Chapters 1-7: Initial Noticings

The very first thing I notice about Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is the focus of its introduction. That the novel, narrated by and focusing on Jake Barnes, should begin with a sentence about one of Jake's friends, followed by a chapter or so about him, strikes me as odd.

A good thing that it strike me as such, though, because at the core of our English class lies the notion that a good author loads meaning into every part of their work. If everything in this book means something, then Hemingway must have wanted to make something blatantly clear by standing his first chapters off against the rest of the book in such a way. Having noticed such a diversion from the norm, I have little choice but to pursue an understanding of the author's intent.

Before engaging the material, I ought to expound on what all stands out in the first chapter. As I said, Hemingway ostensibly focuses on Jake's friend Robert Cohn, but what does he write about him specifically? Well, he writes of Robert that he is nice, but shy and self-conscious, that he is well born, well educated, and well versed in the sports, and that he has an unfortunate time of making relationships. 

Of these pieces, the relationships stand out from the rest. This is due in part to their spatial dominance, taking up three of the first four pages that comprise the first chapter, but also to the persistence of the theme throughout the book, which follows the love interest between Jake and a Lady Brett Ashley for as far as I've read. The gist of Hemingway's portrayal of Robert says that he fares poorly with women, being too inexperienced with them to tell whether they care for him or his finances. Beyond that inability to divine intentions, however, Robert displays a propensity for being easily influenced that Hemingway makes particularly evident with women. Jake professes to the reader at one point that "internally [Robert] had been moulded by the two women who had trained him." I would be hard-pressed to deny the effect of the words "moulded" and "trained" in nailing Robert down as little more than clay to be worked by their hands. A more directed example appears immediately afterwards when Jake says that Robert's previously superb tennis game goes "all to pieces" once he falls in love with Brett, Jake's love interest. This introduces a tendency of Robert's to not only be affected directly by the women in his life, but also indirectly. What could Brett have to do with Robert's tennis game, after all? 

My question now is this: what could Hemingway's purpose be in presenting Robert as such a love-blind individual, given that he writes through Jake's perspective? 

While I'm sure I haven't  yet read enough of the story to have more than a wisp of understanding, I suspect that Hemingway present's Robert as a sort of character foil to Jake, the sexually disabled protagonist. Where Robert is inept, Jake appears confident; in the beginning of the third chapter he engages a french girl walking down the street as easily as he might greet an old friend. Despite this gracefully casual demeanor, however, he struggles while alone with Brett for being unable to consummate their love.

The similarities and differences between these two characters keep ringing alarm bells in my head, but I have yet to discern Hemingway's intent in playing them off of each other. I'll offer my guarantee, though, that by my final post on this book I'll have an answer or a change of opinion as to what's going on here.

Bear with my rambling as I slough my way through understanding this reading--I'll take on something more concrete with the next post and leave the overarching thematic elements until I reach the last page. Comments are appreciated and if anyone wants a suggestion for content, I could definitely use feedback on the mix of literary analysis and personal musing I'm working with. Thanks for reading!