☀ You can borrow and read The Sun Also Rises free below. ☀
Ernest Hemingway* can write, no doubt about it. The Sun Also Rises was his first novel, and by all accounts it was a huge struggle for him, requiring lots of drafts and rewriting, but he does seem to have gotten it right. Generations of readers have declared it a classic, and it is enjoyable, although in a way nothing much happens aside from a bunch of partying and sexual jealousy. But that seems to be the point.
Drinking Relentlessly While Feeling Unsure What They Are
The Sun Also Rises is set in Spain and France in the mid 1920’s. The novel’s narrator, Jake Barnes, has survived the World War but has been injured such that he is no longer able to have sex. This loss of manliness — exacerbated by having been terrified and humiliated by the horrors of war — pervades the book. And it comes up against the heroine, Lady Brett Ashley — Jake loves her, and she loves Jake, but she is highly sexual and sleeps with multiple men and is independent and in many ways more “masculine” than the men in the story.
And all the main male characters — one of them is Brett’s fiancé — are in love with Brett to some extent, usually all the way to “madly”. It makes for interesting and revealing complications.
Losing Themselves However They Can
All the main characters drink way too much. They are supposedly friends and they remain civil to each other, mostly, even in appalling circumstances, but that seems to be because they can’t acknowledge the depths of their experiences, now or those during the war, and must stay superficial or indirect to survive.
Mainly, the story follows a fishing trip to Spain and a week-long visit to Pamplona’s fiesta and bullfights. There’s plenty of opportunity for fireworks amid the constant efforts of the characters to lose themselves in alcohol, sex, food, blood and death, whatever it takes. Hemingway’s writing is studiedly simple, as if he’s just telling matter of factly what he sees, but what’s going on is always intriguingly complex.
Borrow or Buy The Sun Also Rises
You can borrow and read the book The Sun Also Rises free via the nonprofit Internet Archive or buy* it from Amazon (“supplemented with early drafts and deleted chapters”).
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
