My Critical Essays

Hema and Kaushik: A Lacanian Reading

The last three stories of Unaccustomed Earth follow a boy, Kaushik, and girl, Hema, into adulthood.  In the first story, "Once in a Lifetime," Hema recalls her memory of Kaushik when his family to the Boston area and stay with her family. The second story in the link, "Year's End," is narrated by Kaushik. "Going Ashore," the third story told in third person (except in the last three pages), brings Hema and Kaushik together in Rome.

The opening line of "Year's End” begins with "I did not attend my father's wedding." Readers know that Kaushik‘s mother has died, of the breast cancer mentioned in “Once in Life Time”. Most of the story, "Year's End,” recounts the ordeal of the mother‘s dying. After the death of Kaushik’s mother, his father marries Chitra, a woman, from India, with two young daughters.

Kaushik‘s tremendous sense of loss and loneliness drives him to get closer to his mother. In the course of the second story, we know that his mother is constantly described in terms of her love of water. As Hema recalls in “Once in Life Time,” when Kaushik’s parents were looking for a house to buy, Kaushik’s mother says, “Water views, that’s what we should look for” (244). When they bought the house, there were no water views, but there was a pool instead. When his mother was sick, she occasionally would ask him to drive her to the sea. Before her death, she tells Kaushik and his father to scatter her ashes into the Atlantic. To be close to his mother, Kaushik finds comfort with being close to the ocean. He leaves his father and stepmother and embarks on a road trip along the coast of New England. His descriptions of the ocean and his engagement with the seaside landscape reveal of his longings for his mother. This, according to a Lacanian model of the human psyche, is the feeling of going back to the imaginary order, “the part of psyche that contains our wishes, our fantasies, and most important, our images” (Bressler 134). In this phase of the psyche, Lacan argues, humans are united as one with their mother. In many ways, Kaushik’s death by water represents a kind of reuniting him symbolically with his mother, the only other woman he did not want to lose. In a psychoanalytic perspective, the ocean is addressed as a yonic symbol. By going into the sea, “to show his mother he was not afraid” (Lahiri 331), Kaushik tries to go back to the imaginary world, to unite as one with her mother. 

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁

Identity through Character Names in Ha Jin's A Good Fall

Character names are focal points of many literary works. They contribute a great deal to the critical discourse of the narrative in which they are used. They afford readers the opportunity to see into the characters' background and examine their level of involvement with their surroundings. In his collection of short stories, A Good Fall, Ha Jin uses different character names to convey the transnational identity of the characters. Their different names fulfill different levels of attachment of the character to the new and old society.

In the stories, some characters have only Chinese names. These characters still have strong ties to their Chinese heritage and are at the beginning of their new life in the U.S. Hongfan Wang, on “Shame,” is a Chinese graduate student studying in the United States, visited by his Chinese professor, Professor Meng. He, Professor Meng, decides not to go back to his country and start a new life in U.S. Lina and Panbin, in “Temporary Love,” are immigrants in Flushing while their spouses still live in China. In "The House behind a Weeping Cherry," Wanping, a garment worker, and his lover, Huong, a prostitute, run away from pimps and gangs, dreaming of starting their life anew. Ganchin, in the title story “A Good Fall,” is a kung fu master torn between staying illegally and going back home empty-handed.  

There are also characters who have names that indicate “an American identity coupled with Chinese heritage.” These characters are in the process of assimilation while there are still chains that retain them to their past and homeland. The real estate man, Dan Feng, in “The Beauty,” sees himself completely Americanized and wants to avoid his connection with his heritage, but his homely daughter reminds him that whatever he does he is still tied to his homeland. In “Choice” Eileen Min, a forty-year-old Chinese American widow, is quite financially established in the new society. When it comes to her social life, she cannot untie herself from her traditional culture as she chooses to live with her daughter rather than marrying with the 27-year-old boy, Dave Hong, tutoring her daughter. Dave Hong knows that his parents will be horrified if he marries a woman so much older than himself. Yet, he is willing to risk his parents’ disapproval.

