Lovely Literature

Ahh the final lines of the novel make the book slightly worth it. While I did not like this book much at all, I loved the ending.

"Oh Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

That's just a wonderful line to end on. I feel encouraged after Jake's last line because he seems to have seen somewhat of a new light. I think he is saying to her, well it's your fault we aren't together so don't complain to me. At the same time, he sounds somewhat like Bogart in an old time movie. "Isn't it pretty to think so?" It can mean so much, but it's up to the reader to interpret what would come next. Yes, it's a beautiful vision to pretend like they are in love, but if they were still in love they would not be having that conversation. Brett must have not been loved enough as a child because I don't think she is fully capable of true love.

All in all, I am extremely happy that I am finished with this book because it was kind of torturous to read this. I loved O'Brien's book, but Hemingway...not my style. My favorite part of the entire book was the ending--not just because it's over, but because of that final line.

Thank you, Jake, for making my reading experience a bit more worthwhile.

:] Seeya on Monday Costello!

As I see it, the major conflict in this entire story is love, namely so-and-so in love with Brett.

Let's count up Brett's mentioned lovers!

Jake Barnes: Our bleeding heart protagonist. He's a struggling writer/journalist who was changed permanently from the war. He met Brett during the war while she was a nurse and he was wounded.

Michael: A lovely man who is constantly drunk, but who isn't in this story! He is engaged to Brett, but he definitely knows what he is in for. He knows that Brett fools around with other men and that she is not going to change any time soon. He even comments on how she is cheating on him with other men right in front of him.

Count M: A random Count who buys Brett some alcohol and takes her out every once in a while in Paris. Apparently she has told him that she still loves Jake and yet he is perfectly fine with fooling around with her.

Robert Cohn: Hopelessly in love with Brett--unrequited love that is. He went away with Brett for a weekend or so in San Sebastian, and he has been hooked ever since. He even beat up Romero because of his jealousy!

Romero: The young, suave bull fighter. This may be the only guy besides Jake and her previous husband that she has actually been in love with. Believe it or not, Brett suddenly was unselfish and let him go so she would not interfere with his career.

Those are the important lovers among possibly hundreds not mentioned.

"Why didn't you keep him?"
"I don't know. It isn't the sort of thing one does. I don't think I hurt him any." [page 245].

Brett never thinks she hurts her men any, but I'm pretty sure she leaves a much larger impact than what she thinks. I'm kind of over her at this point. Stop abusing love, Brett.

"I know. Please don't remember it. I was crazy."
"That's all right."
He was crying. His voice was funny. He lay there in his white shirt on the bed in the dark. His polo shirt. [page 198].

I like the sense of parallelism that these sentences are written in-- He/His/He/His. Cohn has a major break down at this point in the story after he beats up Romero. He finally realizes that Brett will never love him no matter what he does. He breaks down to Jake and says he is going away. I believe his pain would be too much to bear if he stayed around Brett any longer. It can't be easy to hear that the love of his love does not love him, and yet he does not even know that Jake is in the same boat. Jake, though, is good at hiding it and not even thinking about his loving emotions toward Brett. Come to think of it, he only thinks toward Brett in an angry matter and not in a very loving manner even though he will do anything for her.

These characters are all fickle and it's kind of annoying after a while. I want to yell at them, "Get a back bone!"

"He nearly killed the poor, bloody bull-fighter. Then Cohn wanted to take Brett away. Wanted to make an honest woman of her I imagine. Damned touching scene." [page 205].

Oh jealousy, what a vice it is. Cohn is cursed with that vice most of all. He wants what he wants and refuses to take anything less than just that. All he wants is Brett, but Brett does not want him. I'd feel bad for the guy if I actually liked him.

Cohn's motivation for beating up Romero was his jealousy that he had spent time with Brett. Though Cohn shouldn't be protective of Brett, he definitely is. I think he is trying to just get her to love him even though it will never happen. She put him under her spell when they traveled together, and he has been a goner ever since. There's a point in time where Cohn should get the hint that Brett doesn't want to be with him. Oh, maybe the time where she decided she was in love with Romero!

"I must have been sleeping," he said.
"Oh, not at all," Brett said.
"You were only dead," Bill said. [page 163].

Everyone is mean to Cohn. Granted, he generally deserves it, but everyone is still mean to him. This little understatement shows how Bill is so sarcastic, espcially toward Cohn whenever possible. He is their scapegoat and the one they make fun of the most. In this chapter, he was passed out while the others are drinking wine from the new wine skins the Americans are buying. Brett never passes out even though I'm pretty positive that she could drink the rest of the men under the table. Cohn on the other hand seems to be quite the lightweight for the tough guy he is. For a boxer, you'd think he could handle more alcohol in his system, but it seems to be just the opposite. Either that or he just endulges way too much every single time.

