The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway (1926)
“Hemingway's iceberg floats here first — the wounds are real but never named, and everything that matters is what nobody says.”
Short Summary
Jake Barnes, an American journalist emasculated by a WWI wound, moves through the expatriate circles of 1920s Paris in love with Brett Ashley, a beautiful English aristocrat who cannot be with him. Jake, Brett, Robert Cohn, Bill Gorton, and Mike Campbell travel to Pamplona for the Festival of San Fermín, where the young bullfighter Pedro Romero becomes Brett's latest obsession. Jealousy, drinking, and the war's invisible damage fracture the group. Brett abandons Romero for Jake's sake; Jake retrieves her from Madrid. The novel ends with the two of them in a taxi, Brett saying 'We could have had such a damned good time together' and Jake replying, 'Isn't it pretty to think so.'
Detailed Summary
Jake Barnes, an American expatriate working as a journalist in Paris, is the novel's narrator and central wound. A vague injury sustained during WWI has rendered him sexually impotent — Hemingway never states this directly but makes it unmistakable. Jake is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a twice-di...