This man is insufferable. I have never read anything by him before, but I have obviously heard of him before and to my knowledge he’s considered a legendary author, but goodness! The main character is a self insert of the author and it does not reflect well on him or his world view. He thinks less of anyone who isn’t a man or white or american which is fine if the point was that he sucks, but it’s written in a style where the protagonist is supposed to be generally sympathetic. He judges Brett very hard and claims to be her friend while spending all of his time being jealous of her. He gives off incel vibes tbh. I actually really liked Brett, she is kind to basically everyone and very honest. He judges her for her promiscuity, as do many of the characters, but she is open about her wants and needs and the worst you could say of her is that she’s a little shallow. He fills one whole page with the N-word which is bad enough but he also is very anti-semitic. It says a lot that the best parts of the book were when the characters are being insulted by each other but that really only happens to the one Jewish character which makes it feel worse (even though that character is also kind of insufferable).
I was so surprised coming out of this and looking at Wikipedia now I see that maybe this is a held opinion. That said, the takes on Wikipedia (not the best source I know) feel very charitable to me. It’s interesting in that it is mercifully short and I kind of hate-read it, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. As a result I have no one to talk to about it, thus the rant. Thank you for humoring me and sorry if this is the wrong sub, I get confused about what’s supposed to be on this sub vs other book subs.
by VegetableFew6268
4 Comments
You’ve missed the point completely.
Jake Barnes is a wholly emasculated character and represents an incompetent patriarchy essentially oppressing femininity as represented by Brett, who is an exemplar of early feminist ideals like sexual liberation and autonomy. He’s not really supposed to be sympathetic, but he’s not downright evil so one can sympathize with aspects of him.
Barnes is not a self-insert of Hemingway. Hemingway was much too smart of a writer to do such things… Yes, most of his characters are influenced by his actual life and experiences, he was still very adept at clearly delineating the characters from himself. And if that”s not obvious enough, he very rarely engages in wish-fulfillment as it pertains to using a self-insert character to rewrite part of one’s life in a more appealing way than it actually happened.
Hemingway typically did the opposite, he made his characters into worse versions of himself because it made for more compelling storytelling and drama.
That”s is good of a writer he was, he could actually take a character that people would view as a self-insert and then make that character seem despicable in a lot of ways. Not many writers are willing to do that. Too much ego.
Time and place matter a lot too. You have to recognize the struggles of The Lost Generation in the inter-war years because that is fundamental to The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway (and by extension Barnes) had been through hell and didn’t feel at home in the world anymore. Aimlessness and malaise combined with suppressed trauma were just a constant state of being for them.
I highly recommend that you actually do a proper academic deep dive into a literary analysis of this before deciding to rant anymore because you’re not coming across very well.
Also, The Old Man and the Sea is probably a much more accessible work that you should consider before you allow this misunderstanding to crystallize into how you actually view Hemingway’s entire oeuvre.
One of the things I hate about this sub is how often I’ll come on here and see a long rant about a book written by someone who so severely misunderstood it that it makes me want to scream. This is a reminder that we need to overhaul English curriculums that haven’t been changed in decades which only teach kids the most basic analysis
Did you miss the part about >!him being a war veteran who was wounded and rendered impotent!<?
To call him an incel…
I’m just going to leave this thread.
I’m tired of the endless whining on this sub and people treating their opinions as fact.
If you don’t like a book, just go read another one.
Spare the part where you come on here to share your hate with us and go type it into a review at Goodreads instead.
Now I’m gonna leave
A character being awful doesn’t mean the author endorses those views.