Loves Blind Ingredient - Literature review Example

The Sun Also Rises May 12, Introduction Love is often described as blind. Blindness means not being able to find one’s way in the dark. In the dark alley of love, people often stray. Consequently, straying leads to wrong turns. Wrong turn equates to loving the wrong person. The Hemingway novel shows love’s blindness makes the world a challengingly meaningful place to survive. Lady Brett Ashley Lady Brett Ashley needs a man’s love. Lady Ashley is the personification of the modern day liberated women. She typifies the average liberated women, alcoholic and seeking male lovers in restaurants and other drinking places (Hemingway 28). Opposite to the conservative woman’s preference for only one male lover, the modern day woman can be characterized as having two or more lovers at the same time. Likewise, the modern day woman is characterized as having preference for premarital sex affairs. Further, Lady Brett Ashley’s promiscuity is understandable. She lives to love and be loved. She basked in the arms of men. Her having love affairs with many men at the same time indicates she does not regret her actions. Ashley knows that Jake is in love with her. Since Jake cannot make love because the war had transformed Jake into an impotent lost generation person, Lady Brett Ashley eagerly makes love with Jake’s college friend, Robert Cohn. Consequently, she does not care about Jake’s jealous rage over Ashley’s promiscuity. Likewise, Lady Brett Ashley does not care about her fiancé Mike Campbell’s feeling jealous over Lady Brett Ashley’s having a romantic affair with Mike Cohn. Similarly, Lady Ashley seduces the teenager, bullfighter Romero, to make love (Hemingway 144). Looking at Lady Brett Ashley’s point of view, love is a wonderfully addicting feeling. Feeling the caress of a loving male person creates her feel needed. The male person’s love attention shows Lady Brett Ashley is important. The lady feels she is beautiful. Consequently, Lady Brett Ashley grabs love from every male person that comes her way. Certainly, the novel shows how liberated women of our society act in the realm of love and romance. Jake Barnes Jakes Barnes goes out of his way to show his love for Lady Brett Ashley. Jake expresses his undying love for Lady Brett Ashley. The alcoholic meetings allow Jake to have the strength to show how much he loves Lady Brett Ashley Hemingway 116). Jake knows that his impotency will not satisfy Lady Brett Ashley’s sex act desires. However, Jake does not give up. Jake accepts that he is one of the lost generation members. Further, lost generations represent people who are affected by the World War (Hemingway 12). The war caused Jake’s inability to perform the sexual acts. However, Jake feels that love should not be measured by the sexual act alone. This is the essence of Jake’s love overtures to Lady Brett Ashley. Moreover, Jake’s love interpretation is understandable. Jake equates his inability to make love with the female gender as one of the life’s acceptable situations. Jake equates his inability to make love with the female gender with the gays. Gays do not like to make love with the female gender (Hemingway 90). For Jake, life must go on. Consequently, Jake does not give up on his love for Lady Brett Ashley. To compensate for the promiscuity of his only love, Lady Brett Ashley, Jake refocuses his attention to bullfighting (Hemingway 103). Jake and his friends attend bullfighting shows. Instead of preventing Lady Brett Ashley from making love with other males, Jake focuses his time to watching the bullfights. During one of the bullfight shows, Lady Brett Ashley was able to meet Romero, one of the successful bullfight heroes (Hemingway 127). When Jake Barnes learns that Lady Brett Ashley seduced the young bullfighter Romero, Jake Barnes accepts the lady’s penchant for love affairs (Hemmingway 144). Jake Barnes does not use his military training to murder Lady Brett Ashley. Jake Barnes does not use his war experience to maim or physically threaten Lady Brett Ashley. Jake Barnes does not use his manly force to prevent Lady Brett Ashley from exercising her right to have as many lovers as she wants. There is a popular statement that indicates true love requires the person to let his love object free. If the love object returns, the love object is the person’s destined love partner. If the lover object does not return, the love object was never the person’s destined love partner in the first place. Further, the story shows that Lady Brett Ashley temporarily returned to Jake Barnes after Romero dumped the lady. Consequently, Jake Barnes fetched Lady Brett Ashley from a cheap hotel, Hotel Montana in Madrid, Spain (Hemingway 188). Jake Barnes agrees to help return Lady Brett Ashley Mike Campbell, her engaged lover. Book three of the novel ends with both Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes expressing their deepest thoughts in a taxi. The novel has a happy ending. Lady Brett Ashley shows Jake Barnes that Jake Barnes is a very important part of the lady’s life. There is a popular saying that a person in time need is a friend indeed. Jake Barnes was available to help Lady Brett Ashley during her time of need (Hemingway 188). Jake shows that he is a true friend and lover of Lady Brett Ashley. Definitely, the novel indicates a real life situation that happens to person who is in a state of true love. Robert Cohn Robert Cohn, a very rich Jew, places love over friendships. Cohn is Jake Barnes’s college friend, former Princeton middle weight boxing champion (Hemingway 3). Jake Barnes introduces Lady Brett Ashley to Cohn. Cohn immediately falls in love with Jake Barnes’s friend, Lady Brett Ashley. The love is consummated. Because of Jake Barnes’s impotency, Lady Brett Ashley makes love with Robert Cohn. Further, Robert Cohn shows he is a normal human being. Cohn offers to have a dance with Lady Brett Ashley. This crops up when the fire of love started to grow ever stronger between Cohn and Lady Brett Ashley (Hemingway 17).A normal human being easily falls in love. Each person has the right to fall love. Likewise, every person has the right to be loved. Jake Barnes cannot prevent Cohn from falling in love. It is up to Lady Brett Ashley to accept or reject Cohn’s