Daniel H. Fruit
Submitted for the Seminar in Classical American Authors
Subsequently Rejected by The Hemingway Journal.

Critics have long discussed whether to consider Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a tragic work. Critics have often labeled it tragic because they find within it symbols for tragic occurrences such as a generation's loss of values, the death of love, or an end of innocence. Enterprising critics even uncovered traces of T. S. Eliot's barren Waste Land underneath the Paris soil.

One critic, Jackson Benson, however, considers most of these interpretations incorrect, since he thinks they contain a common, fundamental error: These writers take the expatriates far too seriously. Hemingway's second, he contends, continues in the same satirical vein as the Torrents of Spring, his first." Hemingway he portends launched his own career in protest against "the emotional excesses and rampant self-pity of his own time." (2) The novel he considers a "satire of self-pity" rather than a tragedy. If correct, Benson’s reading forces a major revisiting of the criticism surrounding the novel as critics have universally identified Jake with the author, and Jake frequently indulges in self-pity and self-justification. Jake's statements and opinions would lose some of their authority, while others might appear in a more favorable light if, as Benson contends, all of the Paris pilgrims function as targets for Hemingway humor. His first novel, The Torrents of Spring, certainly established that reputation for Hemingway as it reeks with Hemingway's hollow, bitter satire. However, Benson’s analysis ignores many scenes in the work that the author presents as perfectly serious, especially the sequence in the Spanish countryside and the bullfight scenes. Hemingway himself called the novel a "tragedy," giving weight to those many tragic interpretations of the work and stated that he feared becoming known as simply a "hollow satirist." (5)

Another reading of the novel suggests that both Benson’s and the more traditional critical view may be correct. In other words, Hemingway may intend to satirize his characters but to present a more serious truth beneath the humor. Hemingway maintains he wrote with "a great deal a of fondness and admiration for the Earth and not a hell of a lot for my generation." The Sun Also Rises contains a good deal of satire overlying a tragedy. Hemingway's Anglo-American exiles receive almost all of his humorous assaults because they hold many of the faults of their generation. In contrast, the earth and those in intimate contact with it, such as Pedro and the Spanish peasants, he depicts pictured sympathetically and quite seriously. The tragedy of the book, then, consists in the failure of Brett and her coterie to absorb the values of this stoic, Spanish life style, making them the objects of Hemingway’s satire. Like typical tourists, they come, they drink, they look, and they leave, having learned nothing. Even Pedro's ability to speak their language doesn't help him to communicate with them. Only Bill and Jake establish contact with Hemingway's "enduring earth;" though whether they learn from their experiences, remains questionable.

Thus The Sun Also Rises contains a group of expatriates whose meaningless actions Hemingway satirizes, but whose failure to look beyond themselves to the world around provides the tragedy in the novel, the tragedy of their failure to rise beyond their pettiness.

How seriously the reader considers Hemingway's presentation of the Angle-American clique radically alters the novel's meaning. The more seriously we take the characters self-proclaimed importance, particularly Jake, the more seriously we most take their comments and philosophy. Even the most sympathetic critic, most would agree that some characters, such as Cohn come across as comic, even pathetic characters. Most critics, however, contend that author intends us to take Jake and the group as a whole seriously. Earl Rovit's "Essay in Applied Principles." concludes that Hemingway generally agrees with Jake, and, accordingly, Jake's beliefs correspond with that of the author. Rovit finds Jake a "mostly reliable narrator" to whom Hemingway seems "mostly sympathetic." (6)

Thus, they contend that Hemingway would agree with Jake’s assessment that getting the most out of life means "learning to get your money's worth" (7) and knowing when you have done so. Ultimately, this value system resolves down to a simple system of materialistic satisfaction. While Jake explicitly denounces the failure of Cohn's romanticism, he never renounces these mercantile principles though he utters them when drunk. In fact, this constitutes the only value system expounded by the expatriates constructs, and critics such as Rovit interprets the novel within this hedonistic framework. Everyone accordingly should try to get all the enjoyment they can from life, and the "tragedy" Hemingway finds in the novel lies solely in Jake's inability to join in the fun. Bill's statements about getting a "simple exchange of value" (p. 72) tie into this materialism. By this reckoning, the Count's willingness to risk his life getting what he wants makes him a fully admirable character.

