414 Making It New: 1900–1945The first question asked, implicitly, of all the characters in The Sun Also Rises is, is
he or she “one of us?” That is, is the character one of those who have learned to see
what their true circumstances are, and what they truly feel? Those who have learned
this seem to recognize each other and so constitute a kind of secret society. They are
“aficionados” of life because they understand the perils of existence just as the good
bullfighter, and the good bullfight spectator, understand the perils of the bullring.
Being “one of us,” however, is not enough. There is also the question of how you
behave. Some behave well, like Jake; some behave badly, sometimes, like Brett Ashley.
Some never get the opportunity to behave well or badly because, like the least
attractive character in the book, Robert Cohn, they never see what life is really like
or know what they truly feel. They never recognize what the rules of the game are,
and so never get to be a player. What the good player in life should do, how he or
she should behave, is illustrated in the description of the perfect bullfighter,
Romero – one of Brett’s several lovers – as he confronts the charging bull. “Romero
never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line,” Jake
tells the reader; he never tries to concoct “a faked look of danger.” He had “the old
thing,” Jake concludes, “the holding of his purity of line through a maximum of
exposure.” Romero confronts “the real thing,” the challenge of life with immediacy
and intuitive simplicity. He responds to things as they are, without posture or pre-
tence; and, in responding this way, he achieves a certain nobility. It is a neat example
of how, in Hemingway’s work, realism assumes a heroic quality, even an aura of
romance. The noblest character is invariably the one who sticks closest to the facts.
That is especially true of Jake Barnes, who holds his purity of line as both the
narrator and protagonist. As narrator, Jake tries to tell us what he truly sees and feels,
in a prose that is alert to the particular. As protagonist, Jake tries for a similar clarity,
simplicity, and honesty; and, for the most part, he succeeds. What Jake has to see and
deal with, above all, is his own impotence. He is incapable of sexual intercourse
because of a wound sustained in World War I. This impotence is not a symbol.
For Hemingway, life had no meaning independent of immediate experience, so
symbolism was impossible for him. It is a fact, an instance of the cruel tricks life
plays and the pressures everyone must, somehow and someday, confront. For Jake
and Brett, love seeks its natural expression and issue in sex, sensory fulfillment. But
this is impossible. And for Jake, as for Hemingway, to the extent that love or any
emotion is not felt in sensory terms, translated into concrete experience, it is
incomplete, even unreal. This is the trial Jake must face, the fundamental challenge
thrown down to him in life: that his love can never be a “real thing,” it must remain
thwarted, a loss and waste. Sometimes Jake begins to crack under this pressure. “It is
really awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime,” he observes,
“but at night it is another thing.” He finds himself sleepless; and, his mind “jumping
around,” he even starts quietly to cry. But, fundamentally, Jake weathers the storm.
The end of the novel shows that, despite the temptation to pity himself, to dream
of what might have been, to indulge in fantasy or fakery, he can see and stand things
as they really are. He can be straight and pure and natural in his response to even
the worst his life has to offer. Brett invites him to indulge, to escape from truth intoGGray_c04.indd 414ray_c 04 .indd 414 8 8/1/2011 7:53:56 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 53 : 56 AM