Hemingway's Warning to the Modern World

And how to find meaning...

100 years ago, Ernest Hemingway predicted the cultural ruin of the West. Even though his peers believed a world without morals would free them, Hemingway saw how it would only lead to more despair. That’s why in his novel The Sun Also Rises, he depicts the chaos caused by the breakdown of traditional morality, and its repercussions on man’s quest for meaning.

Set in the 1920s, the novel depicts a group of WWI veterans living in Paris. Traumatized by the war, they orient their lives around liquor and sex, rejecting any sense of deeper meaning in the process. As the plot develops, sexual escapades, jealousy, and a journey to Pamplona slowly unravel the cohesion of the group — the result is a psychological portrait of Hemingway’s characters that eerily resembles that of many people living in modern society.

In today’s article, we explore what The Sun Also Rises has to teach contemporary readers about relationships, love, masculinity, and more. From the streets of Paris to the bullfighting ring of Pamplona, Hemingway’s debut novel is a masterclass on the troubles faced in the modern world, and how to find meaning in the midst of them…

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How to Emasculate a Man

The protagonist of The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes, was injured during the Great War. He is left impotent as a result, and his injury cripples him both physically and spiritually. Since the woman he loves, Lady Brett, won’t be with him, he feels like he has nothing to fight for.

Jake turns to alcohol to mask his sadness and believes his life is empty because of his impotence. Sadly, however, his acute awareness of his condition only begets more woe — as he sits by and watches as other men take their turns sleeping with Lady Brett, lustful envy corrodes his wellbeing even further. It is precisely his failure to find meaning outside of his (in)ability to have sex which causes him to suffer so profoundly.

This brings us to one of Hemingway’s main points: if a man has nothing to fight for, he gets reduced to destructive hedonism.

Because of Jake’s hyperfocus on his impotence, he fails to pay adequate attention to the other opportunities he has to perform in life. He could still find meaning by directing his masculine energy towards fighting for other good causes, but he has lost the faith required to do so — faith in something greater than himself, something eternal.

In other words, Jake’s materialist view of the world causes him to believe that life is largely meaningless, and that the best he can do is enjoy what he has to the fullest. But because he’s unable to enjoy one major aspect of his life to the fullest, he falls into despair. In abandoning traditional morality, he loses his sense of strength, heroism, and vitality.

Through the character of Jake, Hemingway shows that if you want to emasculate a man, the fastest way to do so is to take away his sense of meaning…

How to Weaken a Woman

Lady Brett is a British divorcee who served as a nurse during the Great War. Having seen her fiancé killed in combat, she is deeply scarred by the experience: it is a major part of what shapes her emotionally detached, restless approach to relationships.

Lady Brett admits to liking Jake, saying that she would be with him if it weren’t for his injury. She is beautiful but lonely, and devotes her life to the quest for independence — which is frequently expressed through her promiscuity. Yet paradoxically, the independence she gains only limits her freedom.

Take, for example, her relationship with Romero, a 19-year-old bullfighting prodigy who captivates Brett with his skill and confidence. She begins an affair with him, but then ends it quickly, later telling Jake she feared she would ruin Romero. The young bullfighter was still young, traditional, and deeply devoted to his art, and Brett knew that her lifestyle would force him to change in ways that might destroy the very qualities she admired in him.

Her relationship with Romero fits into Hemingway’s broader concept that when desire and idealism collide with the hard limits of reality, it’s difficult to hold onto what you want without destroying it in the process. Hemingway suggests this is what threatens to hurt women the most — the pursuit of certain ideals that force them to destroy healthier, more wholesome ones in the process.

But ultimately, The Sun Also Rises conveys a message much more powerful than that revealed through the personal stories of Jake or Brett. It explores what happens when pleasure becomes the substitute for purpose, and what to do when you lose the anchors that give life meaning.

The answer to it all is found in Hemingway’s most powerful symbol…