Understanding Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 and it is widely considered Hemingway's breakthrough novel. It follows Jake Barnes, an American expatriate living in Paris after World War I, who becomes entangled with a group of other Americans and British people traveling to Pamplona for the San Fermín festival. The novel is structured around their journey, the bullfighting, and the romantic tensions between the characters. Jake Barnes is narrating the story. He lost his ability to have sexual relations due to a war wound. His former girlfriend, Lady Brett Ashley, is now married to someone else but she continues to have affairs. She visits Jake in Paris and they eventually travel to Pamplona together along with Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell, and others. The group watches bullfights, drinks heavily, and gets into various conflicts. Brett ends up involved with a young bullfighter named Pedro Romero. Jake watches the relationship deteriorate and eventually helps Brett after she makes things worse. The ending is understated—Jake simply walks back alone after the chaos settles. The novel is famous for its sparse prose style. Hemingway deliberately stripped away adjectives and emotional commentary. Characters rarely say what they are actually feeling. The dialogue is where the real meaning lives, buried under surface-level conversation. This was not just a stylistic choice—it reflected the actual psychological state of the Lost Generation.
I have worked with literature students who struggle with reading this novel quickly because they expect drama written out explicitly. When I was teaching this text, one student kept asking why the ending felt incomplete. The book does not tie things up neatly. Jake does not get the girl. Brett does not find redemption. The bullfighter leaves her. The whole thing just stops. I told that student to read the final exchange between Jake and Brett again—she says the novel is "awful," and he replies, "Yes, isn't it awful?" That entire conversation about nothing is the point. The meaning is in the restraint. The bullfight sequences are not set pieces. They serve as a structural parallel to the romantic failures happening offstage. The matador fights with discipline and grace while the expatriates stumble through their relationships without any control. It is a running comparison Hemingway never explicitly states but expects you to notice. The novel has significant limitations as a reading experience. The plot is thin. Almost nothing happens in a traditional sense. If you are looking for narrative momentum, this will frustrate you. The characters are also deliberately unsympathetic—selfish, drunk, emotionally stunted. Many readers quit around the middle when the travel sections repeat themselves. It is not a book that rewards casual reading.
A more accessible entry point for some readers is to first watch the 1957 film adaptation with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner before reading the book, though the film takes substantial liberties. Alternatively, pairing it with Hemingway's nonfiction work A Moveable Feast provides useful context about the real people behind the fictionalized characters. The full novel is available through standard book retailers and many libraries offer digital copies depending on your region.
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