"The Sun Also Rises" brings us all to the atmosphere of Paris of the
1920's. All the non-stop partying and the glamour
of the loose-living of
the expatriated Americans, who depended on the family fortunes back at
the states, is shown through the eyes of Jake Barnes.
Jake takes the
voice on this
novel, telling his story, the crazy and self-destructive life of
a man, madly in love with a woman of a possessive and disturbing beauty
but incapable of changing her own destiny: Brett Ashley.
The path of
their love takes them (and the reader) right to the Spanish fiesta, where
all the excesses and extremes are permitted, and where the culture and
nature of Spain (the bullfights, the weather, the streets and the behaviour
of the locals) seems to take control of the spirit of the characters of the
novel.
Passion, jealousy, ecstasy, despair, all feelings mix-up
towards a convulsion of attitudes, of actions and happenings, all-
together exposing the unbearable truth: the impossibility of mad a love.
This novel
stays as one of the most magnificent portraits of the Lost
Generation: Jake, Brett, Cohn, Bill. The perspective of finding happiness
on the succession of good present moments, the moral degradation, and
the damage left by the war (World War I) specially the mysterious wound
that left Jack sexually incapable.
The title gives the false sense of
hope propelled through the entire book: the sun also rises, stays for the
fact that, day after day, the sun rises once again, but not for something
different; day after day, the sun rises, the same, always the same, just
like all the characters on this book, condemned to follow the path drawn
by their destiny, without any kind of hope, implicit on the final dialogue.