Critical Response Essay

Emily Gibson
Dr. Craig
ENGL 38023
4 March 2016
Is Love Truly Dead?
It is a common theme among modernist writers to explore the effects that World War I had on the world's population. In the novel The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway explores the concept of masculinity and what it is truly composed of when a man's ability to perform sexually, which is arguably his most important task, is hijacked. However, Mark Spilka presents the idea that it is not Jake's absence of true masculinity that prohibits him from entering into a true romantic relationship with Brett, but rather the destruction of love brought about by World War I. In the article "The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises," Spilka explores each main character and how their defining attributes establish the principle that the ability to love no longer exists after the atrocities generated by World War I.
Spilka begins his argument by discussing the theme of the death of love and the frequency with which it pervaded postwar novels. According to Spilka however, Hemingway was the only author that was able to "have caught it whole and delivered it in lasting fictional form" (Spilka 18). With the creation of Jake and Brett as "two lovers desexed by the war," Robert Cohn as "the false knight who challenges their despair," and Pedro Romero as "the good life which will survive their failure" (18) Spilka argues that Hemingway is able to create an overreaching parable that allows him to explore World War I and the idea that it rendered the following generation as completely incapable of love. Spilka then more deeply explores the creation of each character within the novel and how they had been "rendered impotent by the war" (18) thus causing them to be incapable of passion.
According to Spilka, it is not Robert Cohn's "Jewishness" that brings about his friends' animosity, but rather Cohn's romantic outlook on life that causes him to be the target of cruelty. It is through Cohn and the perceived nonsensicalness of his behavior that Hemingway is able to present the idea "that romantic love is dead, that one of the great guiding codes of the past no longer operates" (20). Also, through the irrational behaviors of Cohn we are able to see that Jake is not far from Cohn in his internal feelings. Though Jake presents a front of "a man who carries himself well in the face of love's impossibilities" (19), he does in fact share with Cohn a weakness when it comes to handling love.
Spilka continues on to examine the novel's sexually impotent characters, such as the twisted role Brett adopted within Hemingway's novel. Rather than depicting her in the way of a commonly viewed woman, Brett is illustrated with a short, unfeminine bob and is on increasingly familiar terms with every man she encounters. While the war emasculated Jake, it did quite the opposite to Lady Ashley, instead turning her into "the freewheeling equal of any man" (Spilka 20). It is through Brett that Hemingway is able to explore the idea that though women did not fight in the war directly, it still had an observable influence on them by taking the lives of their husbands or companions, as was the case of Brett Ashley. By claiming the life of her first sweetheart as well as the sanity of her current husband, the war liberated Brett from "her womanly nature and expose her to the male prerogatives of drink and promiscuity" (20). After the war, Brett is forced to "confront a moral and emotional vacuum among her postwar lovers" (20) which motivates her to turn to alcohol and sex rather than attempting to penetrate the loveless aura that surrounds her. It is simultaneously through Brett's "masculine freedom" (20) as well as the emasculation of the men around her, Spilka argues, that true and lasting love can no longer exist in the postwar era.
Spilka then moves on to Book II of the novel, arguing that Hemingway installs the idea that a life without love is unlivable for Jake, thus causing Jake to search for a "healthier code" (Spilka 21) to live by in the absence of love itself. It is within this search of a benign way of life that Book II first moves away from Paris life and to the trout stream in Burguete. It is in this environment, Spilka argues, that Hemingway is first able to introduce the idea that even though love no longer exists for the postwar generation, Jake will still be able to find refuge within "private and imaginative means" (22). However, Spilka admits that the environment of the trout stream did not prove enough to give Jake's new code enough strength, causing him to move on to Pamplona and the bullfighting ring. Though it is through the bullfights that Jake is able to gain access to true emotion, it is also through this environment that we are introduced to what Spilka refers to as the "Code Hero," (23) or Hemingway's Pedro Romero. It is through Romero that we are given the idea of true manhood, for "his manhood is a thing independent of a woman, and for this reason he holds special attractions for Jake Barnes" (23). Because of Romero's ability to establish his manhood not within the physical or emotional love of a woman, Jake is able to see that his manhood does not need to rely solely on his sexual capabilities or his ability to love. Jake is able to relate to Romero on the basis that "they share the same code, they both believe that a man's dignity depends on his own resources" (23). Through Romero, we are able to understand how Cohn's romanticism was truly lost within a generation unable to love, how Jake was "robbed of his dignity as a man and thus exposed him to indignities with women" (25) and by Brett refusing to grow her hair long for Romero she would also "no longer reclaim her lost womanhood" (26). To Spilka, it is through Pedro Romero that we are able to establish a final and secure moral code that gives meaning to a generation in which love does not and cannot exist.