If this constitutes the heart of the novel, then, the liaison between Brett and Jake becomes tragic simply because Jake's injury prevents him from "joining in the fun" and getting a fair exchange for his suffering: "Brett is something that he can neither afford nor even gamble for." (7)

Thus Rovit concludes that one can basically rate the characters according to their ability to find the best bargain, i.e., their skill at that most typical of tourist enterprises, shopping for souvenirs. The Woolseys and the Krums pay exorbitant prices for nothing. The Bill Gortons prove the more cynical tourists and pay without illusions knowing the worthless of their purchases. The count, the least accomplished as a tourist, embarrasses himself primarily due to his lack of experience at bargaining.

Rovit, however, fails to consider the many occasions in which irony undermines these "serious" philosophical statements, demonstrating Hemingway's distance both from both his expatriates and his narrator. Brett glances at the Count's wound and tells Jake: "I told you he was one of us." (p. 60) (8) Yet a page later she censures the count: "You haven't any values. You're dead, that's all." (p. 61) (9) These contradictory statements warn the reader that Brett's judgments deserve closer scrutiny; they also cause us to questions the Count's position as philosophical spokesperson for the group. After all the Count receives his war wound during a "business trip" in Abyssinia (p. 60), not in the Great War. This fundamentally contrasts with the experience of the others and Hemingway himself whom the war disillusioned but certainly did not get wounded merely trying to make money.

Further, throughout the work Hemingway shows the destructive impact of this mercenary view of life. Paris succumbs to commercialism while Spain retains an older set of values. Jake's French waiter likes him because he tips well, one of his "valuable qualities," but Montaya likes him as a person. Jake himself mocks Paris fashion by bringing a prostitute to his party as a date, but this also serves to criticize the money-grubbing nature of Paris society. Thus, Jake mocks the "buy anything" illusion of Paris. During the festival at Pamplona, in contrast, the peasants' meager money loses its value: "late in the fiesta it would not matter what they paid, nor where they bought." (p. 152)

Bill, another major mercantile philosopher, receives some subtle criticism. His books earn him a lot of money, but they bring him little satisfaction. He gives the New York reviewers the "irony and pity" (p. 114) they demand. However, his works lack any real merit; he works as a literary "taxidermist," giving his reader the mere semblance of life. When he faces someone who does not sell out, Pedro, he voices his self-disgust: "Tell him I'm ashamed of being a writer." (p. 175).

Thus Hemingway attacks, rather than defends, Jake's statement of principle. Living requires something that transcends a mere exchange of goods. One sees Bill and the Count, like Brett and Cohn, have serious flaws, while Jake's relationship with his creator becomes more problematic. Other critics consider the expatriate group as a whole more important than its elements. The characters, Malcolm Cowley contends, represent a "lost generation." Since they suffered, they deserve the reader's sympathy and not our satire.

Putting Cowley’s own intimate knowledge of and probably ample side discussions with the author aside, his analysis ignores some aspects of the text, particularly the important distinctions between the expatriates. Brett certainly considers her coterie a group of similar individuals, but her judgment in most matters deserves question, given her many mistakes in the course of the novel. Hemingway stated that included his quotation from Ecclesiastes (p. 1) because he detested Stein's over-generalizations, and closer analysis of the text reveals that each of his exiles suffers from a quite distinct set of problems. (12)

To call this group a coterie of shell-shocked War veterans and fellow travelers ignores important differences between them. Jake suffered a physical injury, and he attempts to overcome concurrent emotional damage. The war clearly, albeit indirectly, seems to have harmed Brett; and she may indeed be "lost." Whether Mike actually fought in Europe remains unclear. Though he drinks and spends like Brett, Mike’s vices appear his main problem rather than a symptom. Bill, the most stable member of the group, did not fight in the war, and his only real defect stems from artistic prostitution. Cohn, who also missed the war, suffers from "arrested development," (p. 44), simple immaturity, not fractured innocence. Thus the expatriates have little in common except expatriation and relative youth and certainly not war and its collateral damage.

