Lovely Literature

"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! :]