Sun Also Rises Within Ernest

¶ … Sun Also Rises Within Ernest Hemingway's novel the Sun Also Rises, the above three paragraphs from Chapter XIV (5-7) illustrate Jake Barnes's efforts to come to terms with the agonizing combination of his lingering sexual desire and love for Lady Brett Ashley, and his impotence, caused by a wound in World War I: destroying his physical manhood, but not his physical or emotional desires.

Main character Jake Barnes is cynical about life, his own circumstances Jake was wounded in World War I From that wound, his manhood was destroyed, but he still has physical and emotional feelings for women Jake admits in this paragraph he is in love with Brett, when he says: "In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend." Jake is in love with Brett but cannot make love to her.

He has, therefore, been "getting something for nothing" so far, because he knows he cannot make love to Brett. Jake realizes this is unfair to Brett: "I had not been thinking about her side of it" which was that she would want to make love to him. When he finally "pays the bill," so to speak, and lets on to Brett that he is impotent, he will also have to let go of his hold on Brett Jake considers it important, however, to avoid self-pity, however bad circumstances may get.

To become self-pitying, he feels, would be to relinquish the one hold he still has on his manhood: his self-control He does not want to appear petulant like Robert Cohn and other men in the story.

He considers such behavior to be equal to being unsportsmanlike or childish about having to "pay" for "experiences" or having to "pay" for "taking chances" with women After the war, Jake had thought he had already "paid for everything" just by being wounded in the war Jake didn't know then things could get much worse: for instance if he fell in love, and had all the desires but not the physical capabilities anymore Now Jake realizes, within these paragraphs, that he must "pay" again, but this time, in a more painful emotional way.

After the war, Jake had numbed all his emotions, and his current strong feelings for Brett come as an uncomfortable surprise to him. Jake had decided, after the war, that he didn't care anymore about changing the world (although that was why he had gone to war) Now Jake just wants to learn how to "live in" the world, not change it anymore.

But with the unfortunate combination, now, of his war wound, his sexual yearnings, and his normal wish to love and be loved, the world of today is difficult for him to live in Jake also mentions, in this paragraph, how a woman "pays and pays"; but he himself actually "pays and pays" even more: in his case the price of living with both physical desire and impotence Now that he has met Brett, Jake's impotence, the price he thought he already "paid," i.e., being wounded in the war, causes him renewed emotional and physical agony Jake and Brett cannot have a normal "exchange of values" (as Hemingway puts it), that is, in a sexual sense, due to Jake's injury.

One of Jake's criteria for manliness is to make the best of things and learn from experience: "Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about." That is his hope for the future: to be able to make better sense of his suffering, and to manage to get what enjoyment he can from life Jake's present philosophy, as these paragraphs imply, has to do with both "paying for everything" and "getting something in exchange," depending on what, how and why one pays Jake's philosophy of "paying" and "being paid" is a sexual metaphor that works for others, but not for him.

In terms of his relationship with Brett, Jake still "pays," as other men do, but can receive nothing, sexually, in return. Thus, Jake can neither "pay" nor "be paid" sexually, as other men (and women) can Jake, however, still wants to learn "to live in" the world as he now finds it, including learning to live with his uncomfortable condition. Jake hopes that his own personal endurance and determination will help him "learn..

what it was all about," that is, to better understand his own suffering, and thereby make better sense of life Later at the bullfight (Chapters XV-XVI), Jake does not complain or act self-pitying in front of others, especially Brett. This is an illustration of the aspects of his manliness, in his view, that he can still control and will not compromise. Jake resents it when men like Robert Cohn act sulky: they have the physical capacities of men, but, as Jake sees it, they act like children.

This is behavior Jake would never allow himself Jake considers Cohn's behavior around Brett and the others at the Pamplona festival and bullfight to be particularly self-indulgent, and, therefore, unmanly Jake is especially resentful that Robert Cohn, whom he considers an unsportsmanlike sissy, could physically make love to Brett, while he himself could not. Mike Campbell, a drunken fool and one of Brett's many lovers, is another person whose physical capabilities, combined with a.