Theme
Definition
Theme is the meaning of the story. Theme is something that has traditionally concerned writers and that therefore is a legitimate concern of readers. Theme is not the moral of the story, it is not the subject, it is not what most people have in mind when they speak of “what the story really means”. Theme is meaning, but it is not hidden, and it is not illustrated. Theme is the meaning the story releases; it may be the meaning the story discovers. By theme, the readers mean the necessary implications of the whole story, not a separable part of a story.
Characters and Theme
Jake Barnes: The narrator of the story, Barnes is an American World War I veteran who was emasculated on the Italian Front, making him unable to pursue a sexual relationship with Brett, or anyone for that matter. Having lost direction in his life as a result of his war experiences, Barnes attempts to satisfy himself through hard work, drinking, bull fights, friends, and nature.
Lady Ashley, or Brett: Brett is the object of lust for most of the male characters of the book. Portrayed as elusive and promiscuous, Brett, like Barnes, also lacks direction in life and finds emptiness in activities that she would have normally enjoyed during pre-war times. She is engaged to Michael.
Robert Cohn: His status as an outsider as a result of being Jewish has caused Cohn to develop an inferiority complex. Despite attempts to be civil and courteous, Cohn is the object of scorn from other characters. The novel's plot turns on his attempt to recover a brief affair he had with Brett, leading him to tag along with the group of expatriates, much to their collective vexation.
Michael Campbell, or Mike: A Scottish veteran of the war, Michael is close friends with Jake and Bill, and engaged to Brett. Though he attempts to hide his contempt for Cohn, his fiery temper usually manifests itself during periods of heavy drinking. Also, he is bankrupt as a result of his excessive borrowing.
Bill Gorton: Bill is an old friend of Barnes and is considerably less cruel than Michael in his attitudes towards Cohn. Despite also being a heavy drinker, Bill is often more light-hearted than the rest of his peers.
Pedro Romero: The star bullfighter of the fiesta, Romero is introduced to Jake and his friends, falls in love with Brett, and then they split up when they recognize her inability to commit to a sustained relationship. His autonomy, steadfastness, and commitment make him a model for Jake, who possesses none of these qualities even though he aspires to them. Furthermore, the younger Pedro Romero having been born in 1905 represents the younger generation. This served to further demonstrate the Lost Generation's feelings of insecurity and disillusionment compared to their next-younger Generation.
From seeing the characterization of all the main characters in this novel, we can conclude that the theme concerning the character is about the sense of the life. The writer want to say about the direction of life in war experience, such as hard work, drinking, bull fights, friends, and nature, how the characters here show their respond to their environment.
Plot and Theme
The novel explores the lives and values of the so-called Lost Generation chronicling the experiences of Jake Barnes and several acquaintances on their pilgrimage to Pamplona for the annual San Fermin festival and bull fights, known more commonly as the Running of the Bulls. Jake, a World War I veteran, is unable to consummate a sexual relationship with Brett Ashley because of a severe wound he suffered on the Italian Front, leaving him emasculated. However, he is still attracted to and in love with her. The story follows Jake and his various companions across France and Spain. Initially, Jake seeks peace away from Brett by taking a fishing trip to Burguete, deep within the Spanish hills, with companion Bill Gorton. The fiesta in Pamplona is the setting for the eventual meeting of all the characters, who play out their various desires and anxieties, alongside a great deal of drinking.
Some of the plot is based on real-life people and events. In 1925, Hemingway and some of his friends -- including Lady Duff Twysden (who even wore her hair like Brett Ashley), her Scottish fiancé, and also her one-time lover, Harold Loeb, who had been the first Jewish student to box while at Princeton -- went fishing near Burguete and then went to the San Fermin fiesta at Pamplona, where they drank and quarreled.
Setting and Theme
The Sun Also Rises is set in Europe after World War I. Except for the bullfighter Pedro Romero, all the major characters are expatriates from America and Great Britain. In search of adventure, and of something to fill the void in their lives, they have come to live in Paris.
Paris in the 1920s was famous for its thriving Bohemian cafe culture. Painters such as Picasso, Miro, and Matisse were there, as was an indomitable American woman named Gertrude Stein, who had established a famous salon where painters and writers such as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway met and exchanged ideas.
Hemingway's characters find life in Paris exciting, but also empty. To escape the sophistication and corruption of the city, they travel to the more traditional world of Spain.
The book's main characters--Jake, Brett, Robert Cohn, Mike, and Bill--are not tied to any one set of values and can skim from place to place like water skiers over a lake. In contrast, the natives of Paris and Pamplona seem to lead deeply rooted and stable lives. The expatriates move from one European setting to another, permanent tourists forever looking in at a world to which they do not belong.
