The Sun Also Rises

Bill Gorton is Jake Barnes's closest American friend in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, providing much of the comic relief and emotional warmth throughout the story. A successful writer who has just returned from Vienna and Budapest, Bill arrives in Paris full of irreverent humor and a knack for affectionate teasing. His role becomes even more significant during the fishing trip to Burguete, where he and Jake enjoy blissful days on the Irati River—savoring good food, sipping wine, and engaging in absurd banter about stuffed animals and "irony and pity." These moments capture the novel's most authentic male friendship and offer a brief pastoral retreat from the tensions of the expatriate scene.

In contrast to the brooding Jake or the hot-headed Robert Cohn, Bill is emotionally straightforward and mostly free from the psychological scars of the war. He is generous, insightful, and loyal—quick to joke but never mean-spirited towards those he cares for. His playful jabs at Jake for being "an expatriate" and his mock-serious talks on "irony and pity" showcase a man who uses humor to confront, rather than shy away from, the disillusionment of the time.

Bill's character arc is intentionally flat: he doesn’t undergo a transformation but rather highlights the qualities of others by contrast. At the fiesta in Pamplona, he remains a steady, cheerful presence even as tensions rise among the group concerning Brett, Cohn, and Romero. He leaves after the fiesta without the emotional baggage that burdens the others, embodying the novel's idea that friendship, sports, and genuine enjoyment provide the closest thing to grace for the Lost Generation.

Count Mippipopolous is a minor yet thematically rich character in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. This wealthy and cheerful Greek count mainly appears in the Paris section of the novel, where he becomes part of Brett Ashley's social circle, delighting her with champagne, gourmet food, and extravagant gifts—most notably a case of Château Margaux sent to Jake's apartment. Despite his lavish generosity, the Count isn't predatory or desperate; he exudes a calm and self-assured happiness that distinguishes him from the emotionally scarred expatriates in the story.

One of his most telling moments occurs during a dinner conversation with Jake and Brett, when he nonchalantly lifts his shirt to reveal arrow wounds from an Abyssinian campaign. Instead of dramatizing his scars, he views them as simple curiosities, markers of a life well-lived. He shares with Jake that he's learned to savor wine, food, and people because he has "been around" and endured his share of suffering. This outlook on enjoying life reflects Hemingway's code: true enjoyment comes only after experiencing pain and death.

The Count acts as a foil to the other male characters. While Jake is paralyzed by desire, Robert Cohn is trapped in romantic illusions, and Mike Campbell is burdened by debt and resentment, the Count has found a peaceful balance. He desires nothing from Brett other than good company and expects nothing from the world that it can't provide. His fleeting presence sharpens the novel's central question—whether the Lost Generation can ever achieve his kind of hard-earned grace—and for most characters, the answer is a wistful no.

Frances Clyne is Robert Cohn's long-term girlfriend at the start of the novel. Though a minor character, she sharply illustrates Cohn's passivity and Hemingway's critique of parasitic relationships. Having spent years with Cohn—traveling across Europe using his money and shaping his social ambitions—she has invested her youth in a man she suspects is ready to discard her. Her defining moment unfolds in a Paris café, where she makes Cohn sit silently while she delivers a devastating, mock-cheerful speech to Jake, listing every humiliation Cohn has put her through: he has offered her money to "go away," refused to marry her, and left her with dwindling prospects and no real skills. This monologue publicly shames Cohn while also revealing her desperation, showcasing Frances as both calculating and genuinely hurt.

Her story arc leads to a swift erasure: she completely disappears once Cohn becomes infatuated with Brett Ashley, highlighting how interchangeable women are in Cohn's romantic fantasies. Hemingway offers her no redemption or resolution—she simply vanishes from the narrative, which serves as a pointed commentary on her situation.

Key characteristics include a sharp wit used as a weapon of cruelty, social ambition, emotional dependency hidden behind aggression, and a pragmatic understanding of her own diminishing power. Structurally, she acts as a foil to Brett: while Brett effortlessly holds power over men, Frances struggles for it and ultimately fails.

