The Sun Also Rises Light

Are there two sides of a person? Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, follows the story of an American man named Jake Barnes, who abandoned America after World War I to live abroad as a writer in Paris, like many modernist writers. During this time period, people’s faith in the American government and policy was shattered as they were deeply effected by wartime experiences, which drove them to distant countries and new professions as they tried to avoid their war stained past (Baym 13-18). These people became known as the Lost Generation. In the novel, Hemingway explores the possibility of the two sides of a person, the façade they put on in public and their true self, by using aesthetics and artistic elements of contrast. It is important to understand the imagery of Hemingway’s work because Jonathan Culler, author of Literary Theory – A Very Short Introduction, says, “without aesthetics… there is no art” (Culler
Light and dark imagery, as well as beauty and ugliness, is applied to the difference of fakeness and reality. Usually, light is referred to as the “good side” and purity, but in The Sun Also Rises Hemingway views light as an element that brightens and beautifies people, even when that beauty is not real or just an illusion. The others accept the characters’ acting in the daytime because they all wish to ignore flaws, even obvious ones. On the other hand, when there is no light shining on them to glorify them, the reader can see their real selves or their inner ugliness. Even though the others in the novel avoid the truth and wish to remain in a seemingly perfect word, Jake Barnes seeks out and approves of people’s real emotions and ugliness. In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway shows the difference between the facade made of lies and the actual truth by describing the characters as pleasant and lovely in the light, while in the dark their true ugliness emerges, additionally it is this genuineness that is attractive to