"He tipped the big five-litre bag up and squeezed it so the wine hissed against the back of his throat." [page 161].

This anthropomorphism makes it sound like the wine is actually hissing while in reality that is a human or animal-like action. I like that word much more than personification :]

I feel like this entire story is about drinking. I know I have stated this before but the drinking problem in this story is crazy. I can't say I know anyone who gets up in the early morning and drinks alcohol at breakfast on a daily basis.

Drinking makes them all have more fun. It encourages their crazy behavior and they tend to become more promiscuous. The decent part about their constant alcoholism is that they speak a from a sober heart and they tend to get the truth out. Maybe they feel as if their lives have somewhat been wasted away and they are still dealing with after affects of the war so they decide to constantly get wasted. The lives they live still amaze me.

Brett is a very interesting character with multiple levels to her personality. She is a static character in this story because she starts out as an independent, slightly crazy woman who refuses to be with who she actually loves, and she manages to not change throughout the entire story.

When she is described, it is very ironic to me because I believe she is the opposite of how every man sees her. I feel as if Jake is the only one who truly sees her for who she is and that is why he can love her for so long without her love in return.

"There's a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight." [page 46]

I cannot see Brett as fine and straight as Cohn describes her, because she acts just the opposite.

The Count then says, "Mr. Barnes, she is the only lady I have ever known who was as charming when she was drunk as when she was sober." [page 66].

I'm not a fan of her alcohol problem and the fact that she kind of gets rewarded because of it. Well, Brett is a difficult character to handle I suppose. I think she irritates me the most because everyone puts up with her because of her looks and her charm so it is difficult for her to change because no one is forcing her to.

"While we were waiting I saw a cockroach on the parquet floor that must have been at least three inches long. I pointed him out to Bill and then put my shoe on him." [page 97]

This is a nice little euphemism thrown in here by Hemingway to make it sound like Jake is a bit more humane to rodents. I'd have done the same thing though. Killed the cockroach that is.

I do like that Hemingway is slightly random with the things he speaks about. It definitely makes Jake and some of the other characters seem more real. Jake's thought process is relatable because he jumps from one thought to the next, sometimes completely random. The fact that Hemingway throws in that Jake killed a cockroach while waiting for Cohn made me like him a little more. Not necessarily the book, but Hemingway as a writer. He's very clever with certain things he throws in as well, especially the ironic/sarcastic elements of the dialogue. The character Bill is kind of the sidekick, funny character who is just always being sarcastic. He's my favorite character, while Jake on the other hand is not because as amusing as his thoughts are, he's spineless when it comes to Brett.

Lady Brett and Jake Barnes share a difficult love. He definitely loves her and wants to spend his life with her, but she pushes him away. She is extremely contradictory though because she often expresses her love for him.

"Told him I was in love with you. True too. Don't look like that. He was damn nice about it. Wants to drive us out to dinner to-morrow night. Like to go?" [page 41].

She just baffles me. I mean, I'm a girl and she truly confuses me. She acts like it's not her fault that she is promiscuous and that she cannot control her cheating...but she definitely can. And there is no good reason why she shouldn't get married to Jake. Ever since her "true" lover died, she seems to have been a mess. I think it's a call for attention. Not that I'm a psychologist or anything. Brett is obviously a beautiful woman who has a lot going for her, but she is also quite the alcoholic. It's crazy how people who look like they have it all together on the outside are usually the ones the most screwed up on the inside. Everyone has a past, and that past is not always an enjoyable one.

Characters, characters, characters!

There are not twenty main characters in this book, but there are many that are mentioned fleetingly with a bit of a story with them.

"Do you still love me Jake?"
"Yes," I said.
"Because I'm a goner...I'm a goner. I'm mad about the Romero boy. I'm in love with him, I think." [page 187].

The bull-fighting Romero foils the protagonist Jake Barnes.
Here's a little breakdown of both characters that I have come up with.

I have learned to love juxtapositions as well as alliterations ever since last year in Mrs. Sander's class when it took me forever to understand what a juxtaposition actually was. Now that I understand them, I find them quite often.

"And if he marries me, like he's always promised he would, that would be the end of all the romance."

On page 58, Frances is speaking to Jake about Cohn's behavior toward her lately. They have been an item for many years and she is expecting marriage. Unfortunately, she knows that he will not marry her and is planning on leaving her. You would think that marriage would be the beginning of romance, but not in Frances and Cohn's case. Cohn changed in college because he was outcasted, so he had to become very tough. I feel like this gives him relationship problems with nearly everyone. Oh well, Frances is a money seeker anyway.

"We have got the loveliest hotel," Mike said. "I think it's a brothel!" [page 89].

This quote is just weird. Mike is weird character though because he is enagaged to Lady Brett, who is known for her promiscuity, and yet he has every intention of still marrying her no matter her affairs. He calls her out on the affair she has with Romero and other men that she encounters, but he does not say he wants to break off the marriage. Plus, he tends to be drunk all the time [but who isn't in this novel?], and he is constantly bankrupt.