Harvey Stone is a minor yet thematically significant character in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, whom Jake Barnes encounters in Paris before the group heads to Pamplona. As a professional gambler and chronic drifter, Stone represents the Lost Generation's spiritual and material exhaustion in a raw form. When Jake finds him sitting outside the Café Select, Stone reveals that he hasn't eaten in five days — not simply due to poverty, but from a deliberate indifference to food and routine. He takes money from Jake without much fanfare, highlighting the transactional and unsentimental friendships that characterize the novel's expatriate scene.

Sardonic and intellectually astute, Stone delivers one of the book's sharper comments when he dismisses Robert Cohn as someone who will "be around long after you and I are gone" — a remark that underscores Cohn's stubborn, unwelcome presence in the group's social circle. This exchange showcases Stone's insight even as his own life appears to be in disarray.

His role is mostly static: he shows up, makes a few sharp observations, and then disappears from the story. However, this brevity is intentional. Stone serves as both a foil and a mirror — a man who has completely surrendered to aimlessness, devoid of the romantic illusions that still flicker in characters like Jake or Brett. He exemplifies what expatriate life looks like without the compensating joys of fishing, bullfighting, or love. His gaunt, fasting figure reinforces Hemingway's recurring theme: the post-war world has left many men hollowed out, living on wit and borrowed francs.

Jake Barnes serves as both the first-person narrator and the moral center of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), which is a key novel representing the Lost Generation. A World War I veteran now working as an American journalist in Paris, Jake grapples with a war injury that has left him unable to engage sexually—this condition becomes a central metaphor for the deeper spiritual and emotional scars left by the war. He’s intelligent, self-aware, and sardonic, yet finds himself caught in a cycle of drinking, aimless expatriate living, and unrequited love.

His affection for Lady Brett Ashley drives the emotional heart of the novel. Jake is deeply devoted to her, but his injury makes a traditional relationship impossible. The tension reaches a painful peak when Jake, despite his own suffering, facilitates Brett's introduction to the young bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona—an act of self-destructive kindness that undermines his friend Montoya’s trust and goes against his own moral code.

Jake's journey is more about stoic endurance than transformation. He discovers real joy and meaning in fishing the Irati River with Bill Gorton, participating in the rituals of the Pamplona fiesta, and appreciating bullfighting as a true art form. These experiences reveal his ability to find joy despite his disillusionment. By the novel's final line—his wry, resigned response to Brett's romantic notion, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"—Jake has come to terms, without self-pity, with the unbridgeable gap between desire and reality. He represents Hemingway's "code hero": dignified, composed, and honest when faced with adversity.

Lady Brett Ashley is the captivating and emotionally intricate heart of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926). A twice-divorced English aristocrat and war widow, Brett navigates post-WWI Paris and Pamplona, embodying the "Lost Generation's" restless pursuit of pleasure and deep sense of emptiness. She drinks heavily, mingles effortlessly with men, and commands attention in every space—yet her freedom carries a weight of true sorrow. Her greatest tragedy lies in her love for Jake Barnes, which is rendered impossible by his war injury, a reality made painfully clear during their late-night taxi conversation in Paris, where she admits she cannot be with him under those circumstances.

Brett's journey is marked by a pattern of self-destructive decisions: she tolerates the possessive Mike Campbell as her fiancé, allows Robert Cohn to turn their brief affair into an obsession, and most critically, becomes involved with the young bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona. This relationship, enabled by Jake, undermines Montoya's belief in Romero's integrity and costs Jake his reputation as an aficionado. In a rare moment of selflessness, Brett ultimately sends Romero away, telling Jake she won't be "one of those bitches that ruins children"—a moment of hard-won moral clarity that represents her only real growth.

Her key traits include magnetic charisma, emotional honesty, self-awareness paired with a lack of self-control, and an underlying vulnerability beneath her modern bobbed hair. She embodies both victim and agent of the novel's overarching disillusionment.