Further, they differ in their goals. Only Jake attempts to become and remain an "aficionado"; Brett and Mike desire only immediate sensual gratification. Though Brett desires Romero's body, she expresses no interest in his values or personality. Even when Brett renounces Romero, she seems to act from self-interest; her gesture towards Romero makes her a noble martyr only in her own eyes. Also the novel contains several characters suffering fundamentally from personal problems rather than a group of characters suffering from the same problem. In fact, Brett’s comments as to the unity of the group largely serve to show the silliness of the Stein generation, and Hemingway mocks each in his turn.

If one cannot take the pilgrims all that seriously as individual, others critics still consider them as serious symbols of a damaged, wounded land, along the lines of Eliot’s then recently published The Waste Land. Philip Young terms Jake's wound as an "objective correlative" (l3) for a spiritually lost post-war world. Thus, the reader might laugh at Jake and his friends, Young contends, but they serve a serious function in the novel as symbols of destroyed humanity: "Despite a lot of fun The Sun Also Rises is still Hemingway's Waste Land, and Jake is Hemingway's Fisher King. (14) This may be just coincidence. If anything, the dying land resembles Hemingway’s Paris, which makes the departure of the group from Paris into Spain a peculiar attempt to cure it. Still, Young concludes that in the novel:

"Prayer breaks down and fails, a knowledge of traditional distinctions between good and evil is largely lost, copulation is morally neutral, and, cut off from the past chiefly by the disaster of the war, life has become mostly meaningless. Food, liquor, and conversation are the few fragments that Jake shared against the fall, but the nature of these fragments makes Hemingway's waste land even more lost than Eliot's: There is fun but no hope." (15)

Whether the war has spiritually impoverishes Hemingway's expatriates remains debatable, but Hemingway's Paris does appear rather bleak. Jake, however, possesses more hope or spirituality than either his companions or the Parisians, which damages Young's theory. He tries to become an aficionado, and his spiritual progress does not parallel that of the other characters. Also Hemingway's novel concerns Spain as much as France, and clearly Spain clearly isn't lost. The story shows how these foreigners react to a new, natural land, and each reacts in a personal manner. Hemingway's characters are primarily individuals and have an integrity that defies simple schemes of organization.

This returns to the subject of Jake. As indicated above, Jake tries to become the aficionado, and, like Hemingway, he mocks the others. This leads to the obvious conclusion that he represents Hemingway’s own voice and that any tragedy in the novel involves him. However, as some critics point out, he does not always rise above the humor. As one critic states, the fact that Jake takes his self-pity seriously "should make it more humorous;" (16) and no one pities himself more than Jake. His early conversations with Brett merely consist of "traded sighs. " (17) Even Jake's arrangement of Pedro and Brett's affair contains (18) an element of comedy because through it Hemingway satirizes a kind of romanticism: "What is more romantic than being asked to pimp for the woman you have put on a pedestal? (19) Thus Benson sees The Sun Also Rises as essentially satiric rather than tragic (20), and clearly a lot of evidence weighs on his side.

The failure of the exiles to produce a coherent philosophy or to function as symbols may lead to the conclusion that the novel rates as nothing more than another satire, in this case of the exiles, just a variant on the Torrents of Spring. In Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense. Jackson Benson terms the novel a satire rather than a tragedy as Hemingway's "typical mode of expression was satire" (16) Hemingway treats his characters "with a mixture of sympathy and ironic detachment. His exiles have no code of conduct and aren't basically similar, instead "a rainbow pattern of abnormality is shifted back and forth to evoke a number of ironic contrasts, one with another. Most of these contrasts can be seen as "antisentimental in nature." (21)

These theories, however, ignore the more serious aspects of the novel. Basically, they ignore Spain. Basically, one can consider Hemingway’s satire as ripping away the values of the mercantile pleasure-seeking self-pitying tourists as it extols that of the Spanish peasants, the true. While Hemingway criticizes his generation, he praises the earth.

