The Other Wounded Heroes of The Sun Also Rises

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
June 2012, V ol. 2, No. 6, 575-578
The Other Wounded Heroes of The Sun Also Rises
Peter L. Hays University of California, Davis, Davis, USA
Jake Barnes is not the only wounded character in The Sun Also Rises (1926): All the major characters, except Bill,
and several minor characters are also wounded. This paper examines how those wounded characters reflect on both
Jake Barnes and Hemingway’s philosophy that we are all wounded in life and must make choices that allow us to
live as best we can without hurting others. By close reading, the author hopes to show how two characters,
Belmonte and Brett Ashley, may have been undervalued by critics, and to also show Hemingway’s essential
ambiguity in portraying human relationships, leaving final judgments up to his readers.
Keywords: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises , wounded characters, heroism
Introduction
Forty years ago, the author wrote:
Jake’s personal limitations, as well as the sterility of his world, are symbolized by his emasculation. And to the extent
that each of us is unable to achieve our desires, we are all to some extent impotent, limited, restricted. But Jake, like most of us, adjusts, survives, and finds pleasure and enjoyment where he can… (Hays, 1971, p. 158)
Equally important, to the extent that we see Jake as the hero of The Sun Also Rises (1926), not just its protagonist, his heroism consists of striving against his limitations and of carving out a life against the odds. He seeks love from Brett, despite his emasculation and her promiscuity. He projects (performs, in Thomas Strychaz’s terms) masculinity (Strychaz, 2003, p. 285), despite his emasculation, picking up a prostitute he cannot employ, squiring Brett, becoming an aficionado of bullfighting, asserting financial control by always paying for things, and finally taking a swing at Cohn. Enough has been written about Jake that the author does not need to dwell on him, but there are other wounded heroes in the novel as well.
Cohn is wounded as well, by Brett’s casualness over their affair, but primarily by his own romantic preconceptions. But Cohn is not a hero. Michael, too, is wounded by Brett’s casual promiscuity, but he, too, is in no way a hero; rather, he is the embodiment of the post-WWI disillusionment, despair, and careless hedonism. Romero is also wounded, first by Cohn’s fists and then by Brett’s refusal to become more womanly by growing out her hair (Hemingway, 1926, p. 246). Whether he leaves Brett, as Don Daiker recently suggested, or she sends him way, as she portends, he, too, will be heartsick, at least for a while. But Romero is very clearly the main heroic figure in the novel against whom all others are measured. Small boned and dainty, he faces bulls in the arena every week, displaying immense courage, and equally important, enormous self-control (Daiker, 2009, p. 84). In the last bullfights described in the novel, he even manages the locality of his beast-dominating artistry as a present to Brett (Hemingway, 1926, p. 220), with “control” appearing twice in
Peter L. Hays, Ph.D., professor emeritus, University of California, Davis.
l Rights Reserved.
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pages 220 and 221. Romero’s self-control is supernatural in that he can keep himself from being knocked out
by a superior and stronger boxer, in a way that Jake, who is only mortal and still struggling for self-control,
cannot. But it is not his immediate limitations that Romero must overcome (unless we see Brett as one, and
their relationship ends by the end of the novel). His limitations lie in the future, when he must deal with aging
and with his nerves after a bad goring (as did his model Niño de la Palma, who was never again as good as
when Hemingway watched him fight at Pamplona in 1925) (Hemingway, 1932, pp. 87-90). In the present of the
novel, he is the complete hero, in charge of himself, the Hemingway hero, or tutor modeling self-control.
Main Argument
That brings us to two remaining characters, one minor and the other major. The first is Belmonte, who returns from retirement to:
Compete with Marcial and other stars of the decadence of bull-fighting, and he knew that the sincerity of his own bull-fighting would be so set off by the false aesthetics of the bull-fighters of the decadent period that he would only have
to be in the ring. (Hemingway, 1926, p. 219)
But to protect himself, as well as his reputation, Belmonte stacks the odds. He picks his bulls in advance: “small, manageable bulls without much horns” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 219). Moreover, to protect himself,
Belmonte, unlike Romero, no longer enters the terrain of the bull. And so those who heard the legend of how
close Belmonte came to the bulls he fought “were disappointed because no real man could work as close to the
bulls as Belmonte was supposed to have done, not, of course, even Belmonte” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 218). So
Belmonte fights not just the bulls, but also his own inflated reputation, as well as Romero’s own great ability l Rights Reserved.
and sincerity in the ring.
But Belmonte has another enemy, a wound: He is “sick with a fistula” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 218), and each move is painful.