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." [page 42].

This quote reminded me of something I frequently think of. People are always afraid of the dark, but darkness is only absence of light. With that in mind, there is no darkness, only light and absence of light. When I get bored, my mind tends to wander to this thought. Hemingway embodies this thought of mine but changes it a little bit. It is always easy to be mad at someone during the day, but at night worries tend to drop away. When you are sleeping, it tends to be peaceful for the most part. Sleep is the time of the day that we do not have to worry about all of our troubles and afflictions we have had thrust upon us. So in this thinking, I don't really believe in darkness, because nothing is actually different in the dark besides the light being absent. Deep thinking right there. :]

There is also some parallelism on the next page [43].

"She was standing looking away, the thread in her folded hands. The man was urging two tourists to buy."

Basically every good writer uses parallelism though...so unfortunately it's not as exciting to write about.

Two of my favorite literary terms!!! Woo!!!!

"Try and take it sometime. Try and take it." [page 39].

A lovely alliteration we have here. This sounds stupid but alliterations are probably my favorite literary devices because they sound poetic and roll off the tongue. Whenever I write, I try to use as many alliterations as possible because I like the way it sounds. Assonance, on the other hand, I am not a fan of. I don't think it sounds as good as alliteration does. It's also more difficult to pick out because it doesn't automatically stand out.

"I say, I must borrow your glasses to-morrow."
"How did it go?"
"Wonderfully! Simply perfect. I say, it is a spectacle!" [page 169].

I love puns...no matter how bad they are, but this one is actually a good one! Hemingway has an odd sense of humor that makes it difficult to figure out whether or not he is trying to make something funny/punny or not. He has a ironic and sarcastic way of writing that can occasionally be difficult to decipher. Anyway, Brett was speaking to Mike about borrowing his glasses to watch Romero more closely and Mike was calling it a spectacle. Get it? :] That made me laugh when I read it...probably didn't make anyone else laugh though. Oh well, you have to find some way to get through things :]

"You are all a lost generation." -- Gertrude Stein

I had much less motivation to read this book than the Tim O'Brien novel. This novel has just been...well...boring. O'Brien has wonderful stories that are captivating [I mean, not everyone knows someone who died in a poop field...], and there is more depth to the plotline, while this novel follows the pattern of eat, drink, sleep, eat, drink, sleep with the occasional fight and bullfight in there.

I said this in a previous entry, but Hemingway is one heck of an articulate drunk. I feel like he was completely wasted while he was writing this novel, and yet he still makes it difficult to understand without truly paying attention to the words. I also noticed how they never have to use the restroom. Actually, I suppose I can't say that for a fact, but they never mention that they need to use the restroom. I mean, come on, that's bound to happen with how much they drink. They wake up every morning, find a pub, and drink. What a life they live. I guess that's what the starving artists of their time did as opposed to our starving artists today who sit around starbucks and drink coffee bemoaning their lives.

I absolutely love the quote at the beginning of the novel before the story even starts. The epigraph that Stein uses basically captures the essence of the "lost generation" stuck in a continuous cycle. Not one particular generation is "lost" so to speak, but they all are. Who actually knows what they want to do with their lives at every moment they live? It's difficult to figure out who you are let alone what you want to do for the rest of your life. You can ask anyone who is in this class actually...we're all doing just that right now. Woo cooolleeeggeee causes so much stressssss.

Hemingway paints a beautiful picture with his lengthy descriptions especially of France. He uses local color effectively as if he wrote this novel while sitting outside of a Bistro in the middle of a French courtyard.

"It was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain after Robrt had gone, watching it get dark andt he electric signs come on, and the red and green stop-and-go traffic-signal, and the crowd going by, and the horse-cabs clippety-clopping along at the edge of the solid taxi traffic, and the poules going by, singly and in pairs, looking for the evening meal," [page 22].

There is also an onomatopoeia in this little paragraph that explains the sound in words that the horses make rather than a dull description. [clippety-clopping]

I think I admire Hemingway in the way he paints a picture with his words rather than his story-telling skills, because honestly, I feel like this story has no plot to it. Yes, it is full of unrequited love in many cases [ie. Jake and Lady Brett, Mike and Lady Brett, and Cohn and Lady Brett], but then again so is almost every other story. I like to entertain the thought that Hemingway was sitting in France actually writing this because if he could do this from memory...well he is an even more articulate drunk than I thought.

:]

The vernacular and dialect of this novel varies with the location. I find it amusing how when the Americans travel, they do not keep their American ways so much, but they adapt to their surroundings. Many of the men speak French and Spanish, which is completely different from most Americans today who only know English. I wish America was more diverse in its cultural aspect, but Americans especially today are proud to be American and only that. Funny how everyone is an immigrant and yet everyone has a problem with the recent immigration.

