Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is packed with symbols. Most prevalent is that of bulls and bullfighting in Pamplona. Hemingway uses the bullfights as more than just setting or plot, but to illuminate the internal workings of the characters’ behaviours and attitudes towards sexuality and each other. Combined with the ways bullfighting parallels the characters’ lives and knowledge of Hemingway’s real life inspirations in writing the novel, closely observing the use of bullfighting serves to uncover more about the characters and their motivations. Bullfighting in this novel has multiple significances, but the most prominent is as a symbol for sex. The bulls themselves represent passion, physicality, and freedom, all things that the protagonist,
