring rhythms of landscapes, rituals, and craft.

Setting and Context

The story moves from the cafés and nightclubs of Paris to the rivers, mountains, and bullrings of northern Spain. Paris offers appetite and distraction; Spain offers order and danger through fishing and bullfighting. Against this backdrop, the characters circle one another in a pattern of attraction, jealousy, and fatigue, revealing a world where money, alcohol, and bravado mask spiritual vacancy.

Plot Summary

Jake is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful, witty aristocrat marked by restlessness and a string of lovers. Their affection is real but stymied by Jake’s war injury, which has left him impotent. Robert Cohn, an insecure American writer and former boxer, is infatuated with Brett and believes she can redeem his life. Mike Campbell, Brett’s frequently drunk fiancé, teases Cohn while quietly resenting his own financial ruin. Jake’s friend Bill Gorton arrives from the States, injecting humor and camaraderie.

The group decamps to Spain for the Pamplona fiesta. Before the chaotic festivities, Jake and Bill take a restorative fishing trip in the Basque country, where silence, cold rivers, and simple food momentarily restore clarity and peace. Reunited in Pamplona with Brett, Mike, and Cohn, they plunge into days of parades, wineskins, and crowded bars. Jake introduces Brett to the young bullfighter Pedro Romero, whose artistry and composure suggest a code of integrity absent in the others. Brett is drawn to him; Cohn spirals into jealous rages.

Tensions flare. Cohn assaults Jake and Mike, then brutally beats Romero. Despite the injury, Romero fights with magnificent technique, winning the crowd’s admiration. Brett runs away with Romero to Madrid, while the rest, frayed and ashamed, scatter. Later, Brett summons Jake to help her leave Romero. She refuses to trap him in her world, sensing she would destroy the purity she admired. Jake joins her in Madrid, and they share a tender, rueful ride through the city, acknowledging that their love cannot be fulfilled.

Characters

Jake’s restraint and decency anchor the novel; his wound is both literal and symbolic, shaping a stoic ethic that values competence and understatement. Brett’s charisma and compassion coexist with a destructive restlessness. Cohn’s romantic idealism curdles into self-pity and violence when the world denies him a salvific love. Mike’s banter deflects humiliation. Bill provides warmth and comic relief. Romero embodies disciplined courage, a model of authenticity within a modern drift.

Themes and Style

The novel explores impotence, personal, moral, and generational, set against rituals that promise form and meaning. Bullfighting becomes a language of grace under pressure, where courage, mastery, and beauty can still be recognized. Alcohol blurs pain while intensifying grievance. Money and class shape desires and failures. Hemingway’s prose is pared down, relying on subtext, gesture, and the unsaid; the iceberg method leaves emotions visible mainly in their effects. The biblical echo of the title suggests cycles of endurance and renewal, even as the characters circle through repetition.

Ending and Implications

Brett relinquishes Romero and Jake accepts the limits of their bond. The moment does not resolve their longing, but it affirms a hard-won clarity: love may be real yet unlivable. In the friction between transient pleasure and enduring codes, the novel finds its measure of dignity, an ethic of facing what is, and carrying on.