Disillusion and Alienation in Hemingway’s "The Sun Also
Disillusion and Alienation in Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises"
In the novel The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway describes a couple who share a very strange and distant kind of love for each other by possessing the idea of spiritual alienation and the feeling of disillusion. This story takes place immediately after World War I, a time of great hardship. This hardship results in a digression of values both morally and socially.
Hemingway shows the aspect of disillusionment and alienation in many different occasions in the novel. One occasion is when Jake starts to pray but he almost falls asleep so he prays for the Bullfighters. He knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bullfighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. (Hemingway 138-139). This quote shows that Jake has loose morals because he did not pray for anything really important, instead he prays for having fun and a good time in the fiesta. When he is praying for something important it bores him and he almost falls asleep. Furthermore he could not pray as well anymore because he has returned from the war where he has saw many terrible things. He is isolated and chambered in his own soul.
Brett is a beautiful woman who has never loved anybody yet her arbitrary love affairs satisfy her. She has also lost self-respect by randomly saying, I’m a goner (Hemingway 183) because she realizes that she does not really love anybody after all she has gone through and all she has done in her life. She shows disillusionment by searching for fulfillment as well as true love. Brett has a lot of trouble deciding on having one man and settling down with him. In an attempt to find a new lover, she engaged herself to Mike Campbell of Britain. Still unsatisfied, she continues on to have affairs with Robert Cohn and then falls in love with Romero the bullfighter. She is a disillusioned woman who cannot find happiness anywhere, no matter which man...