The Sun Also Rises Lost Generation

In the novel The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, the reader follows the travels of expatriates Jake Barnes, and his friends Lady Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell, and Bill Gordon. As the characters travel around France and Spain, Hemingway describes their various interactions with people that both took part in the war and those that did not. The term “Lost Generation” is applied to the people that fought or witnessed the war and is “lost” because of their experiences in the war. Through the characters, the reader can see how the Lost Generation is drastically different from the rest of society at the time. For example, many of them drank heavily, lost faith in religion, and stayed up late through the night in order to avoid thinking about their past. An important
The novel’s descriptions of Brett contrast sharply with the descriptions of a stereotypical female by seeming and acting more masculine: she looks masculine and is more controlling over the opposite sex. Jake’s first description of Brett occurs when she walks into the dancing club with a group of homosexuals. He describes her physical appearance as having aspects of a boy and a girl; “Brett was good-looking . . . and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it” (29-30). When Jake says that her hair was like a boy’s, he really means that she has short hair. Brett’s appearance is different from the traditional woman; her short hair is like a boy. However, the men that she is with sometimes don’t like that, like Pedro: “He wanted me to grow my hair out…it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright” (246). Brett does not want to look more like a woman; this makes her more masculine. She forces the reader to question what masculinity really is; she acts very