The Sun Also Rises
One of the more common ideas associated not only with Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises,” but with Hemingway’s work as a whole, is the idea of “grace under pressure.” This idea has to do with maintaining one’s courage and humanity in the face of danger and obstacles. For most people, the idea of “grace under pressure” relates metaphorically to the emotional and psychological stresses of living; for some few such as combat soldiers or bull-fighters, “grace under pressure” is a more or less ordinary experience at a physical level.
Early on in “The Sun Also Rises,” the character Robert Cohen vocalizes one of the explicit themes of the novel: “Listen, Jake” he leaned forward on the bar. “Don’t you ever have the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” (Hemingway, 11).
The idea that it is incumbent upon the individual to make something of their own life, to resist the feeling of being trapped by mortality weaves its way throughout the novel. When the novel’s main character, Jake Barnes, tells Robert Cohen that he won’t travel to South America with him because he knows from experience that it does no good to try to run away from existential angst, he also reminds Cohen of his own belief that, “”Nobody lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” (Hemingway, 11).
This insight into Jake’s character shows to immediate things: first, that he, too, has been gripped by the same sense of futility and fear of death that plagues Cohen and, second, that, for Jake, bull-fighting and bull-fighters function as a sort of religion or spiritual comfort in the face of death. Later in the novel, when the characters travel together to the Pamplona festival, they attend a bull-fight where a brilliant young bull-fighter named Pedro Romero performs. During this bull-fight, Jake’s earlier creed about bull-fighters becomes more detailed and clear as he appraises Romero’s talent and integrity. The observations which Jake makes about the bull-fighter, Pedro Romero, offer a fascinating excerpt of Hemingway’s prose.
A small slice of the narrative demonstrates that Hemingway was not only capable of encapsulating the theme of his novel, in fact, condensing it into short passages of the narrative, but he was capable of “telescoping” his theme in this way while simultaneously offering a detailed insight into his own literary technique and aesthetic.
The reason that a single passage can reveal so much about both the theme and technique of the novel is because, in Hemingway’s narrative style, the two things are one and the same. The “lean, athletic” prose style that won so much critical and popular acclaim is merged in “the Sun Also Rises” with the novel’s theme or personal responsibility and personal empowerment. Under the surface of the simplified narrative form there is a calculated narrative technique which is meant to evoke a strong and immediate theme, but there is also a sense of ethical and moral resonance which answers the aforementioned ‘spiritual” aspect of both bull-fighting and writing — or any medium of artistic expression. In fact, the observations about Romero’s bull-fighting in the following passages applies beyond art to life itself and are meant to resonate into the universal:
“Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and left an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time.”
(Hemingway, 168)
The connections between this passage and Hemingway’s own literary style are fairly obvious, with “straight and pure and natural in line” (Hemingway, 168) being a central point of Hemingway’s style. It is obvious that Hemingway, the author, tried to embody the kind of honesty adn purity of expression which he attributes to Pedro Romero. Equally obvious is that fact that, within the context of the novel, the character Jake Barnes views Romero’s aesthetic as the “correct” aesthetic adn since Barnes in not an artist (though he associates with them) it is obvious that he sees the bull-fighter’s technique as being meaningful in a more universal paradigm.
What Jake sees in Romero’s bull-fighting is a personal ethic or personal courage with which to answer the angst forwarded by the human condition. His remark to Robert Cohen earlier in the novel which singled out bull-fighters as the only people to really fully live their lives was even more restrictive than it first appeared. It is not all bull-fighters who live their lives fully but only a select few of them, ones like Pedro Romero, who create with purity and honesty and are not afraid to “calmly let the horns pass him close each time” (Hemingway, 168) which also helps to explain why Jake Barnes had such a clear conviction about not running away to South America.
For Hemingway and for Jake Barnes, the solution to the angst which grips Robert Cohen early on and throughout the novel is to face it dead-on and not attempt to run away from it. In fact, the ability to look straight into the fact of one’s angst and personal mortality on a regular basis is the key to living happily or successfully. This is what is meant by “grace under pressure” something which is not only the literal facing of death in a bull-ring, but an emotional psychological maturity which allows an individual to face up to the perils, dangers, and disappointments of every day life.
Once this central “key” to Hemingway’s theme in “The Sun Also Rises” has been grasped, it is easy to understand the narrative technique employed in the novel and to see why it is not merely used for arbitrary purposes but is an attempt to “live by” the aesthetic which is attributed to the bull-fighter Pedro Romero in the excerpted passage. Hemingway is saying that life, and art, and love and even lust are all made better for their “closeness” to mortality adn that the presence of death and obstacles to human happiness are what define us as people and as individuals.
When Jake Barnes observes of Romero’s technique: “The others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all hat was faked turned bad and left an unpleasant feeling” (Hemingway, 168) this is a condemnation of those who would try to live their lives by a false creed, a false religion, or a falsified art. The statement seems fairly straightforward but it is actually a bitter observation about the fate which awaits those who do not master “grace under pressure.”
With a clear understanding of Hemingway’s theme, it is easy to see why Robert Cohen functions as such a viable villain in the novel without actually doing anything outrightly bad or mean. His character is simply an illustration of someone who has “twisted themselves” like a cork-screw to try to fake his way through life. As a consequence, he is weak, afraid of death adn unable to stand up to the challenges of life. Jake Barnes, who has much more profound challenges and limitations, both physical and psychological, than Robert Cohen is still a more successful and a more happy person simply because he understands the wisdoms which were compressed into his epiphany-like experiences with bull-fighting. In conclusion, both Hemingway’s theme and narrative technique in “the Sun Also Rises” rest on an idea of “grace under pressure” which is in itself on observation that human courage and dignity are best attained through honesty and purity of intention.
Work Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises; Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York; 1954.