The Sun Also Rises is a novel that depicts the "lost generation" of adults that live
in the years following the Great War. These individuals have lost their belief in God and
in the after-life. Because of their loss of touch with reality, they seemingly stumble
through their lives, living for each day. The book centers around the Jake and Brett and
their friends. These characters certainly live only for the day that is now. Through their
actions and the situations that they create, Hemmingway uses them to express the feelings
that he personally felt during the era.
The first thing that the characters represent is the impotency of life. Through the
character of Jake, who is impotent, Hemmingway shows the hopelessness and
pointlessness of life. In the story, Jake is unable to have Brett, his love, due to the fact
that he is impotent. Therefore, he tries to support her and help her in her endeavors.
However, he always maintains his love for her, which shows that his actions have a
superficial quality to them. This represents the feelings of Hemmingway that the period is
fake and useless. Through Jake and his aims and feelings, Hemmingway is able to
represent the helplessness of the people of the time to deal with their problems and go
through them. Instead, they ran from them and pushed them aside but never out of the
way. Hemmingway himself did this by withdrawing from society.
Because of the general feeling that life was meaningless and did not affect the
future, the people of the period lived for today and never planned for tomorrow. They felt
that once death came, life was over and there was nothing else. The Great War had
instilled in them that there was no God, or if there was, he was not watching. Thus, they
lived for only what they saw or wanted today. This is evident in the story through the fact
that all the characters simply drink to pass time. It is al...