Sun Also Rises The Sun Also Rises The Sun Also Rises is a brilliant book written by Ernest Hemingway, that illustrates the decadence during the 1920’s.
Throughout the book Hemingway expresses at the time an illegal habit in America, alcoholic drinking. He also displays the beginning of open sexual/physical contact, flirting with more than one person, and having more than one sexual partner. Hemingway’s characters shows decry in their work habits. Throughout the book Hemingway displays many examples of the modern world in the 1920’s, and the decline in moral standards. Alcoholism was big during the 1920’s, and Hemingway displays this moral decay of values through the eyes of his characters.
Hemingway illustrates this at all parts of the book. Whenever Barnes is at a club, his house, hotel room he is drinking. At San Sebastian, Cohn and Brett were said to be drinking. While Jake and Bill were on their fishing trip they were drinking wine the whole time and everyone was drinking during the weeklong fiesta.
During this time in the US drinking was illegal, and Hemingway was showing a lack of respect, and care for the law. He was able to illustrate the modern world and its increase in alcoholism and its decrease of the moral values during the 1920’s. Ernest Hemingway shows his brilliance by displaying the decay in moral standards. One of those moral standards was the openness of peoples’ being attracted to the opposite sex, or same sex.
Hemingway chose to display this by using Brett as his center point and having everyone she comes in contact with fall in love with her. At the beginning of the book Brett was with a group of openly gay men. The gay guys were dancing with each other and being open about their sexual preference. This really didn’t happen before the war. Throughout the book Brett and Barnes flirt a lot and they also kiss several times.
Brett also has and affair and sleeps with Cohn at San Sebastian. Brett also chooses to flirt and lead on Count Mippipopulous. She also has another affair with Pedro the bullfighter. This whole time Brett is engaged to marry Mike.
They are not married yet and they too sleep together, this didn’t happen a lot before the war either. Hemingway chose to illustrate his the decline of moral values by using Brett as his center point, and having anything to do with sex happen with Brett in the sentence. The work ethic of the modern man after World War I declined in its productivity. Hemingway in the book The Sun Also Rises chooses to not have the characters work but party.
I believe once in the book Barnes went to work once, and that was to pick up his paycheck. Robert Cohn the successful author writes one book, gets rich, and then doesn’t write another book. Mike is drunk, never works and he is bankrupt. He also borrows money from the people not being able to pay it back. Brett also herself is broke. She never works once and she always has someone pay for whatever she wants.
The work ethic of the modern man decayed as Hemingway portrayed in The Sun Also Rises. The constant decline of moral standards from generation to generation is represented be Hemingway from beginning to end of The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway expresses this through the eyes of his characters. From open sex to alcoholism to a bad work ethic, he has his main characters encounter each one of these problems. His main characters were Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, Mike and Bill. The continue decay of moral values is displayed brilliantly by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises, to make the story come alive in the readers mind.
English Essays.
