Some Sadistic Drinking Game

I'm going to have to be upfront with this one.  I'm not a very big fan of Hemingway's writing.  I generally have bad memories writing essays on it and have a hard time reading in between the lines of what he says.  Regardless, this blog post is my interpretation of some of themes he chooses to use throughout his book, specifically drinking.

It is an undeniable truth that people in the 1920s drank heavily, but I think Hemingway chooses an exceptional amount of detail that he devotes to drinking alcohol especially.  "Pernod is greenish imitation absinthe. When you add water it turns milky. It tastes like licorice and it has a good uplift, but it drops you just as far. We sat and drank it, and the girl looked sullen."  

Pernod Absinthe as I've researched is actually the very first French Absinthe made in the local distillery. It's funny how Jake calls it "imitation absinthe" almost just insulting it as a whole, and even a little tone of racism.  Generally what makes Absinthe different from other alcohols is that they contain special herbs such as wormwood, and traces of hallucinogenic materials (although not enough to actually have major effect and perdot has this to a lesser extent).  It is generally noted as an "apertif": or something designed to "wet your appetite".   My belief is that Hemingway used this drink as a symbol. This book is designed somewhat as a multi-course meal and the drinks symbolize each of its courses.  

The next drink I've been able to uncover so far is Champagne.  It is also traditionally considered an apertif, but it has slowly transitioned to something that you can drink throughout the course of meal.  Hemingway possibly could be getting to the front body and meat of his story through the Champagne the Greek Count bought, the first time he met Lady Brett, as well as the Champagne he brought to Jake's flat.  It's multiple uses during a meal can also have multiple uses in the story as well.

More so, alcohol brings much more of a hallucinatory effect in general to the way Jake tells the story.  At times, I see that he feels delusional as well as fixed on a certain idea.  Hemingway's technique of putting words in between the lines feel much more smooth as a result.






Comments

  1. Eliza D. TerzievOctober 14, 2020 at 2:35 PM

    The use of alchohol is a really good point to touch on since it comes up basically every other sentence. I like the idea that he's using different drinks to break up the different courses of the novel. What I thought about (and you touch on this) while I was reading was the point about what affect the constant intoxication of virtually all the characters. Perhaps it could sort of erode their filter and give us a more clear view of what their thinking? I'm not sure what other affects it could have but I'm sure there are others. Excellent theory!

    ReplyDelete
  2. erin's blogOctober 16, 2020 at 1:20 PM

    I more interpreted it as everyone being lowkey traumatized and drowning their sorrows at all times, but this is a hot take, wouldn't have thought of it

    ReplyDelete
  3. DinaOctober 17, 2020 at 6:14 PM

    Now that you bring it up, the detail in which alcohol is described in The Sun Also Rises is amazing. I noticed that drinking was written about very often, but I didn't notice that it was described in such detail. I find this very interesting because Hemingway leaves so much in this book vague to the reader, as he doesn't delve much into the characters or their relationships. Yet he leaves no wiggle room when it comes to describing the alcohol they drink. In a way, most of the character development we get is from reading what each person drinks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. LillianOctober 18, 2020 at 6:46 PM

    Many of Brett and Jake's interactions occur while drunk, an interesting addition to that point. While intoxicated, they have no inhibitions, some small part of them failing to recognize how they hurt each other, how they could never work

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Capitalism, Innovation, and Olives

Image
In the summer of 1994, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon, an online bookstore from his garage in Seattle.  In the first month of 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched theFacebook, an attempt to put all of college life online, from his Harvard dorm room (fun fact: I lived in Boston at the time while my father worked in the lab right next to that dorm).  Many more like Bezos and Zuckerberg started out like this and continue to use their large companies to perpetuate this system of capitalism throughout the country.  So what does that have to do with The Mezzanine ?  The detailed observances, the slight faults in life, and the mystery is all carefully dissected by Baker in this tangential novel of his. It is however, these very observations that eventually lead to such innovation and legacy.   Yes, while I believe that the author is creating this satire of a capitalistic society by creating overly illustrious descriptions of relatively meaningless commercial things, he hims...
Read more

The Hours, a Chronologically disjointed story

 Personally, I was very confused after watching The Hours for myself.  This confusion can probably be attributed to the chronological distortion of different stories merging together.  In a sense, from the first story, starring Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, I can witness a deeper background to Mrs. Dalloway and how it relates to Woolf's personality and characteristics.  The idea of suicide is abundant throughout the movie, yet in the end Woolf is the only one to actually submit to this idea.   I think there can be some connections made between the 3 different women, but I also feel it is wrong to say that they are essentially personality clones of each other in different time frames.  Woolf in a way feels a lot more like Septimus in this sense, while the others who reflected and chose lightly felt a lot closer to the character of Mrs. Dalloway.  (In this case, Clarissa Vaughan who is played by Meryl Streep is actually called "Mrs. Dalloway" by ...
Read more

Covid and The Plague

My first impression of The Plague (before reading the book of course) was that it was going to discuss an incredibly different scenario than the modern-day quarantine.  The modern knowledge of medicine, the technology we have, and the biological makeup of each disease is so different, I thought I would get a completely different perspective.  For some reason, it conveys much more similar conditions than I thought. I think this parallel phenomenon can mainly be attributed to how the governing body had handled the plague over time.  Dr. Rieux and the medical board had warned the governing body and political leaders, just like the United States had in the early stages of Covid.  Yet, most chose to ignore it, and suppress it's spread through the media.  They downplayed the disease much like the US did, and when they declared it as a social threat, it was already too late.  The disease had spread extremely quickly, resulting in disastrous effects on the town, ju...
Read more