“You are all a lost generation.” -Gertrude Stein in conversation
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” -Ecclesiastes
The two epigraphs that Hemingway includes at the beginning of The Sun Also Rises paint an ambiguous portrait of the generation of young adults affected by WWI whose lives he depicts in the novel.
There are two ways that the second epigraph (Ecclesiastes) could be interpreted. One could read it as saying that generations are simply something that come and go against the larger background of the earth that “abideth forever” and the natural world. Human life is presented as transient, temporary, and ultimately unimportant against this background. Regardless of the state of human life, the earth keeps turning and the sun will continue to rise and set. In this context, having Gertrude Stein describe Hemingway and the characters’ of The Sun Also Rises generation as “lost” does not have a large impact. The little blip in the cycle that they are is insignificant in the larger cycle of generations, and even more so when compared to the natural world.
However, you could also read the second epigraph as comparing the cycle from one generation to the next to things as fundamental as the sun rising and setting. All of the elements of nature mentioned in the epigraph are described in a cyclical way. The sun rises, sets, and goes back to the place where it rose. The wind “whirleth about continually, and … returneth again according to its circuits”. The rivers flow into the sea and then back to the places where they began. This imagery echoes how as “one generation passeth away… another cometh”. In this context, Stein’s description of the generation described in The Sun Also Rises as “lost” takes on a much greater significance. Imagine if one day the sun didn’t rise, or rivers just stopped flowing. Like in those extreme cases, a piece of a recurring cycle we take for granted is simply gone.
So which reading of the epigraphs did Hemingway intend and base his novel on? I would say both. On the surface, the struggles of the “lost generation” seem negligible. Almost none of the characters we’ve met has a job, they spend almost every night out drinking, dancing, and talking, and none of them (except for Robert Cohn who Jake makes fun of) take anything seriously. However, once you get beneath the surface, the reader sees that the characters do have very real struggles, as well as trauma associated with the war.
Great post! It almost makes me think back to the "Mrs. Dalloway" idea of hiding sadness or trauma behind confidence. As Mr. Mitchell mentioned today, there is alcohol being consumed in nearly every scene in this novel and the characters are constantly sending out this false confidence (except when Jake is on his own or with Brett). It seems, at the same time, (at least from Jake's view) each character has these traumatic backstories: Jake with the war, the Count with his rebellions and revolutions, Cohn with the anti-Semitism in college. On the surface, they seem happy and content, but underneath each character has their own struggles.
ReplyDeleteI think that these ideas play an especially important role at the very end of the novel. You can read the last scene as repeating the cycle of Jake coming back to Brett and wishing they could be together which would further the idea that in the longer scheme none of it matters. But you can also read it as Jake and Brett as two extremely damaged people doing their best to make their struggles work.
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