Just as the Paris sections reveal different types present in a bankrupt society; the Spanish sections show a natural, untainted life. In the small village of Bayonne, the place of "good fishing," (p. 125). In the countryside, Bill and Jake's friendship blossoms. Later Jake's retreat to San Sebastian restores him. The war or the expatriates or both have reduced France to solely materialistic standards of value, but Spain exists in an uncorrupted state: (p. 233)

Thus commercial Hemingway contrasts commercial France with pastoral, idyllic Spain, and the two worlds have very little in common. The festival of Pamplona, a "wonderful nightmare" (p. 222), allows outsiders to experience Spain. Their perception of life changes until it "became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequence." (p. 205) If the festival "absorbed even the Biarritz English," (p. 222) it can also endure Jake and companions.

The real tragedy of the novel, then, lies in the fact that these jaded adventurers learn nothing from Pedro or Spain. Brett uses him to satisfy her lust and her need to feel a good woman. Mike simply drinks himself into a stupor and again spends everything he has. Cohn flees, and Bill returns to America to write yet another commercial novel. Despite Pedro's ability to speak their own language, the expatriates never really communicate with him. They "continue on their own self-indulgent and self-destructive cycles, ignoring the world around them." (18)

Only Jake shows signs of improvement or the capability of redemption. At beginning of the work, he possesses an appreciative knowledge of the cult of the aficionado: "Nobody lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters." (p. 10) In other words, while he lacks something, at least he realizes his lack it.

Yet his love for Brett and weeping self-pity hampers his development. Later Jake proves willing to betray Pedro to please his beloved. Perhaps at the end of the novel he has become tougher. When he retrieves Brett at the end of book, he seems less infatuated with her. She appears to need his support or at least approval while he doesn't seem to need hers so much. His famous final comment, "isn't it pretty to think so" indicates his better understanding of Brett. Even if whole, he could never really share anything with her. Whether he will learn to contact the "enduring earth," though remains equally questionable.

(1) Mark Spilka, "The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises," in Merill Studies in The Sun Also Rises,' ed.William White (Columbus Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969), p. 73.
(2) Jackson Benson, Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), p. 28.
(3) Ibid, p. 28.
(4) "To Maxwell Perkins," 19 November 1926, Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner's, 1981), p. 229.
(5) Ibid, p. 229.
(6) Earl Rovit, "The Sun Also Rises An Essay in Applied Principles," in Merill Studies in the Sun Also Rises, ed. William Ormite (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969), p. 59.
(7) Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), p. 145. All future references to the novel use the pagination of this edition and appear in the body of the paper.
(8) Rovit, p. 59.
(9) Ibid, p. 61.
(10) Ibid, p. 68.
(11) Ibid, p. 63.
(12) Malcom Cowley, "Commencing With the Simplest Things," in Merill Studies in 'The Sun Also Rises,’ ed·William White (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969), pp. 104-105.
(13) Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway: Reconsideration (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), p. 88.(14) Ibid, p. 88.(15) Ibid, p. 88.(16) Benson, p. 33.
(17) Ibid, p. 34.
(18) Ibid, p. 34.
(19) Ibid, p. 35.
(20) Ibid, p. 37.
(21) Ibid, p. 39.
(22) Benson p. 42.

Bibliography

In the scanning process, some of these sources were possibly miscopied. I apologize to the authors.

Benson, Jackson. Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969.

Cowley, Malcolm. "Commencing With the Simplest Things," in Merill Studies In 'The Sun Also Rises' Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969.Hemingway, Ernest. Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Carlos Baker, ed. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1981.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.Rovit, Earl. "The Sun Also Rises: A" Essay in Applied Principles," in Merill Studies in 'The Sun Also Rises'. Ed. William White. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969, pp. 58-72.

Rovit, Earl. "The Sun Also Rises An Essay in Applied Principles," in Merill Studies in the Sun Also Rises, ed. William Ormite. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969.

Spilka, Mark. "The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises" in Merill Studies in 'The Sun Also Rises'. Ed. William White. Columbus Ohio: Charles E. Merill, 1969, pp. 73-92.Young, Philip. Emest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966.