Jake Barnes In The Sun Also Rises

Words: 744
Pages: 3

The Sun Also Rises is a captivating novel because it demonstrates a unique kind of tone that most novels from that generation and writing don’t really encapture, The Sun Also Rises show’s the story and the culture of the lost generation in the form of a band of friends traveling around Paris and Spain each with their own problems and own struggles and not really a way to fix them but one in particular stands out, Jake Barnes, throughout the novel Hemingway uses Jake Barnes to illustrate the theme of struggle so prevalent throughout the book.
For Jake Barnes the sun never rose, Jake has not had an easy life, and has a past that continually haunts him in one form. Before the setting of the book Jake served in a war and got injured to where he
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Towards the end of the book in Chapter 19 Jake travels cross country to rescue Brett from the disastrous affair with Romero at the end of the book Brett states “Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.” Jake replies “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”(p.250) This shows that despite what they went through in the book Jake still thinks it will never be possible for a relationship between the two despite how much they like each other, and this itself is Jake’s biggest internal struggle. Jake will never accept the fact that it could work but he continues to put himself around Brett which agonizes him.
While the theme of struggle persists throughout the novel and through many characters Jake’s struggle is an unique one, unlike Brett’s struggle to find somebody and Robert Cohn’s struggle to get Brett, Jakes struggle cannot be easily solved and thus he’ll never feel whole, and as a whole Jake’s struggle represents most of the lost generation, The lost generation doesn’t know what to do after WW1 just like Jake some of the people returning home from the war will never come home the same and will never heal, and for them and Jake, the sun never