Talk:The Sun Also Rises

Duff Twysden and Harold Loeb

"The character of Robert Cohn is a savage portrait of novelist Harold Loeb, who had aroused the anger of Hemingway by indulging in an amorous sojourn with Lady Duff Twysden in Normandy before bringing her to Spain." Can anyone come up with a source that says they were in Normandy together? I can't find anything. Nadavspi | talk 01:26, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Symbolism not Mentioned

This entry seems to ignore the simple fact that Hemingway was a Modernist, and that Modernists used to hide the myth behind their plots and words--cf. Joyce. The entry doesn't say anything about the connections of the novel to the King Fisher myth, and the theme of sterility which Hemingway probably derived from Eliot. Behind or below the only apparently realistic surface there is a network of symbols, last but not least the bullfight which is evidently a pagan sacrifice in disguise. No mention of it. It's a rather shallow entry for a masterpiece of Twentieth Century Fiction! --93.40.118.37 (talk) 21:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you joking?75.49.224.163 (talk) 19:44, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Characters

I have read this book many times and always thought that Ethyl Alcohol was one of the most important background characters.

Some POV issues

Also, Hemingway, whose vocabulary was never large, was fluent in three romance languages: French, Spanish, and Italian. Each of these has a much smaller vocabulary than English, and yet each manages to be richly expressive. Talking about Brett and Mike’s speech, Jake Barnes tells us that "The English spoken language—the upper classes, anyway—must have fewer words than the Eskimos. . . . The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. . . . I liked the way they talked." Hemingway may have been inspired by the ways in which these European cultures, all of which he admired, managed to communicate effectively, even poetically, using so few words.

The article works well (more or less) up to this paragraph, wherein we have some strong POV statements. First, the phrase "whose vocabulary was never large" is ambiguous. While one could read it charitably to mean that Hemingway avoided florid prose, another reading would be that Hemingway lacked facility with the English language. Whatever one's opinion of Hemingway's writing, a thorough survey of his works and correspondence shows that Hemingway was a sophisticated individual who consciously economized his words. Second, while Hemingway's interest in the aesthetics of expression might have driven his fascination with the romance languages, that is a matter of speculation unsuitable for a neutral encyclopedia article.

The 'Major Themes' section is a useful addition, but as it stands it requires some serious revision. To begin with the second section makes some vaguely interesting points about the possibility of reverse initiation, but goes on to exhibit some obviously personal conjecture. I also think comparing characters to the sun of the title is pretty fallacious and unhelpful, not to mention unsubstantiated. The 'Major Characters' section also suffers from similar issues: the mention of Robert Cohn being Hemingway's 'hero' is pure conjecture and not referenced, and i think unlikely. Where in the novel does it state that Romero left Brett because she couldn't sustain a commited relationship? Pure assumption. All we can know is that she finds herself in need of Jake's rescue, feeling chastened and silly.

I will edit this heavily in due course, making use of a university library to provide some balanced view points on some of the critical responses to this book, and its perceived major themes. Particularly with reference to nature and natural process being the hero of the book (embodied to some extend by Romero), which Hemingway made explicit reference to in his correspondence (and for which i have proper references for).Turkeyplucker 11:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Injury

Not to dwell on the old penis issue again, but I'd like to get an opinion on the wording used to describe Jake's injury in the Plot Summary. While I'll admit that by definition "mutilated" is an accurate choice, by connotation doesn't it seem out of line with how Jake injury is described in the book? This could just be my bias at work, but when I hear mutilated I think of...you know...bloody disfigurement. The issue is handled far more delicately in the book, only ever being termed an "impotency" issue. Do you think a slight rewording is in order? [by the way, I have no idea why, but this would only appear when I placed it at the top of the section, not the bottom. anyone know more about wiki formatting than I do?] Clemenjo (talk) 12:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: The nature of his injury is unclear but that he is not a eunuch in any sense since he loves and clearly desires Brett -- and apparently she him in some bizarre sense, is not at all ambiguous.

Re: Jake's penis—the book was only clear that he was impotent due to an injury somewhere down there. What reason is there to conclude that his penis was "shot off"? Postdlf 13:57, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In re the injury, there is no evidence in the book that Jake's penis was "shot off", and Hemingway's take on it was:

“…It came from a personal experience in that when I had been wounded at one time there had been an infection from pieces of wool cloth being driven into the scrotum. Because of this I got to know other kids who had genito urinary wounds and I wondered what a man’s life would have been like after that if his penis had been lost and his testicles and spermatic cord remained intact. I had known a boy that had happened to. So I took him and made him into a foreign correspondent…” Letter to Thomas Bledsoe, 1951 Selected Letters, Page 745

It is also worth noting that Hemingway also said: "Actually he [Jake] had been wounded in quite a difeent way and his testicles were intact and not damaged. Thus he was capable of normal feelings as a man but incapable of consummating them. The important distinction is that his wound was physical and not psychological and that he was not emasculated." Interview with George Plimpton 1958. The Paris Review Interviews I p50 Issue 18 1958.

The novel does not ever make this explicit, as pointed out above. But it does render ideas of emasculation a little redundant, and it shouldn't be given as Jake's reason for fighting over Brett if his wound is so implicit. It would be better to suggest that he allows, and aids, Brett to drift off for other reasons: her personification of the 'lost generation', and Jake's lack of respect for it, for instance.Turkeyplucker 14:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

it's certainly explicit, because the italian tells Jake he has given more than his life for his country, understood that the only thing worth more to men than their life is their penis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.148.78 (talk) 06:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

My point relating to such phrases as 'most critics think this or that', is not that you should find a citation for it, but that it should be ommited. If you have read and understood a wide range or criticism then it will be evident in the quality of what you write. It is too colloquial and unscholarly to use such phrases.--Turkeyplucker (talk) 19:49, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Hemingwaysun1.jpg

Image:Hemingwaysun1.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

What happened to this article?

I used to come to this article to see which characters were based on which real people, and the events Hemingway turned into the novel. Now all that is gone. Why on earth would that information be removed? Even the fact that this is a roman is clef is omitted, while a lot of speculation (much of which becomes pointless once you grasp that Hemingway was drawing on real events) is allowed in the criticism section.76.216.91.243 (talk) 04:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The last sentence in the criticism section is pure personal speculation. It should be cited for references/sources and if they aren't up to snuff, delete it. 2/3's of that entire section sounds like a personal opinion. i wonder if the person who wrote it ( because it reads like one person wrote all of it) also deleted the character list, maybe because it conflicted with what he wanted to say? S.J., 10:15 pm EST, Friday, January 6, 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.12.235 (talk) 03:17, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

'Reception' area

That place in the article reads like a kid's book report. All is speculative and runs counter to Wikipedia's general tone. If anything, the title of that section ought to be renamed 'Analysis', but I personally don't think it belongs on Wikipedia. Let's send it to the depths!