In my younger and more vulnerable years, I thought Hemingway’s novels in were vapid, boring stories about worthless people leading ridiculous lives that contributed little or nothing to society.  I’m ashamed to say that, in my late teens, I wrote this book off as “dumb.”

However, I found I kept returning to this book, especially as my appreciation for Hemingway’s other writing started to grow.  With my third and fourth readings, I finally started to see why so many others to label this a classic.

What the Story Says

At its core, this is a story of cause and effect, particularly how our cumulative life experiences shape who we are and how we interact with others.  Robert Cohn is belittled and abused throughout college and early adulthood because of his ethnicity, so is it any surprise that he turns into a jerk when he gets the upper hand?  Lady Brett has learned from the men in her life that she cannot trust anyone. When she goes careening from affair to affair, unable to commit to anything lasting, is it shocking? Are we surprised that she believes only lasting relationship she could have is the one that is impossible (with Jake)?

This isn’t to say people aren’t responsible for their own actions.  Most of the characters in this story end up pretty unhappy, which probably could have been avoided had they taken some personal responsibility.  Rather, it is just trying to show that there is more to people than their surface appearance and actions.

“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”

The Sun Also Rises

There is a larger theme at play as well, related to World War One. Many young people who were involved in the war experienced difficulty integrating back into society afterwards.  Jake’s vaguely-defined wound serves as a metaphor for this.  Because of a war injury, Jake cannot relate to the world around him, and especially to women, in the same way that others are able.  Likewise, those who served in WWI have a hard-to-explain emotional wound that the rest of the world does not. Thus they find it difficult to relate to the post-war world.  Remarque expresses similar thoughts in All Quiet on the Western Front.  To Hemingway, this inability to relate is what made the “Lost Generation” so irreversibly lost.