Matadors and Martinis: The Two Lives of Jake Barnes
In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway depicts the travels of a group of expatriate Americans as they leave Paris and plunge into a festival at Pamplona, Spain. Jake Barnes, the novel’s protagonist, brings his group of friends to witness his favorite yearly tradition: bullfighting. He never anticipates, however, that his friends’ values, or lack thereof, are doomed to create chaos at the festival, and so Jake loses both his expatriate and Spanish friends. From the start, Hemingway portrays Paris and Spain as separate worlds, each with its own characteristics, customs, and values. Jake lives as both a cynical urbanite and as a passionate aficionado of bullfighting, with two incompatible …show more content…
Hemingway portrays his passion for fishing religious, describing the Spanish woods as “God’s first temples” (127). This hints that Jake possesses an ideology of life that circles around his sports, putting him in contrast to the expatriates and their lack of values. We can see this further when Jake arrives in Pamplona, where his passion for bullfighting, afición, puts him in a sort of brotherhood with others. Bullfighting is a “very special secret” for Jake and his fellow aficionados, so much so that he the incursion of outsiders into bullfighting is “lewd” (136). Further, to be considered an aficionado, one must pass “a sort of oral spiritual examination,” making bullfighting another instance of the religiosity of sports in Jake’s life (137). In placing such value in his sports, Jake becomes a different man when he steps into Spain. His ideals shift from cynicism and emptiness to brotherhood, religion, and passion, changing his values from those of an urbanite to a sportsman. Because of this, we can view him as a member of two different worlds, as he is at home in both Spain and Paris, and can adopt the ideals and qualities of both the Spanish and the …show more content…
During a sequence of drunken opinions and thoughts, Jake concludes that “enjoying living [is] earning your money’s worth and knowing when you [have] it,” a belief closest the urban French stress on the importance of money (153). Although he quickly corrects himself, admitting that “perhaps as you [go] along you [do] learn something,” he adds that he does not care “what it was all about” (153). This indifference toward life early in the story hints that Jake, while he may share many of the values of the aficionados, is a cynical and amoral expatriate at his core. He doesn’t think to learn from his mistakes or to adopt higher ideals, but instead views life as a transaction of pleasure. By pursuing a good time with Romero and the expatriates, Jake enables the chaos that becomes of Pedro and Brett’s
In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway depicts the travels of a group of expatriate Americans as they leave Paris and plunge into a festival at Pamplona, Spain. Jake Barnes, the novel’s protagonist, brings his group of friends to witness his favorite yearly tradition: bullfighting. He never anticipates, however, that his friends’ values, or lack thereof, are doomed to create chaos at the festival, and so Jake loses both his expatriate and Spanish friends. From the start, Hemingway portrays Paris and Spain as separate worlds, each with its own characteristics, customs, and values. Jake lives as both a cynical urbanite and as a passionate aficionado of bullfighting, with two incompatible …show more content…
Hemingway portrays his passion for fishing religious, describing the Spanish woods as “God’s first temples” (127). This hints that Jake possesses an ideology of life that circles around his sports, putting him in contrast to the expatriates and their lack of values. We can see this further when Jake arrives in Pamplona, where his passion for bullfighting, afición, puts him in a sort of brotherhood with others. Bullfighting is a “very special secret” for Jake and his fellow aficionados, so much so that he the incursion of outsiders into bullfighting is “lewd” (136). Further, to be considered an aficionado, one must pass “a sort of oral spiritual examination,” making bullfighting another instance of the religiosity of sports in Jake’s life (137). In placing such value in his sports, Jake becomes a different man when he steps into Spain. His ideals shift from cynicism and emptiness to brotherhood, religion, and passion, changing his values from those of an urbanite to a sportsman. Because of this, we can view him as a member of two different worlds, as he is at home in both Spain and Paris, and can adopt the ideals and qualities of both the Spanish and the …show more content…
During a sequence of drunken opinions and thoughts, Jake concludes that “enjoying living [is] earning your money’s worth and knowing when you [have] it,” a belief closest the urban French stress on the importance of money (153). Although he quickly corrects himself, admitting that “perhaps as you [go] along you [do] learn something,” he adds that he does not care “what it was all about” (153). This indifference toward life early in the story hints that Jake, while he may share many of the values of the aficionados, is a cynical and amoral expatriate at his core. He doesn’t think to learn from his mistakes or to adopt higher ideals, but instead views life as a transaction of pleasure. By pursuing a good time with Romero and the expatriates, Jake enables the chaos that becomes of Pedro and Brett’s