           In addition to that, Ha Jin sometimes gives only English names to the characters. These characters are more involved with the American culture than those who have retain their Chinese names, “sometimes to the point where they have rejected their Chinese sensibility.” In “The Beauty,” Gina is the beauty in her community and her features resemble Caucasian traits, especially the straight nose and the double-leaded eyes. Her beauty comes from plastic surgery in attempts to escape from her past heritage. In “On the Crossfire,” Connie lives like an American partner, going out in the morning and coming back home late afternoon. Mandi, in “Children as Enemies,” rejecting their traditional culture, encourages her children to change their names from Chinese to English.

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁

Form and Character in Coming Through Slaughter

Ondaatje’s formless narrative structure and antithetical characters parallel the formless nature of Bolden’s life and music, jazz improvisation. More specifically, Ondaatje's structure and characters dramatize the formless structure of the artist's life and music.

Bolden is known for his constant improvisation in his music. He defines his own music against "the clear forms of Robichauxt's music," because Bolden believes that "[Robichauxt] dominated his audiences. He put his emotions into patterns.” Instead, Bolden wants people hear the fragments of his music he happens to play. He “wanted them to be able to come when they pleased and leave when they pleased and somehow hear the germs of the start and the possible endings at whatever point in the music that [he] had reached then.” Bolden wants to play the mood that comes to his mind instantly, “every note new and raw and chance. Never repeated.” The multiple points of view, the fragmented narrative line, and the print on the page echo Bolden’s chosen art form, the improvised jazz. Ondaatje is like a jazz musician and his novel is improvisation.

In Coming Through Slaughter, the various characters and their relationships with Buddy Bolden create the story line of the book. Buddy's two closest friends, Webb and Bellocq, represent the polarized points, having form vs. formless, in Bolden's life and art. The image of Webb's magnets pulling in contradictory directions metaphorically corresponds to the opposing characters into Buddy's life. Webb is a man whose work has an organized form and order. He tries to bring Bolden back from the private life to the public life, an organized life he used to have with his wife, children, and band. Even, Webb's name suggests that he tries to trap Buddy literally and metaphorically to the public life.  On the other hand, Bellocq tempts Bolden away from his audience into a private area of silence. He has no interest in Buddy's music. After coming back from the Brewitts, Bolden tells Webb that Bellocq had tempted him on to silence: "he had tempted me out of the world of audiences where I had to catch everything thrown at me." While Webb and Bellocq represent the polarized points in the life of Bolden, a polarity he is unable to bring into harmony, the women in his life, Nora and Robin, also function to suggest the tensions within Buddy's personal life. Nora Bass, Bolden’s wife, is the fixed point in Bolden’s life to which he returns.  She and his children give his life "a fine and precise balance".  They impose on him the order he lacks in his personal life. On the other hand, Robin, Bolden’s lover, provides Bolden with the retreat he needs from the demands of the public life, from the demands of his family, and the demands of his audience. With Robin, Bolden moves into a private life of silence. Finally, Bolden contains within himself the tensions and the pulls of Webb and Bellocq and Nora and Robin, and these tensions are reflected in his music.

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁

The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson: A Review

           Lacy M. Johnson’s memoir, The Other Side, tells the account of her kidnapping, imprisonment, and rape by her ex-boyfriend. Through jumping back and forth along the timeline, she tells not only about these but also the time before she meets him and the time after she escapes from him.

        I am impressed by the memoir’s straightforwardness and pacing. Johnson kept me on the edge of my seat. It made me read the book in one sitting. But, there is one thing I want to write about in this response paper, the technique of “show and don’t tell.” I do not say that she does not employ this technique in her memoir. On the contrary, she uses it effectively. She does really a great job in showing her experience; she puts us right in the middle of the action and showing the events as they occur, in real time, along with her action, reactions, inner thoughts and feeling and actual words.

       So, what is it about her “show and don’t tell” technique that I want to write about?

Before I go to that, I would like to divide Johnson’s memoir into two parts: Before the kidnapping and after it. So here, I want to focus on the first part, especially the part when she meets him and lives and travels with him.

