Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises :: Hemingway Sun Also Rises Essays

THE SUN ALSO RISES The book THE SUN ALSO RISES By ERNEST HEMINGWAY contains 251 pages filled with sadness, devastation and lost love. The plot is based on real people the Hemingway knew and that angered a lot of his friends, if any. Robert Cohn, the main character, is feeling inferior because he is Jewish and starts a boxing career to feel better about himself. He married the first girl he meets out of college. Then, he meets a new woman in CA and then takes her to Europe with him while he is working on his novel. He returns to the U.S. to get it published. His friend, Jake Barnes, who lives in Paris, is asked by Cohn to travel to South America with him to watch bull fights and meet women to "fall in love with". Jake, not interested, stays close to home. "Listen Robert, 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."(11). However, by staying home, Jake finds trouble. Jake goes to a cafe and meets Georgette, a beautiful woman with an awful smile whom Jake finds boring. Jake takes Georgette to BAL, a dance club and while there, he meets Lady Brett Ashley, the "love of his life" and she is also an alcoholic nymphomaniac. Cohn shows up and also gets infatuated with Brett. However, Brett leave with Jake and Cohn is now extremely jealous, while Georgette is left alone but later leaves with someone. Jake and Brett ride around Paris talking about how they want to be together but can not. Jake goes home later that night, thinks about Brett and ends up crying himself to sleep. "This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again." (34). He wakes up at 4 am to the sound of a drunken Brett arguing with the landlord of Jake's building. She gets up to his apartment but soon leaves and instead, asks Jake to meet her the next day.