Hemingway uses The Sun Also Rises to loosely write about his experiences after the war. The main character, Jake Barnes, goes through many hard times after returning from World War I. He’s injured so he cannot fornicate, which greatly troubles him. This injury did not happen to Hemingway, but could possibly be parallel to an issue that he had after the war. Because of this injury, Jake cannot be with the woman he loves, Brett Ashley, because it would not be fair to her. Also, Jake has to deal with his insecure friend, Robert Cohn, who is having troubles with his marriage and writing his second novel. “Jake’s attitude toward homosexuals—the way he degrades them and casts them as his rivals,” can explain how his injury has greatly affected his life. When Jake goes to the bal musette he encounters what he perceives to be many homosexual men. He was lead to believe they were homosexuals by the way they dressed and how they kept their hair. He also saw that their casual attire was very feminine, which bothered him more than the plain fact that they were gay. Jake doesn’t understand why a man would cross-gender himself and portray a woman, and it makes him think about his current conditions. “Jake’s inability to perform sexually corresponds to the homosexual’s inability to perform the correct gender.”
Brett Ashley, the woman he is in love with, spends a great deal of time with homosexual men. Jake probably feels that even though he is straight, Brett probably thinks of him as one of her gay friends when he’s with her. He wants her to love him the way he is, even if he can’t give her everything she needs. When Jake sees a gay man, he thinks about their renunciation of naturalized male desire, and this offends him. He doesn’t see how a man could spend his time with Lady Ashley and not want to be as close as he can be with her. He feels homosexual men don’t take advantage of what they could have—something that he desperately wants. During Chapter Four of the novel, Jake comes to a realization of himself—that his injury is, in fact, humorous. Jake also said, earlier in the novel, that homosexual men are meant to be funny. So his injury connects him to homosexual men in the form of “humor.”
During Book II of The Sun Also Rises Jake, Robert Cohn, Brett and her fiancé Michael, and Bill Gorton, one of Jake’s friends, are going to Spain to fish and see bullfighting. While Jake and Bill are fishing and spending time alone, Bill brings up a story about a man whom was injured the same way in which Jake is injured. In a backdoor way, he insults Jake, but apologizes for it after and goes on a rant about homosexuality and how it related to the Civil War and freeing the slaves. Bill says, “I’m fonder of you then anybody on earth. I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot.” This makes Jake think that maybe his injury means he’s homosexual, or maybe not even a real person. Jake knows he can never love someone without them pushing him away, or being too afraid to love, or be fond of him. At the end of the novel, Jake and Brett come to the saddening conclusion that they can’t be together. It would be too hard on him if she broke his heart, and it would be too hard on her to deal with his injury. With the final lines that Jake says to Brett, “Yes. Isn’t it pretty to think so?” when Brett said that they could have had a great life together, shows that he really thought about it. All Jake wanted was to spend the rest of his life with the one person he was in love with—Brett Ashley. Lady Brett Ashley is a strong and independent woman. The man she first loved was killed in the war. She was married, and during the book, she is in the process of getting a divorce. During these final steps of the divorce process, she is engaged to someone else. She always wants to be controlling her own life, but can’t ever be alone. All through the novel the group goes from bar to bar, and each time Brett shows up with a different man. However, at the end of the night, she shares a cab home with Jake. She always tells her she’s unhappy, and that her life is aimless and unsatisfying. She keeps these men around to make her life seem exciting to other people. The man she is engaged to is Mike Campbell. Almost all of the times we see him in the book, he’s drunk, or planning on become drunk. Brett is probably with him because he’s fun and wants to go to bars and clubs, just like she wants to do. While in Spain, the group goes to watch bullfighting. A new fighter, Pedro Romero, is shown, and is extremely good. Brett is immediately attracted to him and wants to spend time with him. When Jake finds out that he could dine with Pedro, Brett instantly asks to tag along. Brett has a couple drinks with him and flirts with him through the night, with Mike getting more and more mad, and drunk. Even though she is engaged, Brett doesn’t see it as a full commitment, just as someon e to go to the bars with. Lady Ashley is looked at as a “model of behavior.” She has a daring and conventional lifestyle, which was different than most of the other women during her time. But more of a model of behavior was that she, like other people during her time and now, was trying to learn how to live her life. Jake’s friend, Robert Cohn, is the outcast of their group of people. He’s Jewish, and he has had to face this problem most of his life. Also, unlike all the other men of his group, he was not in the war. He wrote a successful novel and now he’s too afraid to write a second one because he feels it won’t be as good as his first. Cohn stands in the way of Jake and Brett. He’s having an affair with Brett, but it hurts him because he knows that there’s no emotional attachment. He lashes out at Jake and Pedro because Brett wants to have an emotional attachment with them, but not him. He lacks excitement and his character his completely bland. He complains about his life because he’s too afraid to go out and try new things. Each character in The Sun Also Rises plays an important role. Jake loves Brett, and Brett longs for Jake to be the man she wishes him to be. However, Brett wants to be the ruler of her own life, and can’t get attached to someone. So even if Jake could be a “true” man, she would probably end up leaving him anyway. Cohn doesn’t know how to live his life, just like the other two main characters in the book, but he doesn’t really try to live it. No one in this book wants to be hurt, and that’s what makes Jake and Brett try to get what they want, and makes Cohn stand back and not let anything bad come near him.