       In the first part, in two occasions, she tells the reader that she is in love with him (the suspect, the Spanish teacher, the man [she] lives with, and the man [she] used to live with). In the first occasion, after the accident, he goes over some photos she had with him, the photos of the time they were in Europe. About one of them, she writes that “And then there is me nursing a beer from a paper back in Brussels’s Grote Markt… I smile I look happy and young and in love” (65). In the second occasion, she writes that “it is harder that he taught me about the film, and cooking … It is hard to admit that I loved him” (84). Lacy Johnson, did you really love him? I do not see the answer of this question in your memoir.

       I see that Johnson depicts him as a temperamental, psych- or socio-path. I see him murder her cat. I see him beat Johnson. I see him threatens to leave him in a foreign country. She even shows worse pictures of him. She shows that the way he makes love with her is not making-love but rape or  she shows that one night, after a fight, he comes back late when she is sleeping, he lifts him from bed to put her on the floor.

In the memoir, she refers to him as “The Suspect,” “The Spanish Teacher,” “The Man I Live With,” and “The Man I Used to Live With.” I see a vengeful tone is taking over throughout the book. The tone of a person who has been kidnapped, imprisoned, and raped. A victim. I do not see her much as a student whose Spanish Teacher flirting with her or I do not see a person who loves The Man [She] Live[s] with.

       In brief, while Johnson in some occasions admit that she loved The Man [She] Used to Live With, she misses to show that. This, I believe goes back to his vengeful thinking that takes over her mind.

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁
Identity in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

The English Patient offers us a group of characters that gather at the San Girolamo villa at the end of World War II. The novel’s central figure is the English patient. He is a badly burned man being taken care of by a Canadian nurse. He retains his mental faculties and is able to tell the other characters about his past. Hana, the Canadian nurse, is a war service volunteer. When she gets the news of her father’s death, she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  She decides to stay behind at the villa to nurse the English patient.  Kip, who is an Indian sapper works with the British Army, comes upon the group in the villa. Caravaggio is a Canadian thief. His profession is legitimized during the war when he puts his skills to use for the British intelligence.

In the novel, demarcation of geography (the desert), architecture (the villa), race (English, Indian…etc), and physical appearance (of Almasy and Caravaggio) are continually being broken down. The characters are all coming from different countries. They want to belong to the new place and find a new home, but they never find it. They remain nation-less or transnational; having no place to belong to or belonging to multiple places as the same time.

In the novel, the English patient tells Kip that they get along so well because they are both "international bastards-born in one place and choosing to live elsewhere” (177). Both the English patient and Kip reject national borders. The English patient, by choosing to live in the desert, a borderless place, rejects belonging to one place. Now in the villa, his identity is totally erased as he is burnt beyond recognition. He is “a man with no face. An ebony pool. All identification consumed in fire” (Ondaatje 48). The loss of his physical body represents the erasure of his national identity. He strongly believes that nations are dangerous inventions. Kip, as an Indian man serving in the British army, straddles two worlds, walking a line between adopting Western customs and losing his national identity. He has interacted in the English culture, yet he does not submit fully to the culture. At the same time, he has retained his Indian culture.

Certain environments in the novel lend credence to the idea that the national identity of the characters can be erased. The desert and the isolated Italian villa function as such places where national identity is unimportant to the character’s connection with each other. The desert is uncontrollable and unreliable because of sand storms. In other words, the desert is a metaphor for their unreliable national identities and is a place of freedom where national identities disappear. The villa itself, being destroyed by the war, has no specific border to be separated from the outside world. The characters, from different parts of the world, gather in the small world of the villa. Their world, like the desert, has no artificial border.

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ 

Gender Misidentification:

A Character Study of Jake and Brett in The Sun Also Rises

The challenges of gender and sexual identity have been increasingly theorized in literature as it plays an important part in constructing gender roles. Literature has formed strict requirements for how women should look, act and behave and has also set certain standards that men must live up to. Until the early of twentieth century, the majority of published writers were men and the portrayal of women in literature was inevitably one-sided. In the ancient world literacy was severely limited, and the majority of those who could write were male. Donald Hall in Literary and Cultural Theory highlights this issue:

Since many texts were written when social oppression of women was considered natural, they often reflect patriarchy in substantiality unmodified ways. Throughout history texts written by male writers have tended to reflect, overtly or covertly, their own positions of power and often had highly patriarchal attitudes toward women” (Hall 204).