… He moved with greater difficulty as his pain increased, and finally the crowd was actively against him, and he was utterly indifferent. He had meant to have a great afternoon, and instead it was an afternoon of sneers, shouted insults, and
finally a volley of cushions, and pieces of bread and vegetables. … And always the pain that any movement produced grew
stronger and stronger until finally his yellow face was parchment color… (Hemingway, 1926, p. 218)
As Jake does with Brett, Belmonte continues to strive, despite the pain caused. He is a minor hero, discounting the extent of his victory, but like Romero, he controls his pain and goes into the arena to face a bull,
even if it is a small one. He need not to fight; his reputation is secure. In fact, by fighting small bulls, he
tarnishes his reputation, but like Manuel Garcia of “The Undefeated”, his self-identity is that of matador and he
controls his pain to confront the beast each day, as we the lesser heroes must control our insecurities and pains
to face life each day. There is a continuum of heroism and self-control in the novel. In bullfighting, Lalanda is
at one end, Belmonte in the middle, and Romero at the ideal and spectacular end. In daily life, Cohn is at the
disappointing end—no self-control whatsoever, unless boxing. Romero, again, is at the ideal end, and Jake, like
most of us, struggles in the middle.
Which brings us to Brett. For many, she is the villain, not a hero, inflicting pain as she does on Jake, Cohn, and Michael. But Brett herself is wounded. She lost “her own true love” to dysentery in the war (Hemingway,
1926, p. 46), and her second husband is abusive, seemingly suffering from what we now call PTSD (Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder) and what was then called shell shock, making her sleep on the floor and threatening
THE OTHER WOUNDED HEROES OF THE SUN ALSO RISES577
her life with gun. She was a V.A.D. (a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment) during the war, a nurse’s aid,
which Catherine Barkley defines as, “We work very hard but no one trusts us. … They don’t trust us when
there’s nothing going on. When there is really work they trust us” (Hemingway, 1929, p. 25). Brett served,
presumably throughout the war and as we now know, nurses too share the agonies of wounds and deaths;
nurses, too, suffer PTSD. Brett lacks confidence and “cannot go anywhere alone” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 107),
giving Robert pity sex (still nursing) and saying of her fiancé Michael, “He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful.
He’s my sort of thing” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 247)—what today we would say exhibits low self-esteem. Yet,
like Romero who manages the bulls with artistry and his own self-control, Brett—who Kathy Willingham
likened to a torero in this novel (Willingham, 2002, pp. 46-51)—controls the men around her with her sexuality,
not just Jake, Mike, Robert, and Pedro, but also the Count and Bill. In an era when women had few avenues for
non-domestic achievement—and Brett has rejected domesticity completely—she uses her one gift, her
sexuality, to achieve power, status, and control. As Cohen (1985) said, “She rejects gestures of feminine
subservience for those of masculine power” (p. 296). Her manipulation of men inflicts pain (Strychacz, 2003, p.
286), as the bullfighter also does, and she herself does not escape (figuratively) unbloodied: “I do feel such a
bitch” (Hemingway, 1926, pp. 188, 247).
Daiker (2009, p. 77) believed that Romero left her. Others (Svoboda, 1983, p. 27; Miller, 1995, p. 179;
Cohen, 1985, p. 303; Lewis, 1991, p. 75; Brenner, 1983, p. 50; Rovit, 1963, p. 155) feel that Brett generously
gave up her passion for the young bullfighter for his sake, a painful but selfless and heroic act. Her final
comment to Jake—“We could have had such a damned good time together” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 251)—has
been interpreted by those who think poorly of her as romantic self-delusion and her belief that if Jake had not
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been wounded they could have had an enduring romantic relationship. Jake’s reply of “Isn’t it pretty to think
so” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 251) is read as his realization that Brett needs to control men, that she would never
surrender control to Romero or to him were he sexually whole, and that she continues to love him while he
poses no threat of sexual authority or control. But what if her comment has been misread? What if she, like
Jake, who realizes he can never have Brett, was referring to her own inadequacies? She might be saying that if
she did not need to dominate men, to be in a controlling position and thus reminding him constantly of his
inability, she could have lived contentedly with him. As she says earlier in the novel, speaking of sex, “It isn’t
all that you know” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 34). When Jake answers, “No, but it always gets to be”, her response
is “That’s my fault” (Hemingway, 1926, p. 34).
Conclusions
Brett, Lady Ashley is more self-aware than she has been given credit for. She is another wounded character in the novel, and depending on one’s reading, she is like Jake, small “h” heroic, getting through life as
well as she can, and like Jake, enjoying life when she can. At the novel’s end, those of us, who believe that Jake
has gained insight into his relationship with Brett, have to wonder what that will mean: Will he try never to see
her again? His love for her seems to preclude that. When he sees her, can he remain less emotionally vulnerable?
It is, after all, at least seven years since his wounding (nine years according to unprinted opening pages) (Baker,
1969, p. 153); the scab over his inability to have Brett should have turned into solid scar tissue. And if Brett
realizes that it is her fault, will she be less promiscuous in the future? The open ending of the novel leaves for
many possibilities.
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