And Sun Also Rises Essay

This paper discusses Ernest Heming focusings young And Sun Also Rises (1926) and takes an in-depth analysis of the development of the female timbre Lady Brett Ashley in trying to come up with better understanding of the characters role in the novel. Hemingways And Sun Also Rises is widely regarded as Hemingways best novel. It became the overnight Bible of the postwar generation. (Barrett, 724) The novel revolves the theme of damage done to Hemingways generation by the violence of World War I. altogether the main characters of the novel are to certain extent scarred by war. Some of them suffer physical injuries like Jake or Count Mippipopolous and others bear the mental trauma of deep in thought(p) generation (the phrase belonged to Hemingways friend Gertrude Stein and became the novels first epigraph). Among those psychologic solelyy deteriorated individuals Lady Brett Ashley is a controversial character that evokes different readers and critics reaction. This paper explores the path by which Lady Ashleys character develops through the novel.With the first meeting with Brett Ashley her individual female sexual appeal and stupendous general attractiveness is revealed. From the beginning of the book, men find her irresistible. When Jake, as narrator, first introduces Brett, he says, Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a gabardine skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boys. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that woollen jersey (Hemingway, 22).Robert Cohn, too, is immediately captivated by Brett, and a short time later, he says, Shes a remarkably attractive woman (Hemingway, 38). She is a ironlike and independent woman and probably these are the features that attract men more than her physical beauty. Her real tool is her charisma that strikes the men around her. Every strong male character in the novel, at one time or another, comments on B retts female attractiveness. When he is introduced to Brett, Bill Gorton says, Beautiful lady (Hemingway, 74) microphone Campbell says, Brett, you are a lovely piece.Dont you think shes beautiful? (Hemingway, 79) These compliments are like a refrain that is reiterated through the recess of the novel. Despite the abounding attention on mens side Brett rejects to become committed to a single man, at least physically. Neither the profuseness of attention nor her independence makes Brett a happy woman. Having first appeared as a careless free woman Brett Ashley turns out to be an unhappy and miserable brute just the same as all those who lived through the war.Brett is often described in the literary criticism as sexually promiscuous, or even a nymphomaniac, which seems extreme given that in the course of the story she has sexual relationships with, at most, three men her fiancee, Mike Campbell Robert Cohn and Pedro Romero. Some critics, like Edmund Wilson, assess Bretts share as b itch-like Wilson interprets Brett Ashley as an exclusively destructive force (p. 238). This interpretation, plausibly, is directly related rely to Bretts own assertion that she makes to Jake after she leaves Romero You know it makes one get hold rather good deciding not to be a bitch (Hemingway, 245).Nonetheless it is difficult to agree with such interpretation of Bretts character. First of all it is known that she is one of the lost generation, the people whose youth fell on the post-war period when the relationships and responsibilities were loose and disordered, and so Bretts behavior merely reflects this time. Furthermore, though Brett never stayed with any man longer than she wanted, she never displayed cruelty in attitude toward men, so she could not destruct them to any degree. And the most important issue which explains Bretts character is again related to the time of the novel.Brett Ashley belongs to those people whose thoughts are confused being affected by the war. So w hile looking for her way in sprightliness she fails in finding the lull for her psychological disturbances therefore continues her self-abusive conduct. Brett can be profoundly careless of the feelings of others. She scatters cigarette ashes on Jakes rugs, and when Romero gives her a bulls severed ear after a successful bullfight, she leaves the gift behind, stuffed in a hotel drawer. Cohn calls her a sadist when she is unmoved by the plight of the horses gored in the bullring.Certainly she uses Jake heartlessly at times, expecting him to introduce her to a man she desires, put up with her affairs, remain steadfast in his devotion to her, and faithfully run to her surrender on short notice when she finds herself at loose ends in another country. Yet she is also deeply unhappy and emotionally fragile. Viewed more sympathetically, she can be seen as a self-destructive woman, traumatized by the ugly and unromantic loss of her first love to dysentery in the war Brett hurts no one in th e novel as severely as she hurts herself.Her nymphomania, her alcoholism, her constant fits of depression, and her obsession with bathing are all symptoms of an individual engaged in a consistent pattern of self-abuse (Whitlow, 56). All in her misery she often complains to Jake, her lonesome(prenominal) true friend, about her aimless existence and unsatisfying life. Her vagrancy from relationship to relationship is assimilated with Jake and company roaming around bars. As the novel unfolds one observes how Lady Ashley transforms from the self-confident independent woman into one who seems extremely awkward being by herself.That is why she is searching for the shelter in more or less stable though platonic relations with Jake. As with the other characters, World War I obviously played the determinant role in the formation Brett Ashleys character. Having lost her true love during the war she elaborated the pattern of random relations, especially with regard to men. Her skepticism an d lost faith in search for true love symbolizes the search of the whole lost generation for their decayed values. Unable to find support in the handed-down convictions that imposed certain meaning to her life Brett feels morally lost.Having lost belief in anything Brett together with her friends is trying to escape the reality and fill her empty life with careless wandering from bar to bar, living night life, drinking and entertaining, doing everything that fits into the notion escapist activity. The character of Lady Brett Ashley is developing through the novel from the initial revenue stamp of careless but happy woman into the typical representative of post-war generation with aimless way in life. Parties, free love and other kinds of merry-making are only the futile distraction for concealing the sorrow and insecurity that filled her soul.