Hemingway’s exploration of Man in The Sun Also Rises
             ‘It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’
             Much of Hemingway’s body of work grows from issues of male morality. In his concise, “Hills Like White Elephants,” a couple discusses getting an abortion while waiting for a train in a Spanish rail station bar. Years before Roe v. Wade, before the issues of abortion rights, mothers’ rights, and unborn children’s rights splashed across the American mass consciousness, Ernest Hemingway assessed the effects of abortion on a relationship, and, more specifically, he examined a man’s role in determining the necessity of the procedure and its impact on his psyche and his ability to love. The Sun Also Rises continues the investigation of the morality of being a man in longer, more foundational form. Rather than dealing with such a discrete issue as “Hills Like White Elephants,” the novel discusses questions of masculinity on a large scale by testing an array of male characters, each perfect in some traditionally masculine traits, with a woman perfectly designed to cut to their flaws. The three most important of these controlled experiments balance each other particularly well. Lady Brett’s treatment of Jake Barnes, Pedro Romero, and, much more briefly, Count Mippopopolous allows Ernest Hemingway to exhibit the infinite fallibility of Man as his most fundamental and important quality rather than exulting the tough-guy, ubermench cult he is often credited with popularizing.
             Ernest Hemingway says he slapped Max Eastman’s face with a book… and Max Eastman says he threw Hemingway over a desk and stood him on his head in a corner… They both tell of the face-slapping, but Mr. Hemingway denies Mr. Eastman threw him anywhere or stood him on his head in any place, and says th...