The Sun Also Rises is set among these expatriates who purposefully left their native land. Hemingway didn't have to look far to find models for the characters in his novel, for he himself was an expatriate, and The Sun Also Rises is closely based on an actual trip Hemingway and his friends took from Paris to Spain a month before he began the book. What makes the book a work of art is that it is not simply a record of something that happened, it's a fully imagined rendering of his own experience. The Sun Also Rises was a sensation when it was published; numerous young people recognized themselves in the book, even if they had never been to Paris or seen a bullfight.
Point of view and Theme
The events in The Sun Also Rises are described through the eyes of Jake Barnes, so you have to look carefully at Jake's strengths and weaknesses in order to judge how reliable he is as a narrator.
Jake is a fully realized character created by the author; he does not necessarily say everything that the writer believes. There may have been some superficial similarities between Hemingway and Jake: they were the same age, both were journalists in Paris, both were Americans, and both were wounded during World War I, although in different ways. But they should never be taken for the same person.
Jake is what is called an "unreliable narrator." He tells the story, but he tells you only what he wants you to know, sometimes putting himself in a good light, other times not. He also makes judgments about characters with which you might not agree. His hatred of Robert Cohn, for example, is colored by his jealousy and anger over Cohn's affair with Brett. He also has endless tolerance for Mike Campbell who, at least when you see him in the novel, is nothing but a drunken, obnoxious anti-Semite.
Because the point of view of this novel use first-person narrator who doesn’t know everything, except something which happens to him, so as a reader we can follow all the events through his journey and experience. The theme concerning this is about experience of life.
Style and Theme
Hemingway said of his life in Paris in the 1920s. He was trying to put down what he sees and what he feels in the best and simplest way he can tell it." To accomplish this, Hemingway banished all literary frills from his writing. The Sun Also Rises, for instance, contains almost no metaphors or similes, very few adjectives, and even fewer adverbs. Hemingway wanted to focus on "things" in themselves, and so he used only simple nouns, and simple verbs. His style, compared to the style of many other writers that the readers have read, is extremely lean.
Hemingway also believed that if a writer knew his subject well enough, he did not need to write everything he knew. Writing, to him, was like the tip of an iceberg; the reader would see only one-eighth but would feel and understand the rest.
Hemingway further believed that he could reach his readers through the physical and emotional reactions of his characters. By lucidly describing sensations--smells, sights, sounds--he hoped to produce the same feelings in his readers.
The Sun Also Rises is not simply a dramatic story of love and betrayal, nor is it only a travelog or an allegory of damnation and salvation--though it's all of these things in part. It is also Hemingway's effort to put his theory of writing into practice. Robert Cohn, who blubbers self-consciously, doesn't have good style in life or in writing (his novel was bad). The bullfighter Pedro Romero, on the other hand, has terrific style: if he wrote as he fights bulls, his style would be like Hemingway's--clean, enduringly pure, and professional. He would get the job done economically. He would avoid tricks or mystification; he would never show off. Thus when Hemingway celebrates Romero's bullfighting technique, he is indirectly celebrating his own writing style.
Tone and Theme
Its characters engage in witty, often hilarious dialogue, but underneath their wisecracking shells lie vulnerable and discontented real people, disillusioned by the world around them. The tone of the book plays upon both of these aspects of our characters; as the novel approaches its end, the disillusioned side emerges more clearly. An increasing sense of cynicism and plain old exhaustion builds up during the days of the fiesta, as everyone drifts apart and some relationships disintegrate, perhaps beyond repair.
For this story, it concerns about the own experience of the main character to run their life through love, religion, way of life, family, friend, etc.
Theme in “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
The novel has heavy undercurrents of suppressed emotions and buried values. Its weary and aimless expatriates serve as metaphors for society's lost optimism and innocence after the war. The topic of war is rarely discussed explicitly by any of the characters, but its effects are alluded to through the sexual incapability of Jake and his war wound, and the behavior of the other characters. By the way, the themes of this novel, after analyzing it from several aspects of prose, is about “the lost generation (physically and emotionally) as the effect of the World War I”.
For his novel, Hemingway hope that future generations may rediscover themselves as the Ecclesiasiates’s quotes in Epigraph: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. . .The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”
Or another quotes in the epigraph of the novel: “You are all a lost generation” from Gertrudge Stein in conversation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kenney, William. How to Analyze Fiction. 1966. Monarch Press: New York
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1926. Charles Scribners’s Sons: New York.
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