The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by Ernest Hemingway. His first novel, it is considered a treatise of the post-WWI generation, dubbed the Lost Generation by Gertrude Stein. Arguably the best modernist novel of the period by an American, it received mixed reviews upon publication, although Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes it is "recognized as [his] greatest work".[1] Hemingway began writing the novel on his birthday (21 July) in 1925, and finished the draft about two months later. After putting aside the manuscript for a short period, he spent the winter of 1926 revising heavily. The novel was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in the US in October 1926; and it was published in the UK as Fiesta by Jonathan Cape.
The novel is based on Hemingway's own trip to Spain in 1925; the plot is about a group of expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of FermĂn in Pamplona for the running of the bulls, the bullfights, and where they spend their days getting drunk. The setting was considered unique and memorable, presenting the seedy cafĂŠ life of Paris and the Pamplona festival. Equally startling was Hemingway's spare writing style, and his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action that became known as the iceberg theory.
On one level the novel is a love story between the hero Jake Barnes, whose war wound has made him impotent, and the sexually promiscuous divorcèe Brett Ashley. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; and her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona. As a roman à clef the novel's characters are based on real people and the action is based on real events. The primary themes are the notion that the post-WWI generation was a 'lost generation', decadent and dissolute, irretrievably damaged by the war, which is melded with the love story, the theme of death, renewal in nature, and living life purely, to best of one's ability, in an authentic manner.
Plot summary The narrator of The Sun Also Rises is Jake Barnes, an expatriate American journalist living in Paris. Barnes suffered a war-wound that caused him to be impotent, though the nature of his wound is never explicitly described in the novel. He is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a twice-divorced Englishwoman. Brett, with her bobbed hair, embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s, having had numerous love affairs.
Book one is set in Paris. Jake plays tennis with his Jewish college friend Robert Cohn, picks up a prostitute in one scene, and escapes with Brett from a gathering at a nightclub. She tells him she loves him, but they both realize they have no chance at a lasting relationship. In Book two Jake is joined by Bill Gorton, recently arrived from New York, and Mike Campbell, Brett's fiancĂŠ, arrives from Scotland. Jake and Bill travel to Spain where they meet Cohn north of Pamplona for a fishing trip. Cohn, however, leaves his friends for Pamplona to wait for Brett and Mike's arrival. Cohn had an affair with Brett a year earlier and still feels possessive of her despite her engagement to Mike. Jake and Bill enjoy five days of tranquility, fishing the streams near Burguete, after
which they arrive in Pamplona, reuniting with the group and drinking heavily. Cohn's presence begins to be resented by the others, and they taunt him with anti-Semitic remarks. During the fiesta they drink, eat, watch the running with the bulls, attend bullfights, and bicker with each other. Jake introduces Brett to Romero, a young bullfighter and she is so smitten by the 19-year-old that she seduces him. The jealous tension between the men builds; Mike Campbell, Jake, Robert Cohn, and Romero are all in love with Brett. Cohn, a champion boxer, has fistfights with Jake, Mike, and Romero, whom he injures rather severely. Meanwhile, Romero continues to perform brilliantly in the bull ring.
Book three shows the characters in the aftermath of the fiesta. Sober again, they leave Pamplona. Bill Gorton returns to Paris, Mike Campbell stays in Bayonne, and Jake goes to San Sebastian in northeastern Spain. Jake is about to return to Paris when he receives a telegram from Brett, who is in Madrid, asking him to join her where he finds her in a cheap hotel without money and without Romero. She announces she has decided to marry Mike Campbell. The novel ends with Jake and Brett in a taxi speaking of things that might have been.
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