The Sun Also Rises, but don't forget it sets too

 I'd have to say the ending of this story was almost too anticlimactic for my taste.  I was expecting a character to be killed off, whether it be Cohn, Brett, or Jake. Most importantly, I think it symbolized some sort of loop in Brett and Jake's relationship. I am assuming that some way or another, every event in the story that we have seen in the story, has happened somewhat similarly before, and will continue to towards the future.  This is not only seen in the repetitive nature (constant drinking at bars, eating at restaurants, drama with Brett, and drunk chaos), but it is especially intimated by the ending.


"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"   


Notice Brett's wording, "we could".  Their whole relationship is built on the foundation of the hypothetical: what could've been.  Jake also reciprocates this essentially hypothetical fantasy that they have created.  I think that since the beginning of the history of their relationship, Jake acting as kind of a bodyguard/screening character for Brett has been the commonality.  This event: the trip to Pamplona and San Sebastian, this has all happened before (maybe not in these exact locations, but their emotional statuses have been repeated). 

The Sun Also Rises was a new read for me, but its repetitive nature worked as a device for me to pretty much hate all the characters.  I feel bad that Jake is almost enslaved by Brett in a way, but I feel that it is ultimately his fault: his shackles are his own and will continue to be if he doesn't change his perspective.


Comments

  1. locally locayleeNovember 8, 2020 at 7:50 PM

    I like how you point out the reportativity of this book. I also thought about how some scenes repeat, even though they're in different settings (e.g. drinking--as you said). However, I hadn't thought about the final line contributing to this reportativity and I like how you added that.

    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