The Price of Objectivity :: essays research papers

The Price of ObjectivityThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is one of the pre-eminent works of modernist literature. It set the tone for the several decades of literature that was to follow. It delves late into the lost generation that was created after the first wold war. A generation that lost any noble-mindedness that their predecessors had. A generation that lost any emotional attachment to the orbit around them. This is a trait that is predominant throughout Hemingways novel as the narrator, Jake Barnes, remains clinically detached from the events that transpire around him.Jake was an ambulance driver in the first world war and as with many of his peers, his experiences left him with a severe emotional disillusionment with the world as a square. not to mention the lack of functioning genitalia which certainly didnt help him advert positively with the world. Essentially, if it didnt involve Jake, he couldnt care less. For example, Jake watches a man go far gored through the clog by a stampeding bull and die, because waits for the go up to go off signaling that the bulls were coralled and then simply walks off. He doesnt advert himself with the health of the (then) wounded man, he doesnt contemplate whether the running of the bulls was a worthwhile risk in the name of fun and games. He simply watches, then leaves without the slightest tint of subjectivity to his narrative. He remains perfectly objective, simply a watcher in the grand scheme of life.And what does Jake watch exactly? He watches as everything goes around in circles, always ending up in the same place as it started. The group as a whole heads out drinking, only to wake up the next morning to recite the process with nothing changed. Brett, although engaged to a man who loves her, is hopelessly in love with Jake. Jake is forced to watch as she passes alongfrom Mike, to Cohn, to Romero and then cover charge to Mike before finally ending up right back where she started with Jake. Jak e watches as every event he witness returns full circle. A cycle that the title, The Sun Also Rises, refers to. Just like the sun as well as rises only to hasten to the place where it arose, so do the events of the characters in the book, self-aggrandising off the image that life is futile and nothing ever gets accomplished.