Mike Campbell is Brett Ashley's fiancé and one of the hard-drinking expatriates at the heart of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. A Scottish veteran brought down by bankruptcy, Mike drifts through Paris and Pamplona on borrowed money and borrowed time, his charm always undermined by his drinking and emotional instability. He mainly serves as a foil: his loud, reckless nature highlights both Jake's stoic restraint and Cohn's romantic delusions.

Mike's journey is one of ongoing decline rather than growth. From his boisterous entrance in Pamplona to his embarrassing, drunken downfall in the city's cafés, he never gains self-awareness or changes. His most intense moments are his harsh, repetitive taunts directed at Robert Cohn—"You don't belong here. Why don't you get out?"—which, while cruel, reveal a deeper social truth: Cohn's sentimental feelings for Brett are both unwelcome and absurd. Mike's cruelty also acts as a shield; unable to face his own shortcomings as Brett's partner, he lashes out at the most obvious rival.

His relationship with Brett is marked by a cycle of dependency and destruction. He knows she sleeps with other men—including Romero—yet he lacks the strength or means to leave her. His bankruptcy is both literal and symbolic: he is morally and emotionally bankrupt. Despite moments of genuine humor and honesty (like when he admits he's "so tight" or that he has no money), Mike ultimately embodies the Lost Generation's struggle to rebuild their identities after the war's devastation.

Montoya runs the Hotel Montoya in Pamplona and is one of the novel's subtly important characters. A dedicated bullfighting enthusiast, he acts as both a welcoming host and a moral compass within the world of the corrida. Though his presence in the story is brief, he holds great thematic significance as a representation of genuine passion—the "afición"—that Hemingway places at the heart of the novel's ethical framework.

From the moment Jake Barnes arrives in Pamplona, Montoya extends a warmth reserved for those who truly love bullfighting without any corruption. He greets Jake with a handshake that conveys a sense of belonging, sharing insights about promising young matadors like Pedro Romero, whose talent Montoya watches over with a protective, almost fatherly, instinct. This trust is crucial to Montoya's story: he has worked hard to keep Romero away from corrupting influences—wealthy tourists, foreign admirers, and the superficial social circles of the expatriates.

The tension peaks when Jake, despite his better judgment, introduces Brett Ashley to Romero. Montoya sees the fallout—Romero becomes involved with Brett, putting his focus and purity at risk. In a significant, silent rebuke, Montoya stops acknowledging Jake at the hotel, withdrawing both the handshake and his warmth. This quiet withdrawal is impactful because of its subtlety: Montoya doesn’t argue or confront; he simply stops recognizing Jake as one of his own. His journey thus highlights the cost of sacrificing authentic values for social acceptance, serving as a moral reflection of Jake's own compromised integrity.

Pedro Romero is a nineteen-year-old Spanish bullfighter whose natural talent in the ring symbolizes true grace under pressure in the novel. Through the admiring perspective of aficionado Montoya, Romero stands out from the spiritually lost expatriates: while they show emotion, he lives it. In the Pamplona corrida scenes, Hemingway describes his technique with precise, almost ritualistic detail—his refusal to cheat the bull, his stillness, and his complete control of distance—making the bullring the one place in the novel where meaning feels pure, untouched by irony or disillusionment.

His story shifts when he becomes involved with Brett Ashley. Jake, breaking his own principles and betraying Montoya's trust, introduces the pair, and Brett's interest in Romero pulls him from the safe realm of pure craft into the chaotic emotional lives of the expatriates. In a fit of jealousy, Robert Cohn brutally attacks Romero before the final corrida, but Romero shows remarkable bravery by fighting the next day, dedicating a bull to Brett and killing it despite his injuries—a moment that highlights his key quality: the ability to take hits and still perform with honor.

In the end, Brett sends Romero away, realizing she would only bring him down. His departure is quiet and unremarked upon, which enhances his role as a moral anchor. He neither narrates nor explains; he simply acts decisively. In a novel filled with loss and helplessness, Romero embodies the ideal that the other characters can admire but never truly achieve.

