“I never met any one of his class who remembered him”:
Religion and morality in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”

Ernest Hemingway considers that religion but not morality plays a significant role in his novel “The Sun Also Rises” for the whole novel is about drinking, parties and the religion issue. Hemingway describes the inferiority of a Jew called Robert Cohn and he is always called “the Jew with Brett” to announce how religion can impact people’s disposition. Hemingway suggests that religion is an essential role in lost generation but morality is not that important in this amoral society at that period, which was a period that filled with alcohol, money, sexual obsession. By using the modification of Cohn’s character from the beginning to the end, he illustrates how religion can affect one’s life and personality, in that case, he draws a rich Jew who had a strong feeling of inferiority although he was so-called the upper class and he did not dare to consider other girls but his fiancée Frances, and he gained confidence when his novel got a little success but he was actually a man with inner self-abasement which can be inferred through his handshaking behavior. As he says, “he cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton” (Hemingway 11). Princeton was known as a place where is full of wealthy guys and the ones who are revered by the society, but Cohn did not gain the respect from others because of his religion. Oppositely, nearly everyone hated him, and that was why he became a shy, stubborn and attention-seeking person at first. He learned boxing to defend and he won the middleweight boxing champion, but this did not change people’s attitude to him. When it comes to the impression Cohn left to people, he says “I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion” (Hemingway 11). He loved Frances and they had a pretty happy time together. When Jake suggested a trip to Strasbourg and he knew a girl in there, Cohn got so nervous about that and was afraid of Frances knew there would be a girl in this trip. From Cohn’s attitude, which can be inferred that he was easy to be satisfied and did not dare to lose Frances, and the reason was that he was passive, lack of confidence and love from his Princeton time. After his success in literature, he turned into an arrogant man and gained plenty of flame. He started to go to parties and changed his attitude to Frances, and he met some fresh things and people, especially his crazy fancy to Brett which was an extremely impulsive action he would never do before. As Hemingway describes, “‘You were the only friend I had, and I loved Brett so.’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘so long.’ ‘I guess it isn’t any use,’ he said. ‘I guess it isn’t any damn use.’ ‘What?’ ‘Everything. Please say you forgive me, Jake.’”(Hemingway 197) From his inner mind, he was still feeling inferior with his Jewish identity, and that was why he begged Jake to forgive him and told Jake that he was the only friend that he had got. In addition, after he had fight with Mike, he was called ‘the Jew’ with a little disdain. All of this was because he was a Jew and the society was not fair to this religion at that period, in that case, they would treat him as the divergent. Hemingway introduces an amoral society to people which was called the lost generation. In this period, people were addicted to alcohol and bullfighting these kinds of things and benefit was the only connection among them. Firstly, for Brett, the relationships among Jake, Cohn, Romero, Mike, the count and her were not that normal. Brett shifted from one to another and actually she did not want to be married to anyone of them, because she was afraid of sticking to any man and she desired independence. As it is said, “‘He wanted to marry me, finally.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Of course. I can’t even marry Mike.’ ‘Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley.’ ‘No, it wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.’” (Hemingway 246) What is more, for Jake, his hostility to Cohn in some way was because he was jealous to him. And he was aimless, lack of dreams and got drunk in a vast number of bars in Paris nearly every night. Although Jake was a journalist, he did not work as other people who had a regular routine. He never did anything meaningful but attending parties and chatting with others. Jake and Brett were two typical characters who were the lost generation, which were the people during the period after the World War I finished. In the lost generation, there was various kinds of people and the degrees were distinct. The people who suffered from the war lost in alcohols, money and other entertainments. There was no morality to say in that society, and everybody only cared themselves. In other words, that was an amoral society. Hemingway suggests that religion played a really essential role in this novel, and nearly every change of Cohn was because of his unfair treatment for his religion during the hard Princeton time. But Hemingway does not consider that society was a moral one for the characters’ wasteful life- both wasting money and time. They were amoral and their value system was based on what benefit they could get or which one was helpful for them. They were the generation who suffered from the worst things and their values changed a lot, and they started to care nothing but themselves.
(Word count: 1020 words)