Hemingway's Fiction: Alienation, Loss, and the Human Condition

Hemingway and the Lost Generation

One of Hemingway's greatest influences was the generation from which he came. Many of his stories revolve around the idea of an individual facing a sense of loss or experiencing a feeling of being lost — a preoccupation directly tied to his association with the Lost Generation. Characters facing alienation are nothing new in Hemingway's work, and they reveal the delicate psyche and nature of man while exploring complex human circumstances. Love and war were two subjects Hemingway faced in real life, and they merge in many of his stories. Hemingway possessed the ability to see what deeply affects human beings, and those things include love, war, and death.

Robert Spiller writes that no one has provided readers with "so many vivid and almost unbearable impressions of the human temperament under the pressures of war" (Spiller 1300) as Hemingway. Hemingway was deeply disenchanted with war, writing, "We had made a bloody mess of it… I would go, now, somewhere else as we had always had the right to go somewhere else and as we had always gone. You could always come back" (Hemingway qtd. in Spiller 1300–1). This passage reveals how personally Hemingway thought about the way events shaped people, including himself. His genuine nature stands out in everything he wrote. Philip Young notes that Hemingway was "America's most famous writer" (Young 39) during his lifetime, and argues that his influence upon his generation as well as upon literature as a whole is powerful and unmatched. Hemingway's world is one in which "things do not grow and bear fruit, but explode, break, decompose, or are eaten away" (Young 45). Just as the world is not always beautiful, neither is Hemingway's fiction.

Alienation in The Sun Also Rises

Proof of Hemingway's powerful view of human nature emerges in The Sun Also Rises, one of his most celebrated novels. John Aldridge believes Hemingway's most "seductive attribute" (Aldridge 139) is "his powerful responsiveness to experience" (139), and this novel demonstrates Hemingway's reaction to his personal life. When writing the novel, Hemingway "was living in the most exotic city in Europe among some of the most remarkable personalities and gifted artists of the post–World War I era" (139). This is a palpable quality of the novel: streets, apartments, hotels, restaurants, and bars are depicted with striking realism. Hemingway knew the names of the streets as well as the "exact location of all the best places and the best route to get to them" (139). Coupled with Hemingway's "wonderful eye" (139), these details provide the makings of a great story. Aldridge notes that Hemingway's "tight minimalist style" (141) is exhibited in its "purest form" (141) in this novel. Precision mattered to Hemingway, and what he leaves out of his stories is just as important as what he includes.

One of the prevalent themes in the novel is the alienation experienced by the Lost Generation. Expatriates and estranged soldiers living in the aftermath of war provide company for one another on the streets of Paris. Jake is a soldier struggling with a loss of faith in his country. Jake and his friends lead lives that have no meaning and no goals — nothing defines them, and as a result, they have no direction. We see an example of this early in the novel when Robert admits he wants to take a trip but simply cannot get himself started. He is like an individual wandering aimlessly. Jake echoes this sentiment when he says, "Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters" (The Sun Also Rises 10). Later he tells Bill, "You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes" (115). This statement reveals that Jake is fully aware of his situation yet feels no compulsion to change it. Later in the story, Brett puts their lives in perspective when she says, "It's sort of what we have instead of God" (245). Here Hemingway represents the Lost Generation through his characters with unflinching clarity.

Jake Barnes, Masculinity, and Hopelessness

Jake also symbolizes the Lost Generation through his war wound, which presents an entirely different set of issues regarding manhood. Jake feels like less of a man, which exacerbates his hopelessness and sense of alienation. No one can truly relate to him, and to make things worse, he suffers sexually. Brett compounds the problem because she loves him, but not in a sexual way. Jake does not feel man enough to address the situation, so he allows her to mistreat him, deepening his hopelessness. The entire relationship cycles through him helping her, hoping for love, getting rejected, and ultimately being unable to walk away from her. The best she can offer when he presses her is that there "isn't any use my telling you I love you" (55). When the discussion becomes complicated, she states simply, "Talking's all bilge" (55).

Brett is hopeless in her own way, and staying attached to her only makes Jake's life worse, since she can never give him what he wants. Yet the situation, as painful as it is, still beats being alone. Jake fears loneliness and cannot face the prospect of finding no one to care for him at all. He is caught in a terrible cycle when it comes to life and love, and his lack of desire to do anything about it reflects a lost generation that sees no hope in its future. As scholars of the novel have long recognized, Jake's paralysis is both personal and generational — a wound that is as psychological as it is physical.

Conclusion: The Grit of Human Experience

Hemingway's work encompasses a wide range of characters and circumstances, all intriguing and compelling. His stories grip us with the grit of life, exposing the frailty of humanity through the very act of being alive. Things happen and individuals are shaped by their experiences — experiences that range from war to love to death, all important because we either know someone touched by such circumstances or have been touched by them ourselves. Hemingway drew on his real-life experiences to add an authentic quality to his fiction. His stories often reveal the pain of life and relationships, and while these situations may be disheartening or painful, we cannot deny that they are real and sometimes unavoidable.

Sometimes we become our own worst enemy, as Jake does in The Sun Also Rises — never finding the strength to walk away from the people who enable his self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes living is a challenge when we confront the problems associated with aging, as "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" forces us to do, inviting us to peek into the sadness of old age when we would rather look away. And sometimes other people make our lives more difficult. Love is a reason people stay together, until difficulties arrive and love transforms into something more painful to accept — as it does in "Hills Like White Elephants." Hemingway touches on the sadness of life in all three of these works, but what we cannot deny is that none of it is fantastical. It is real, and that reality hits us squarely between the eyes.

Works Cited

Aldridge, John. "The Sun Also Rises: Sixty Years Later." Readings on Ernest Hemingway. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy. New York: Longman, 1998. Print.

—. "Hills Like White Elephants." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. II. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1990. Print.

—. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. Print.

Spiller, Robert. Cited in Young, Philip. "A Master Key to Understanding Hemingway." Readings on Ernest Hemingway. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997. Print.

Young, Philip. "A Master Key to Understanding Hemingway." Readings on Ernest Hemingway. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997. Print.