Robert Cohn is a Jewish-American writer and former boxing champion who graduated from Princeton. His romantic idealism constantly puts him at odds with the Lost Generation ethos of the novel. Introduced as Jake Barnes's tennis partner and literary friend in Paris, Cohn's outsider status is evident—he is tolerated but never fully embraced by the expatriate crowd. His defining characteristic is his refusal to accept reality: after reading W. H. Hudson's The Purple Land, he romanticizes South America into an escapist fantasy, a tendency Jake recognizes early on as dangerously naïve.

Cohn's story centers on his affair with Brett Ashley in San Sebastián. While the other characters accept Brett's emotional unavailability, Cohn becomes fixated on her, believing their brief relationship was significant. At the Pamplona fiesta, this delusion erupts into violence: he attacks Jake, Mike Campbell, and ultimately the bullfighter Pedro Romero in a fit of jealousy, yet afterward, he weeps and begs Romero for forgiveness—a moment that highlights his struggle to embody the stoic masculinity that the novel celebrates. Instead of gaining respect, his show of physical dominance only intensifies the group's disdain.

By the end of the fiesta, Cohn is completely isolated—Frances Clyne has already revealed his cruelty in a scene at a Paris café, his former friends mock him openly, and he leaves Pamplona alone. His journey is one of ongoing disillusionment: he represents the novel’s cautionary tale against false illusions, shaped by his sentimental romanticism.

In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, disillusionment isn't just stated but shown — evident in the novel's straightforward sentences and the aimless, restless movements of its characters across post-WWI Europe.

Jake Barnes serves as the primary embodiment of lost faith. His war injury, left undescribed, symbolizes a generation's emasculation — not only sexually but existentially. He struggles to express his love for Brett Ashley, and this paralysis reflects his peers' broader inability to turn emotions into meaning. His Catholic prayers in Pamplona reveal their own futility; he admits he isn't a good Catholic and that his prayers achieve nothing, yet he persists — a ritual stripped of belief but not entirely forsaken.

The fiesta itself presents a sustained irony. The crowd's ecstatic release during the bullfights stands in stark contrast to the Americans' struggle to feel anything genuine; they watch Romero perform with true grace but respond by trying to possess or taint him. Brett's short-lived romance with Romero concludes when she lets him go, one of the few unselfish actions in the novel, yet even this moment feels more like damage control than redemption.

The novel's iconic closing exchange — Brett lamenting that they could have had such a damned good time together, with Jake quietly agreeing and adding "isn't it pretty to think so" — encapsulates the theme. The conditional tense embodies disillusionment: desire recognized, but fulfillment forever out of reach. The sun rises and sets throughout the story, indifferent and cycling without progress — an echo of Ecclesiastes made narrative.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway portrays friendship not as a comforting bond but as a source of tension, loyalty, and quiet devastation among individuals scarred by the war.

The central male friendship between Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton provides the novel's warmest moments. Their fishing trip to Burguete feels like a breath of fresh air amidst the rest of the story: the two men sip wine in a cool stream, share absurd jokes about Henry James and irony, and settle into a comfortable, wordless rhythm that the chaotic scenes in Pamplona never achieve. Hemingway uses this pause to illustrate that true male companionship for this generation thrives only when women, rivalry, and money are temporarily set aside.

However, friendship in the novel is constantly threatened by desire. Robert Cohn's attachment to Jake is possessive and needy—he follows Jake to Pamplona partly because Jake serves as a link to Brett Ashley. When Brett becomes involved with the bullfighter Romero, Cohn's violent outbursts toward both Jake and Mike Campbell reveal how fragile the social constructs of friendship are under the strain of jealousy and wounded pride.

The friendship between Jake and Brett is arguably the most crucial and the most painful. They are deeply committed to one another, but Jake's injury turns that commitment into a lasting scar. Brett's final telegram—calling Jake back to Madrid—and his resigned reply crystallize the novel's core message: within the Lost Generation, friendship and longing are so intertwined that separating them would mean destroying both.