love overtures. The novel shows that Lady Brett Ashley eagerly accepted Cohn’s love messages. She loved Cohn in return. This infuriates Jake Barnes, destroying the friendship between Jake Barnes and Cohn. Surely, the novel shows a real life situation that happens to every male gender. Bullfighter Romero Romero succumbs to the love overtures of Lady Brett Ashley. A person is born to love and be loved. Romero easily accepts the love offered by the Lady Brett Ashley. As a young person of 19 years, Romero takes advantage of his bullfighting fame. It is Romero’s bullfighting expertise that attracted Lady Brett Ashley. Romero does not care about the other men in the lady’s life. All Romero does gives in to his human nature. Human nature dictates that persons must take advantage of every opportunity in life. One of the advantages of Romero is his expertise in the bullfighting right. It would not hurt Romero to have an affair. Lady Brett Ashley admits she is in love with Romero (Hemingway 144). Further, it would not hurt Romero to make love with any lady of his free choice. Lady Brett Ashley did not force herself on Romero. Romero did not rape Lady Brett Ashley. Romero will not suffer any debilitating side effects from making love. Instead, Lady Brett Ashley can get pregnant. Consequently, Lady Brett Ashley will bear the child of Romero. Romero and Lady Brett Ashley can get married. Both Romero and Lady Brett Ashley can have a family. There is nothing illegal about such a situation. Moreover, book three shows Romero and Lady Brett Ashley parting ways. Lady Brett Ashley asked Jake Barnes’ help to take here away from the cheap hotel (Hemingway 188). This clearly shows that the love affair between Lady Brett Ashley and Romero ends. It clearly shows that the chemistry between Romero and Lady Brett Ashley did not work. Romero has his own future plans in life, which did not include an uncomfortable relationship with Lady Brett Ashley. Lady Brett Ashley had her own plans in life, which did not include an uneasy relationship with Romero. In terms of love, the story shows that the promiscuity of Lady Brett Ashley was the ingredient that caused the breakup of the relationship. As a liberated woman, Lady Brett Ashley did not exert the extra effort to save their love relationship. This is the reason for the popularity of divorce. Mere quarrels or simple misunderstandings are enough ground for married couples to file for a divorce. Mike Campbell Mike Campbell is going to marry Lady Brett Ashley (Hemingway 29). Campbell is one of Lady Brett Ashley’s male lovers. Campbell is only flying his human instinct (Hemingway 63). His human instinct is to fall in love with a female person. Falling in love can develop into marriage. A marriage can generate a happy family. A happy family can generate a close-knit relationship among the grandparents, parents, and children. Clearly the novel shows the typical scene in any human family. Commentary of Matts Djos Matts Djos has his one interpretation of the popular Hemingway novel. The novel shows the ill effects of alcoholism (Djos 36). Alcoholism is the excessive drinking of intoxicating liquor, especially Whiskey (Hemingway 8). Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, and other characters in the novel prefer spending their free hours drinking alcohol. Consequently, alcohol contributes to the promiscuity of Lady Brett Ashley. Alcohol gives people to strength to do things which non-alcoholics would think twice beware engaging in an uncomfortable or unwarranted act. Further, the Djos comment specifically shows the main characters of the novel prefer drinking. Specifically, the comment indicates Jake Barnes prefers drinking alcoholic beverages. Similarly, the comment indicates Lady Brett Ashley favors drinking alcoholic beverages. Likewise, the comment indicates Mike Cohn likes drinking alcoholic beverages. The comment indicates Bill Gordon enjoys drinking alcoholic beverages (Djos 141). Furthermore, the Djos comment shows the main characters in the novel use the powerful alcohol to boost their desire to control other people (Djos 141). Jake Barnes uses the alcohol meetings to win Lady Brett Ashley’s heart. Lady Brett Ashley uses the alcohol moments to find a male lover. Her alcoholic temperament precipitates to Lady Brett Ashley having all the male lovers she can find. Finding love, she does not know how to nurture the lover affair into a lifelong married life relationship. Finding that the current relationship is not what she wants, she runs away from every relationship. She hopes that next relationship will be a better one, to no avail. Cohn uses the alcohol meetings to win Lady Brett Ashley’s love. Lady Brett Ashley’s drunken state brings her a temporary state of canonizing herself as noble as well as self-sacrificing mundane woman. Mark Spilka Comment Mark Spilka states that the novel revolves around the theme of failed love (Weeks 127). Jake Barnes is unable to make love because the war had made him impotent. Since Jake cannot make love, Lady Brett Ashley seeks other men to satisfy her sexual drive. Romero is characterized as a person who does his best to enjoy the benefits of a happy life. Cohn is described as the knight who comes to the rescue of the sex-starved Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley relationship. Cohn offers Lady Brett Ashley the love act that she needs. Unfortunately, love does not work between Cohn and Lady Brett Ashley. Jake Barnes does not give up hope of finding a solution to his inability to give Lady Brett Ashley her animalistic sexual desire. The comment shows that war is to be blamed for the love impotency of the novel’s main characters (Weeks 128). Conclusion Based on the above discussion, love can be defined as blind. Blindness equates to darkness. In the dark alley of love, people fall in love for many seemingly wrong reasons. Consequently, people defend their wrong love choices. Evidently, the Hemingway novel proves love’s blind ingredient creates a challengingly meaningful world to live in. Works Cited Djos, Matt. Alcoholism in Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2002. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2002 Weeks, Robert. Hemingway: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1962. Read More