The Sun Also Rises: a review 2025

AS one thing leads to another I decided to re-read Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, written some 100 years ago. In some ways it is terrible writing, in others, amazing. The Sun Also Rises is about nothing and everything.

Maybe the best way to talk about the book is by way of the six elements of story. Let’s get into it.

Title

is perfect. It comes from Eccleciastes. Moreover, it represents how as some things change, others remain as they have always been. So it is with this story and Hemingway’s writing.

Plot

is an old one. Timeless. In the end the trope is that of rescue–the hero rescues the damsel in distress. Her distress, however, is internal. Lady Brett Ashley is not tied to the railroad’s track; but to her beauty, sexuality, and nature.

The story is about men and women–their attraction to one another. Four men, actually at least six, are infatuated with Brett Ashley, a somewhat (mid-thirties) older women who lost her husband, Lord Ashley, in the war. Now, she’s adrift trying to find happiness.

All of human emotion comes out within the tale–love and lust (or, passion/aficion), envy and jealousy, fear, courage, work, despair, pretension, bravado. What it is to be a man.

Characterization

Jake Barnes is the “hero”. And also a fictional Hemingway. Consciously or not, I can’t tell, Ernest shows who he is inside with Barnes–sensitive and shy, introverted. He is not the killer of fierce animals, that is left to Pedro Romero, the dashing, young (nineteen) bull-fighter.

Barnes’ drunken soliloquies are some of the most authentic writing I have ever read. Additionally, I think they give insight into who Hemingway was: a manic-depressive alcoholic.

Barnes’ “friends” (chaps) are not very likable characters. I suspect they are modeled after real people in Hemingway’s in-real-life adventures. The conversations/dialogue, too, I think are likely representations of that which actually happened.

Brett Ashley is mysterious, and a flirt, trying hard not to be a “bitch”. And everyone falls in love with her. Did I mention how timeless the story is?

Setting

is France and Spain right after The Great War (World War I). It is here that I think Ernest’s writing becomes tedious. There is a lot of redundancy. Most of the story takes place in Pamplona, Spain, in July during the week of the fiesta centered around the bull fights. It is one non-stop drunken party. There’s some hiking and fishing, and also riding in cars. At one point, in the middle of a paragraph Hemingway inserts, “That has nothing to do with the story.”

There is a lot of that. However, it does set a tone. Again, I don’t know if that was intention by the author, or the by-product of his bi-polar disorder and alcoholism.

Style

is what Hemingway is most famous for, and it’s all here. Short, crisp sentences. Showing the actions and emotions rather than just describing them. Using dialogue to advance the story. In addition, describing what a character does to move the story. Some might call it fluff, for it has no real purpose other than it brings the reader into the scene.

“At the hotel where Mike was going to stay in Saint Jean we stopped the car and he got out. The chauffeur carried in his bags. Mike stood by the side of the car.”

On the other hand–there are some run on sentences that made my head spin. One of perhaps 200 words. Sixteen lines long with 15 “and”‘s, and so many commas. However, it is a stream of consciousness scenario I can relate to. My mind does work like that sometimes, too. Again, it places the reader in the scene.

Lastly, in Book III, Hemingway abandons the previous styles and goes more traditional first-person narrative. As if he finally sobered up. I liked it. I thought it was a perfect ending to a drunken fiesta. Intentional?

Big Ideas/themes

is what makes the work timeless. Despite 100 years of progress, we are still basically the same lost and adrift species–competing against each other and other creatures–trying to define ourselves. To leave our mark.

Gertrude Stein called Hemingway and the others “a lost generation.”

That could be said about many subsequent American generations. Especially today. In which case, why not live as though each night was your last?

Hemingway’s ideas

are, I think, fairly universal.

To be a man is to be aggressive and bold – capable of killing. Always competitive and on the hunt.

To be a woman is to be mysterious and nurturing, and somewhat unpredictable. Except that deep down a woman is always attracted to the bold, aggressive man.

Drunk reveals what sober conceals.

In Conclusion

this book could not be published today. Hemingway derides everyone and has overt racist and prejudiced views against everyone and every group.

Hemingway’s writing reflects the life he lived. He famously said, “Write what you know.” I think he would laugh at MFA Creative Writing courses. A person today trying to adapt Hemingway’s style would be, what? A fool? How can one be a manic-depressive, alcoholic writer writing about his life of adventures in war, on safari, and with women and friends? What would that look like? The world has changed.

I’ve a couple questions:

1. Is it okay to enable, and reward, madness for the sake of entertainment?
2. Is bull-fighting an honorable profession?

I looked up (googled) bull-fighting today. It is still a thing in a few countries. Reported was that 200,000 bulls are killed each year in the “sport”. I find that hard to believe, but … ?

Have you read Hemingway? What do you think? Everything? Nothing? Smash or pass?