Feminists, also argue that the male-dominated patriarchal assumptions have been implanted in literature through the acclaimed male writers and philosophers. Plato who thanks the gods that had not born as a woman, Sophocles who claims that the female is by nature inferior, Aristotle who thinks women means weakness, Shakespeare who says women have no character at all, Honore de Balzac who considers woman as a slave and Mark Twain writes that Jane Austen is impossible to be read and believes that she should not have died a natural death. These male writers plus many more others lend support to the belief that a patriarchal vision has been established in the literary canon. However, by blurring the lines between masculinity and femininity, Hemingway has broken this male-centered and male-dominated assumption in The Sun Also Rises. Through a shift in the role of the male and female characters in The Sun Also Rises, by constructing a powerful Brett on the one hand and an emasculated, wounded Jake on the other, Hemingway subtly questions gender roles in his novel, The Sun Also Rises. The novel seems to have deviated from the patriarchal belief system. Jennifer Banach in her essay “Gender Identity and the Modern Condition in The Sun Also Rises,” sheds light on how Hemingway challenged the traditional definition of the gender roles in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises:

The book presents a startling discourse on gender roles in modern times alongside considerations of topics such as modern sexuality, androgyny, and the endurance (or extinction) of traditional models of romance in the postwar world. It raises questions about identity, challenging conventional definitions of manhood and womanhood, and ruminates on the bounds of human nature, asking which parts of oneself, if any, may remain unchanged and how loss can affect one's core identity (Banach 36-37).

What readers see in The Sun Also Rises is that Hemingway portrays the difficulties his characters face when facing societal gender binaries. The Sun Also Rises explores the challenges of having to adhere to strict gender binaries in societies. As a result, the characters often venture outside gender boundaries and exhibit behavior not specific to their gender.

 We, as readers, need to ask a question about what made Hemingway incorporate this new discourse on gender roles. Is there an internal motivation for Hemingway to take a different path from his fellow male writers? According to feminist criticism, the acclaimed male writers, through their works, have encoded the male structures of power in their literary inheritance. Or there is an external motivation?

This paper attempts to examine the issue of gender misidentification in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, through exploring the questions of how Hemingway blurs the lines between masculinity and femininity, and what makes him disregard the strict, traditional gender binaries.

James Nagel in his essay “Brett and the Other Women in The Sun Also Rises,” writes “The Sun Also Rises is much more a novel of character than of event, and the action would seem empty were it not for the rich texture of personalities that interact throughout the book” (Nagel 90). The most important among these characters are Jake Barnes, the narrator of the story, and Brett Ashley, the main female character in the novel. Ernest Hemingway dives deep into the societal culture that young men and women experienced. The Sun Also Rises displays how The World War I led to vast changes in societies. While societies rebuilt themselves after the devastation, new cultural and societal views on gender emerged. During the post-World War I era, young men and women challenged the traditional views of their parents regarding gender. Thus, the decades of the 20s and the 30s saw young men and women testing gender binaries by transgressing their gender spheres: men began to take on behaviors typically gendered female while women began to take on behaviors typically gendered male (Zabala 4). Brett and Jake are both products of those societies that were built after the destructive war.

