In “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, the protagonist Jake suffers from an unspecified injury that plagues him throughout the entire narrative. He is a veteran and was hurt in the line of duty, meaning that he for some reason is unable to have sex. While this may seem like a minor detail regarding Hemingway’s story, it affects the way that Jake behaves on almost every single level and is obvious during several interactions with female characters. This is because sexualty is such a large facet of the society of the 1920s with traditional gender roles, much more so than in the contemporary ideology held by our society today. Identifying these interactions where Jake’s injury troubles him greatly help to understand how severe this social handicap really is.
There are several instances in “The Sun Also Rises” where Jake falls short of what is expected of him or who he is expected to be. Many of these interactions with others inadvertently show who Jake is and what he’s internally thinking, in a way that directly contradicts his actions. For example when he is flirting with Georgette and he eventually goes on a date with and discovers she’s a prostitute, he is able to say all the right things and navigate through the treacherous conversational waters with ease. However, as soon as the young lady smiles and reveals off-putting teeth, Jake is no longer interested. “ We had another bottle of wine and Georgette made a joke. She smiled and showed all her bad teeth, and we touched glasses. "You're not a bad type," she said. "It's a shame you're sick. We get on well. What's the matter with you, anyway?" "I got hurt in the war," I said. "Oh, that dirty war." We would probably have gone on and discussed the war and agreed that it was in reality a calamity for civilization, and perhaps would have been better avoided. I was bored enough.” (Fitzgerald 42) They still proceed normally and go on the date, but Jake is unable to feign infatuation as genuinely as he could before the lady shows something deeper than surface level. When she begins to drop the barrier between them and show him the tiniest slice of who she is, Jake recoils from it and grounds himself in comfortable superficiality.
This feeling of security provided by staying surface level shows us that Jake is ashamed of who he really is. Even though he sustained his injury while fighting for his country, it wounded his pride in a way that can’t be remedied. He views himself as having been emasculated by his past, and this affects him in the present because of the way he is unable to be as masculine as he used to. When the group of men with Brett who talk about dancing with Georgette annoy Jake, we know that it’s more than a simple issue of conflict and that it stems from his deep-rooted insecurity regarding his own masculinity. The men shouldn’t really bother him; even given this, he feels threatened. “I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure. Instead, I walked down the street and had a beer at the bar at the next Bal.” (Fitzgerald 37) While it’s not explicitly stated in the text, it’s reasonable to assume that the men are gay. This leads one to conclude that their homosexuality, or “lack of masculinity,” is what frightens Jake because of his own self-perceived lack of masculinity.
This affects Jake because this sort of masculine expectation, and thus his internal fear, is ever-present. Each time he speaks to a woman, and throughout the entire time when he is interacting his friends in the novel, he is essentially acting. His insecurity regarding his masculinity shows through every facet of his behavior because Jake is constantly attempting to perform in the way he is expected to. In reality, Jake is heavily guarded and refuses to let others come close to him. He is used to pushing them away and maintaining a profound emotional distance from others, which is why we see the character of Brett as so significant.
Brett is influential for Jake because she represents what all of the other characters are lacking. Where other women can no longer captivate Jake because of his inability to perform sexually, Brett goes against this and makes him feel happy “Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.” (Fitzgerald 156) This happiness is important because we see Jake so often experience unhappiness when others don’t, and that he typically views social events and being social in general as a hollow affair. We see Brett break this monotony for Jake, and represent a real emotion and infatuation the likes of which are previously unseen. His self-perceived insufficiency limits his behavior in the world and affects the way he talks to others, especially women. While Brett is able to overcome this and make him feel desire the way an unadulterated person might, this only emphasizes Jake’s behavior with other females. There’s a clear difference between this and his previous behavior.
Because of Jake’s lack of what he believes to be masculinity, he behaves differently and more reserved. Jake was a part of ‘20s society like anybody else and bought into the idea of strong gender roles reinforced by characteristics that defined those roles. Since he was unable to procreate, he did not speak to women in the way that his other male counterparts did, driven by a desire to hook up. This complete fundamental undermining in his character stemming from something so beyond his control is disheartening, to say the least. The fact that people used to attribute their adequacy to something as superficial as their masculinity is not healthy, and in our modern day society we practice that understanding to a more thorough extent.
Hemingway, Ernest, et al. The Sun Also Rises. Scribner, 2016.
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