The Intersection of Love and Economy

A Simple Exchange of Values

This summative post has some ground to cover, what with all the ends I've left open in my previous posts, but given the required word count for it I think I'll manage.

I'd like to begin with theme since I have no doubt that everything else will connect back to it, and starting here might save me some unnecessary rambling later on. As you might notice in the first three posts about my reading of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, relationships span the entire breadth and width of the novel. Beginning with Robert Cohn and his two failed first attempts at love, transitioning to Jake and his unattainable-yet-solid love for Lady Brett Ashley, then coming full circle and more with Robert and what seems like the whole world falling in love with Brett one-by-one, the prospect of love permeates this novel. Funnily enough, love never materializes--not in the way you'd expect it to, anyways. Every attempt fails, and seeing as all the efforts are directed towards Brett, perhaps it's inevitable, but that lack of finality in such a recurrent topic leaves the reader wondering: where is the love? As a matter of fact, I'm under the belief that it's where it was the whole novel long--with Jake, the impotent protagonist.

Very early on Jake makes it clear that he loves Brett, and while Brett professes her own love for him, she won't settle with him because he cannot provide what she wants. Jake doesn't fight this, knowing that he cannot change it, but he remains in support of Brett throughout the events of the novel despite what she puts him through. Brett never realizes what she has in Jake, but his love is Hemingway's archetype, the real thing. After all, what does he gain from being good to Brett? He can't have what every other man is after, and he certainly doesn't make money by it; he stands by her for what he feels for her, and his feelings don't change.

So then, what is the theme? Well, I say it's all to do with how people go about love, how they go about it physically and emotionally. Perhaps in a more general sense, it deals with how people strive for what they can't have.

Both have precedent in the text or I wouldn't mention them here, but the first I've got a clearer understanding of than the second. As I said in the previous post, every main male character except Bill Gorton falls in love with Brett. Michael, her fiance; Robert, who gets lucky (in a most unfortunate way); Romero, the bull-fighter; and of course, Jake, her impotent lover. Since Brett is the object of all this attention, she serves as something of a hub of misfortune for all her callers and dances one half of each of the mating dances that the story follows. Where the males' dances act out the first part of the theme more than the second, Brett's seems to play to both pieces, just as she plays to all of her suitors. The men all try for Brett's affection in different ways, showing not one but a multitude of ill-fated ways to go about love. Michael buys his way to her heart and bankrupts himself doing so (if he doesn't do so before the events of the story, that is). Robert finds himself with her once and then pesters her incessantly for his certainty that she loves him. Romero finds himself the object of Brett's attention, but soon redirects his own attentions towards her and away from his passionate bull-fighting, at which point she leaves him. Jake, in contrast to all the others, goes about his life without putting forth more than a passing effort to be with Brett, and yet she always ends up back with him, always leaves soon after. The sheer impossibility of anything beneficial coming from the lot of these efforts describes what Hemingway conveys through the novel, showing the fallibility of that amorous pursuit along with it's scant rewards. 

As for the second portion of theme, which has everything to do with what people value, evidence for it lies in dialog and in the courting of Brett. Jake says early on specifically that Brett "only wanted what she couldn't have," and that statement rings true both in his case and in that of Romero. With Jake, she can love him all she wants without ever getting what she desires out of love, making them a perfect match and an impossible one at the same time. With Romero, she goes after him first, only leaving him once he feels strongly enough about her that he is too accessible to be desirable. Many more references to exchanges of value and trade-offs pepper the text, especially with Michael, who bankrupts himself to get at Brett. Such is the value to him of getting what he wants that he spends what he doesn't have. Similarly, Robert bankrupts himself morally when he knocks out Jake, one of his few friends, over Brett. It just further develops the same idea, that the pursuit of desires costs each of them something they value. 

To break off on a tangent, the topic of alcohol finally finds its home at this place in the ideology of the book. After considering it quite a bit and finding a few rogue occurrences of sobriety--Brett telling Jake that he needn't get drunk, not to get drunk, at the end--I've found that drunkenness is something like a currency, a great equalizer for these by-and-large unhappy souls, that they use to drown out their lives. Perhaps it was a less common use of the substance when Hemingway was around than it is today, but more likely the author uses alcohol as another object of desire that the woeful characters of this novel pursue fecklessly. 

Backing away from the content of the text now, self-reflection finds it's place in this lengthy post. In the arena of my close reading skills, I think participating in class has probably helped me more than any of the metacognitive authors we've read have. Foster laid out my literary toolkit for me, but to be honest all of his material hasn't kept firmly in my head. Perrine helped some with my understanding of the scope of symbols, and Vendler did some good with my poetry analysis, but looking for things in class that I probably should have already learned to look for has helped me see what those notable things. In particular it's gotten me to understand how important patterns are to close reading as opposed to individual objects of interest. That's why I started this blog off looking for patterns, because they make up the foundation I had to lay before searching through this novel for meaning. Anyways, it's helpful to learn about new ways of looking at a text, or at any task for that matter.

I hope I haven't fully spoiled the book for anyone hoping to read The Sun Also Rises, and although I'm sure I have, I would still recommend it to anyone looking for a book with substantial content with the potential to challenge their perspectives on human behavior. It's very well written, and in a style I've not encountered before, which adds to the experience, so I would recommend it for that quality as well. I have to say that on the whole, although I thought it was a brilliant book, it put me in something of a bitter mood a few times. I attest this to the quality of the writing, but if you don't want a book to affect you then this one might not be for you.

Well, there it is, one book blog complete before the end of the quarter and only three more to go for the year. This should be an interesting project, and we'll see where it takes me. Cheers!