During the post-World War I era, a new type of women emerged who were called New Woman. The New Woman was a historical figure that became prominent in the public eye as she began to redefine gender roles. Dorothy Schneider and Schneider Carl in their American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 write that “The presence of this historical New Woman began to take over typically masculine gender roles and spheres (qtd. in Yu  179). These women discarded their long hair and frocks for shapeless, boyish “flapper” styles. They also ventured out of their private home sphere and joined men in public discussing issues previously not open to women. As men encouraged women’s social mobility, they began seeing women as partners and not as their inferiors, which led to the increasingly blurred gender roles in contemporary society. (Zabala 4)

The Sun Also Rises is about the growing emergence of this new type of woman that comes about in the early twentieth century. In the novel Hemingway creates new models for strong American women that had not been used before in literature (Marney). Brett Ashley reflects this type of woman. She is a new type of woman who is unlike the other women of the novel. James Nagel in his essay also writes that, in Brett, Hemingway created one of the more fascinating women in 20th-century American literature. Sexually promiscuous, she is a denizen of Parisian nightlife and cafés. In Pamplona she sparks chaos: in her presence, the men drink too much and fight. The portrayal of Brett in the novel functions to draw out the connection between Brett and the historical figure of a New Woman. The most important characteristic of both Brett and the New Woman is that they share masculinity in both appearance and behaviors.

In her first appearance, Lady Brett Ashley, the main female character in the novel, who is more known as Brett refers to herself “a chap”.

“Brett came up to the bar.

‘Hello you chaps.’

‘Hello, Brett,’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you tight?’

‘Never going to get tight any more. I say, give a chap a brandy and soda” (Hemingway 29).

Though Brett is extremely attractive, she has many masculine characteristics that Hemingway juxtaposes with the other women in the book, who are either prostitutes or possessive women. The first masculine characteristic is her boyish hair. With “her hair brushed back like a boy’s,” (Hemingway 30) Brett is more likened to a man than a woman. She is uncomfortable with the traditional femininity, she believes she would “look a fright” (Hemingway 246) with long hair and doesn’t want to be “one of those bitches who ruins children.” (Hemingway 247) When she becomes involved with Romero, she is humiliated by his wish that she grows her hair long and be “more womanly” (Hemingway 247). Ultimately, it is Brett’s masculine character that allows her to keep her distance in a world that distrusts human attachment. Here, it was Brett’s hair that most clearly evokes her transgressed gender sphere. Romero grew up in Spain and his society was still a traditional one where long hair was the symbol of woman. Regarding Brett’s masculine characteristic, Linda Miller in her essay, “Brett Ashley: The Beauty of It All,” writes:

[Romero’s] friends had "ragged him" about Brett "at the cafe," seemingly because of her unconventional appearance, which somewhat embarrassed Romero. But in telling Brett to grow out her hair, Romero was perhaps less concerned with what others thought than with encouraging Brett to become "more womanly" in the traditional Spanish sense and to get rid of that masculine "cover" that the boyish hairstyle epitomizes: "Me, with long hair. I'd look so like hell," Brett tells Jake. (Miller)

The second masculine characteristic of Brett is her independence. Her independence can be seen in her promiscuity. Even though Brett is engaged to Mike, another male character in the novel, she openly has affairs with many men, including Robert Cohn, Pedro Romero, and Jake Barnes, although the relationship with Jake is not sexual. Her carelessness about sex makes her even more desirable to men: she is not controlling and marriage-obsessed like Frances, and she is not for sale like Georgette. Brett is independent in choosing the standards which she wants to live by. Romero cannot handle Brett the way that she naturally is, so he wishes to marry her so that he can feminize her to meet his standards. The standards were established by his upbringing. But because of those standards that Brett chooses, he leaves her. Brett refuses to compromise her sexual identity for them. Brett prefers her independence over her lovers.

Power is another masculine characteristic that Brett is enjoying in the novel. Unlike the feminist criticism which focuses intensely on the way in which women are denied social power and the right to various form of self-expression, in The Sun also Rise, it is the female character, Brett, who enjoys her social power. It can be said that she is strongest, most conventionally masculine character in the novel, dominating her lovers and manipulating them.

In fact, criticism that focuses on Brett as a “bitch” focuses primarily on the ways in which she dominates the various male characters. Thus, it is generally accepted that the nature of Brett’s power is in her ability to control her relationships with the men that she interacts with (Yu 178).

