Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Sun Also Rises


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

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever ... The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose..." - Ecclesiastes

Whenever I read books, I always like to recognize how the titles tie into the story. After reading this book, I was quite stumped. The only place I could find anything remotely related to the sun was in the epigraph at the beginning of this literary work. Personally, I didn't find much of a point to this book, but the epigraph Hemingway chose explains some of his reasoning for writing this work.

His first quote from Gertrude Stein explains an obvious view of his. If he didn't agree with this quotation, he wouldn't have found it necessary to place it before his writing. Hemingway clearly believed that this generation of drunk cafe hoppers was lost. In my opinion, through out the book he makes the characters look like they all have no lives. Hemingway wrote this book not to put this generation and their way of life on a pedestal, but to actually look down upon them.

His second quotation presents the idea that everything is happening in one mad circle. Things always go back to where they came from. This is where he wanted to emphasize the continuous aspect of life.

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