The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (first color ebook reader TXT) 📕
Description
The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway’s first published novel, and the novel that introduced the term “Lost Generation” to describe the generation that came to adulthood during World War I.
The novel follows Jake Barnes, an American expat living in the Parisian café society of the roaring 20s. A wound sustained during the war has left him unable to have sex, and that drives a wedge between him and the woman he loves: Brett Ashley, a twice-divorcée who has embraced the sexual freedom and independence of the age. As they drift through their lives in postwar Paris, they find themselves on a trip with some friends to Spain to witness the Festival of San Fermin, a week-long bacchanal whose highlight is bullfighting.
Hemingway explores the aimless, heavy drinking, and dramatic lives of Jake, Brett, and their friends as a means to reflect the Lost Generation as a whole. Jake is a character of troubled masculinity: his war wound has fundamentally changed him as a man, and his behavior is often tentative, unsure, and placating. On the other hand, Brett is an enigmatic New Woman: free to drink and carouse with the men, she is seductive, but aching for the reassurance and love of a real relationship, and not just sex. The satellites of friends that orbit around them are equally troubled, drinking to excess and fighting with themselves and with others.
These complex characters are now mere spectators for the bullfight, a microcosm of war and death whose masters, the matadors, are the powerful and elegant emblems of masculinity that the Lost Generation finds it impossible to compete against.
Though initially met with mixed reviews, modern critics consider it to be Hemingway’s best novel. The characters and events are largely based on real-life people in Hemingway’s social circle and his time spent in Paris and Spain. Thus, the book sold very well in its first print run, as the expatriate community was eager to read about the coded scandals of their peers. Today it is recognized as a foundational work of the modernist style, and an American classic.
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- Author: Ernest Hemingway
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“I’m all right,” I said. “My head’s a little wobbly.”
There were several waiters and a crowd of people standing around.
“Vaya!” said Mike. “Get away. Go on.”
The waiters moved the people away.
“It was quite a thing to watch,” Edna said. “He must be a boxer.”
“He is.”
“I wish Bill had been here,” Edna said. “I’d like to have seen Bill knocked down, too. I’ve always wanted to see Bill knocked down. He’s so big.”
“I was hoping he would knock down a waiter,” Mike said, “and get arrested. I’d like to see Mr. Robert Cohn in jail.”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Edna. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do, though,” Mike said. “I’m not one of these chaps likes being knocked about. I never play games, even.”
Mike took a drink.
“I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you. How do you feel, Jake?”
“All right.”
“You’re nice,” Edna said to Mike. “Are you really a bankrupt?”
“I’m a tremendous bankrupt,” Mike said. “I owe money to everybody. Don’t you owe any money?”
“Tons.”
“I owe everybody money,” Mike said. “I borrowed a hundred pesetas from Montoya tonight.”
“The hell you did,” I said.
“I’ll pay it back,” Mike said. “I always pay everything back.”
“That’s why you’re a bankrupt, isn’t it?” Edna said.
I stood up. I had heard them talking from a long way away. It all seemed like some bad play.
“I’m going over to the hotel,” I said. Then I heard them talking about me.
“Is he all right?” Edna asked.
“We’d better walk with him.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Don’t come. I’ll see you all later.”
I walked away from the café. They were sitting at the table. I looked back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands.
Walking across the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre. It was all different. I felt as I felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game. I was carrying a suitcase with my football things in it, and I walked up the street from the station in the town I had lived in all my life and it was all new. They were raking the lawns and burning leaves in the road, and I stopped for a long time and watched. It was all strange. Then I went on, and my feet seemed to be a long way off, and everything seemed to come from a long way off, and I could hear my feet walking a great distance away. I had been kicked in the head early in the game. It was like that crossing the square. It was like that going up the stairs in the hotel. Going up the stairs took a long time, and I had the feeling that I was carrying my suitcase. There was a light in the room. Bill came out and met me in the hall.
“Say,” he said, “go up and see Cohn. He’s been in a jam, and he’s asking for you.”
“The hell with him.”
“Go on. Go on up and see him.”
I did not want to climb another flight of stairs.
“What are you looking at me that way for?”
“I’m not looking at you. Go on up and see Cohn. He’s in bad shape.”
“You were drunk a little while ago,” I said.
“I’m drunk now,” Bill said. “But you go up and see Cohn. He wants to see you.”
“All right,” I said. It was just a matter of climbing more stairs. I went on up the stairs carrying my phantom suitcase. I walked down the hall to Cohn’s room. The door was shut and I knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Barnes.”
“Come in, Jake.”
I opened the door and went in, and set down my suitcase. There was no light in the room. Cohn was lying, face down, on the bed in the dark.
“Hello, Jake.”
“Don’t call me Jake.”
I stood by the door. It was just like this that I had come home. Now it was a hot bath that I needed. A deep, hot bath, to lie back in.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.
Cohn was crying. There he was, face down on the bed, crying. He had on a white polo shirt, the kind he’d worn at Princeton.
“I’m sorry, Jake. Please forgive me.”
“Forgive you, hell.”
“Please forgive me, Jake.”
I did not say anything. I stood there by the door.
“I was crazy. You must see how it was.”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“I couldn’t stand it about Brett.”
“You called me a pimp.”
I did not care. I wanted a hot bath. I wanted a hot bath in deep water.
“I know. Please don’t remember it. I was crazy.”
“That’s all right.”
He was crying. His voice was funny. He lay there in his white shirt on the bed in the dark. His polo shirt.
“I’m going away in the morning.”
He was crying without making any noise.
“I just couldn’t stand it about Brett. I’ve been through hell, Jake. It’s been simply hell. When I met her down here Brett treated me as though I were a perfect stranger. I just couldn’t stand it. We lived together at San Sebastian. I suppose you know it. I can’t stand it any more.”
He lay there on the bed.
“Well,” I said, “I’m going to take a bath.”
“You were the only friend I had, and I loved Brett so.”
“Well,” I said, “so long.”
“I guess it isn’t any use,” he said. “I guess it isn’t any damn use.”
“What?”
“Everything. Please say you forgive me, Jake.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“I felt so terribly. I’ve been through such hell, Jake. Now everything’s gone. Everything.”
“Well,” I said, “so long. I’ve got to go.”
He rolled over, sat on the edge of the bed, and then stood up.
“So long, Jake,” he said. “You’ll shake hands, won’t you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
We shook hands. In the dark I could not see his face very well.
“Well,” I said, “see you in the morning.”
“I’m going away in the morning.”
“Oh,
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