Brett’s power is manifested in her ability to both initiate and terminate her affairs. Robert Cohn, another male character in the novel, claims that “she turns men into swine” (Hemingway 148). Throughout the novel, Brett selects the men with whom she desires to have a sexual relationship and then ends the affair with them. This pattern, with some variations, is seen in her interactions with Michael, Cohn and Romero. The best example of Brett’s ability to function as both the initiator and terminator of her relationships can be seen in her interactions with Pedro Romero. In this affair, Brett holds the role of the initiator of the relationship by commissioning Jake to help her find Romero so that she can begin an affair with him. Brett’s role as the terminator of her relationship with Romero is revealed in the fact that she ends the affair by making Romero leave her in Madrid: “He [Romero] only left yesterday, I made him go!” (Hemingway 245). Here, Brett is revealed as the one who is controlling the end of the relationship.

Another example of Brett’s power over the men can be seen in that while she sends the Count Mippipopolous away for bringing some drinks. Despite Jake’s denial, Brett insists on sending the Count away:

“Darling,” she said. Then: “Do you want me to send him away?”

“No. He’s nice.”

“I’ll send him away.”

“You can’t just like that.”

“Can’t I, though? You stay here. He’s mad about me, I tell you” (Hemingway 61).

All of these different displays of Brett reveal her power in her relationships and power provides her a primary source of freedom in her affairs.

Hemingway, through his dynamic characters such as Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley, is able to demonstrate the enormity of the effects of World War I. Jennifer Banach in her essay, “Gender Identity and the Modern Condition in The Sun Also Rises”, describes that how the war made a shift in the meaning of identity and challenged the conventional definitions of manhood and womanhood and the traditional models of romance:

World War I and the staggering amount of injury, death, and loss it inflicted on the generation that fought in it threw into question traditional notions of love and romance, challenged religious faith, and raised moral issues. An entire generation underwent an overwhelming loss of innocence, making it impossible for them to continue living as they had before the war. The changes were of such great significance that they were manifested in people's everyday behavior and appearance, with the war affecting the very way that people identified themselves. The issue of gender identity and its correlation to the greater human condition, which could no longer be denied, became a key focus for Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. (Banach 37)

Impotence, which was one of the offshoots of the war, becomes a central problem explored by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. The novel explores, in many ways, what it means to be male and much of that exploration hinges on Jake’s injury, which becomes associated with the search for new and various masculinities in the post-WWI Paris. Jake Barnes, as a representative of masculinity, has unclear identity in the world of the novel. Jake is an American veteran of World War I working as a journalist in Paris, where he and his friends engage in an endless round of drinking and parties. The key events in the formation of Jake’s character occur long before the novel’s action begins. As a soldier in World War I, Jake is wounded. The exact nature of Jake’s “wound” is not made clear by the text, what is clear is that he is not capable of participating in normative sexual intercourse. Although he, as a narrator, does not say so directly, there are numerous moments in the novel when he implies that he is wounded. When Georgette reaches out to touch Jake physically, he puts her hand away.

“You're not a bad type," she [Georgette] said. "It's a shame you're sick. We get on well. What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"I got hurt in the war," I said (Hemingway 24).

On a fishing trip with his friend, Bill Gorton, there occurs a rather revealing conversation concerning Jake’s desire to talk about his injuries. Bill offers Jake some insight into his status as an expatriate, telling him:

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You're an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.... You don't work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you're impotent. (Hemingway 120)

Jake replies that, “No… [he] just had an accident” (Hemingway 120). Jake then expresses, inwardly, his disappointment in Bill’s refusal to continue discussing his injury: “He had been going splendidly, but he stopped. I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with the crack about being impotent. I wanted him to start again” (Hemingway 120). This exchange makes it clear that Jake is wounded and his wound had made him unable to have intercourse. Todd Onderdonk in his essay, “‘Bitched’: feminization, identity, and the Hemingwayesque in The Sun Also Rises,” analyzes men’s femininity as a central concern in Hemingway’s works:

While feminization is not a word Hemingway himself uses, the metaphorical representation of men acting or being treated "like a woman"--that is, adopting or being forced into states of shameful passivity or disempowerment--is a central concern of many of his works (Onderdonk 61).