The main point of Spilka's article is to support his idea that through the sterilization of Jake and the masculine presentation of Brett, Hemingway is aiming to evoke commentary on the principle that World War I had stolen the generation's ability to love and be loved in return. However, many of the articles citing Spilka do not comment on his thesis on the annihilation of love, but rather more commonly explore his commentary on the radical shifts in gender roles that were emerging during this time period. According to Scott Donaldson, by depicting Brett as "the antithesis of her corseted, ruffled, and straitlaced Victorian foremother" Hemingway paints the picture of not only emerging modern woman, but also the "sexy modern woman" (Donaldson 178). Donaldson argues that through Brett, Hemingway is not only highlighting the loss of Jake's masculinity, but also contrasting the shift from the Victorian icon of a respectable woman to Brett's modern depiction of a woman free of restraining her sexual urges. Donaldson argues that Brett's masculine depiction does not contribute to the lack of love in the novel, but rather allows Hemingway to comment on the emerging role of women in the postwar era.
In contrast to Spilka and Donaldson, Ernest Lockridge presents the idea that it is neither Cohn's overt romanticism nor the shifting gender roles that drives the surrounding characters to castigate Cohn, but rather stems from Jake's sexual jealousy of Cohn and his subsequent desire to gain vengeance upon him. According to Lockridge, it is Jake's desire for retribution that "motivate the novel's central action and overall structure" and that Cohn is not simply "some sort of thematic or allegorical "double" to Barnes" (Lockridge 44-45). To Spilka, Pedro Romero is used to highlight Brett's lost womanhood, and to Donaldson, to feature the changing gender roles of society, but Lockridge argues that Romero is used only to further Jake's campaign to annihilate Cohn (46). It is through Lockridge that we are able to see yet another divergent theme in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises stemming from Jake's emasculation, Cohn's undisguised passion, and Romero's stunning picture of manhood.
Written during a tumultuous time during American history, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises along with many other modernist novels attempted to not only put into perspective but also make sense of the extensive changes occurring worldwide. Though I do agree with Spilka and his idea that Hemingway used his desexualized characters to explore the premise that World War I killed off humanities ability to love, I do not agree that Hemingway was solely exploring this premise rather than simultaneously commenting on both the changing gender roles within society as well as masculinity as a whole. Though Robert Cohn was one of the few characters within the novel that upheld a "romantic view on life," I do not believe that this makes him "the last chivalric hero, the last defender of an outworn faith" (Spilka 19). Rather I agree with Donaldson that Hemingway used the novel to comment on the changing roles of women as well as indirectly demean women on their increasing promiscuity within society. Furthermore, I do not agree with Lockridge's idea that the bitterness that stemmed from each character towards Cohn was produced by Jake's sexual jealousy due to the fact that Jake was not the only character that lashed out against Cohn for no discernable reason.
World War I brought about a new generation that the world was not ready to handle. With changing societal roles among both men and women, many citizens worldwide found themselves questioning humanity as can be seen by Hemingway's exploration of numerous societal ideas within The Sun Also Rises. Many scholars have argued over what was Hemingway's underlying theme, and one of the most cited articles written was Mark Spilka's "The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises." However, the majority of the articles citing Spilka's thesis were refuting his claim that Hemingway used the novel to put forward the idea that through the emasculation of his characters, love was forever dead following World War I. Instead, many authors refuted Spilka by claiming that it is not the death of love that was explored through Jake's sterility, but rather the concept of masculinity and what it is truly based on.










Works Cited
Spilka, Mark. "The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises." Ernest Hemingway: Critiques of Four Major Novels. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. Print.
Lockridge, Ernest. ""Primitive Emotions": A Tragedy of Revenge Called "the Sun Also Rises"". The Journal of Narrative Technique 20.1 (1990): 42–55. Web. 25 February 2016.
Donaldson, Scott. The Cambridge Companions to Hemingway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print.




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