While the expatriates travel France, they speak French and endulge in the luxurities of French cuisine and especially alcoholic beverages.

"Che mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!" [page 39]

This phrase is exclaimed when the Americans get to a hotel, and Hemingway throws in some geographical description of the Ospedale Maggiore in Milano, the Padiglione Ponte, and Padiglione Zonda.

When they travel to Spain, not as many of them are fluent in Spanish, but they meet bullfighters, workers, and women of Spanish descent who help them get by on what is necessary.

"I felt sure i could remember anybody with a name like Aloysius. It was a good Catholic name. There was a crest on the announcement. Like Zizi the Greek duke. And that count. The count was funny. Brett had a title, too. Lady Ashley. To hell with Brett. To hell with you, Lady Ashley," [page 38].

Not only does Jake Barnes have his own internal conflict brewing, but he has a lovely stream of consciousness right here. After finishing the book, I am not the biggest fan of Hemingway's writing [that's a euphemism :], but I enjoy how he portrays Barnes as a very normal, down-to-earth starving artist who is deeply in love with this woman and he cannot fall out of it. He has problems that are relatable, and his thought process is very scattered at times. Barnes' stream of consciousness goes through his inner struggle with being Lady Brett Ashley's "safety net" so to speak because he is always there for her and she takes advantage of that.

I like to go back to my own thinking sometimes and wonder how I got to a certain thought. I go back through everything I was thinking and what reminded me of my next thought and so on. It's interesting as to how the mind makes connections with things and events that are not related otherwise.

"Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter they weighed one hundred and five or two hundreded and five pounds," [page 1].

I have found many literary devices in this novel, but they do not all have enough to write about to make them separate entries, so I will most likely be combining them.

The above quote is a very interesting simile to me because this boxing coach is only mentioned in the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, yet he seems to have gained many people's respect. He comes off as a man kind of like the fighting coach in the movie Never Back Down who is very well respected and successful. It is even more interesting that Spider Kelly taught Robert Cohn how to box because he is known for raising respectable men and Cohn has not been portrayed as respectable whatsoever.

"...and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down," [page 138]

This is figurative language that speaks of how the bullfighting system works with the picadors, bulls, and steer. I was shocked at how nonchalant the main characters acted when they watched numerous men killed by bulls. It reminds me of gladiator fights in coliseums, except those were man vs. man while these fights are man vs. bull. I honestly don't have an interest in the bullfighting sequences that were explained in this book. I'm all for non-brutality here.

"It's funny," I said. "it's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love."
"Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again.
"I don't mean fun that way. In a way it's an enjoyable feeling."
"No," she said. "I think it's hell on earth." [page 35]

That's quite a contradictory view on love, especially coming from a woman who usually holds the optimistic view on love while the man is pessimistic. Lady Brett Ashley is obviously a very independent woman who does not appreciate weakness in herself. I think her weakness is that she is in love with this man [Jake Barnes] who she is telling herself that she cannot have.

After I finished the book, I wanted to reread the chapter summaries for certain things I did not immediately understand. One of the things I paid close attention to was Brett's love for Jake. She is such a sex-crazed, independent woman, but she is also very selfish. She refuses to allow herself to be in relationship with Jake because his injury from the war prevents him from having sex. If that's what is holding her back from marrying him...well I think that's a lame excuse. She is struggling with this internal conflict constantly, and the audience becomes aware of this at the end of chapter 2.

While this is her internal conflict, I also believe there is an external conflict between Lady Brett, Jake, and Lady Brett's lovers. There is an obvious uncertainty at whom Lady Brett actually "loves" because she has been married and divorced and now engaged to Michael, but she has all these lovers and "men on the side," and then of course Jake is a complicated situation. The relationship problems along with alcoholism definitely comes up as the big elephant in the room.

With the due date for these blogs only a week away...I suppose I should actually start to type them up.

"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it," [page 18]

Ahh yes. Never have there been truer words than Robert Cohn's. Honestly, that's kind of how I have been feeling lately with the summer ending, school beginning, and college applications becoming available. It's always nice to know that you are not the only one who is afraid that life is going to catch up with them.

Robert Cohn. Not one of my favorite people. I like him more at the very very beginning of the novel in which he is a boxer at Princeton and is still somewhat likeable. Then of course he changes and becomes more arrogant because of the abuse he receives since he is Jewish. It's truly amazing to me how the world can decide to pick on a certain race or religion with nothing to back it. Why do they/we put so much energy into hating other people? It just seems so pointless and silly when you think about it--and yet it still continues and always will. I'm just sick of discrimination and people not accepting others. Can't the world just get a grip and grow up? Show a little maturity and professionalism toward the rest of the world.

Okay, off my soap box now.
On to the next one! :]