Almost all male characters in the novel struggle with their sense of manliness. While Jake command our attention, the minor male characters of the novel also impart meaningful information about gender identity as a reflection of the new condition. Cohn is controlled by his wife who only wishes to take care of herself. He is denigrated by the other men and allows himself to be taken advantage of. He lacks the strength and assertiveness normally associated with a strong male, and, therefore, he does not fit within the bounds of traditional notions of masculinity. Count Mippipopolous, like Jake, is a veteran and was wounded in the war. Mike Campbell is engaged to Brett Ashley, and he knows about her affairs with other men without saying anything.  The way the male characters seem to carry a feminine quality, while Lady Brett Ashley is often interpreted as having a masculine façade, is simply the evolution of the manifestation of gender roles during the post-war era.

In “Life Unworthy of Life: Masculinity, Disability, and Guilt in The Sun Also Rises,” Dana Fore asserts that “… Jake will never achieve the psychological stability he craves because he finally accepts prevailing social and medical philosophies about his injury, and these ideas, in turn, will always leave him vulnerable to the fear that he will ‘degenerate’ into an invalid or a ‘pervert’” (Fore 76). A clear example of Jake’s psychological instability is that when Jake is alone in his apartment and past memory floods into his mind:

Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed.... Of all the ways to be wounded.... I put on my pajamas and got into bed.... I read [Le Toril] all the way through, including the Petite Correspondance and the Cornigrams. I blew out the lamp. Perhaps I would be able to sleep. My head started to work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded and flying on a joke front like the Italian. In the Italian hospital ... the liaison colonel came to visit me.... I was all bandaged up. But they had told him about it. Then he made that wonderful speech: "You, a foreigner, an Englishman" (any foreigner was an Englishman) "have given more than your life." What a speech! I would like to have it illuminated to hang in the office. He never laughed. He was putting himself in my place, I guess. "Che mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!"

 ... I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping round. Then I couldn't keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trains go by ... and then I went to sleep. (Hemingway 38-39)

Jake’s war wound and sexual impotence puts him in a powerless position for much of the novel. He is in love with Brett, but his impotency makes him struggle with his sense of manliness. He knows in his heart that Brett is incapable of loving him but he chooses to help her because they are friends. This aspect of their friendship that is strictly platonic is not understood by society or their peers. So, when Jake helps Brett he is actively giving up his masculinity because he knows in his heart that Brett will never be satiated by him physically. Regarding Jake’s wound Greg Forte says that “[It] thus carries the contradictory burden of two complex histories of loss--the loss of male power and potency on one hand, and the apparently more beneficent rupture with sentimental manhood on the other” (Forte 27).

Finally, we can draw that Hemingway’s post-World War I environment facilitates gender reversals among his characters in the novel. Gender roles are entirely created and constructed through society and culture because the society in which people live plays an enormous role in defining the expected patterns of behavior. Wendy Martin in “Brett Ashley as New Women in The Sun Also Rises” writes:

The loss of traditional cultural meaning is accompanied by a loss of certainty about proper feminine and masculine behavior. Since gender is a social construction, new roles represent a response to new realities, and through trial and error, new forms of sexual behavior emerge. New configurations of gender shatter the old frame, and stripped of their traditional roles, the characters in The Sun Also Rises are more transparent, that is, more able to express a greater range of feelings. (Martin 75-76)

The society that was made after the WWI, made Hemingway disregard traditional gender binaries. The loss of millions of men changed the social and cultural landscapes of countries. The strict gender and class roles set by the traditional societies did not apply anymore. Women had to learn to be strong during the absence of men during World War I and men came back emotionally vulnerable and physically weak. Hemingway’s accurate reflections on the reality of gender in society led him depict the characters in The Sun Also Rises the way as they are. The lines between his characters are blurred as Lady Brett Ashley takes on a masculine, leading role in her relationships and Jake Barnes is crippled into what can be perceived as a weak, female state by his inability to procreate.

Works Cited

Banach, Jenifer. "Gender Identity and the Modern Condition of "The Sun Also Rises."" Salem

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