In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, identity is portrayed as something fluid and unstable, as characters constantly test, perform, and struggle to grasp it in the wake of the First World War.

Jake Barnes exemplifies this identity crisis throughout the novel. His unnamed war injury, always looming, robs him of traditional masculinity. To counter this, he builds his identity around expertise: knowing the best cafés, ordering the right wine, and understanding bullfighting on a level that others can't grasp. However, this connoisseurship acts as armor; whenever Brett Ashley appears, his façade cracks and the wound resurfaces.

Brett herself navigates different identities through her series of lovers—Mike, Cohn, Romero—hoping that each relationship might finally reveal her true self. Her short hair and masculine name reflect the era's confusion about women's identities, but Hemingway prevents her from settling into any fixed persona. She walks away from Romero at the moment she realizes she is shaping his identity instead of finding her own.

Robert Cohn's struggle with identity is presented differently: he clings to a Princeton boxing trophy and a published novel as proof against the anti-Semitism and social exclusion he faces in Paris and Pamplona. The group's disdain for him partly stems from their contempt for his overt need to fit in.

The bullfighting scenes emphasize this theme: Romero's pure, unpretentious style is portrayed as an identity grounded in genuine skill, sharply contrasting with the expatriates' borrowed personas—an ideal none of them can truly attain.

In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, loss doesn't come with announcements; it builds up in quiet moments, evasions, and the constant movement of characters who can't pause long enough to mourn. Jake Barnes bears the most explicit wound: a war injury that has rendered him incapable of sex, a reality he dances around without naming directly. His loss intertwines the physical and the romantic, crystallized in his ongoing tension with Brett Ashley, the woman he loves but can never fully possess. Whenever they find themselves alone—whether in a taxi in Paris or in a hotel room in Madrid at the novel's end—the moment concludes with withdrawal instead of resolution, grief woven into restraint.

Brett represents a different kind of loss: she grieves a version of herself that the war and a failed marriage have made impossible to reclaim. Her pattern of moving from one man to another seems less like promiscuity and more like a struggle to find an identity that feels right. Mike Campbell's empty bravado and growing debts portray a man who lost his sense of direction in the trenches and has been pretending to be normal ever since.

The fishing scene at Burguete serves as a fleeting reprieve from grief—Jake and Bill Gorton enjoy a few pages where they exist outside the novel's emotional turmoil. The trout stream, the wine, and their easy friendship create a space where loss momentarily fades. This peaceful interlude sharply contrasts with the chaos of Pamplona, making the return to grief even more poignant.

Even the fiesta—seemingly a celebration—acts as a symbol of exhaustion: the crowds, the drinking, and the bulls killed in ritual order reflect the characters' own depleted vitality. Nothing is restored; the sun rises again, but only to signal another cycle of the same.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway explores love not as a redemptive force but as a persistent source of low-grade torment — a desire that flows endlessly without ever reaching a destination.

Jake Barnes's injury serves as the novel's key illustration of this concept. His wound makes it impossible for him to physically connect with Brett Ashley, yet it does nothing to diminish his longing. Each scene they share is filled with what remains unachievable: the taxi ride early on where they momentarily come close before Brett pulls away, or the moment in Pamplona when Jake watches her navigate a crowd of admiring men, registering his loss with almost clinical detachment. Hemingway avoids letting Jake express rage; instead, the emotion comes through what he doesn't say, making it even more haunting.

Brett is not just a femme fatale but a woman ensnared in her own struggles. She repeatedly tells Jake she loves him, yet she shifts from Cohn to Romero to the next man — not out of malice but because she can’t remain still in a feeling that has no outlet. Her choice to send Romero away toward the end, opting not to ruin a young man who still has the chance to be whole, is the novel's most quietly heartbreaking act of love: a sacrifice that costs her the one relationship that seemed uncomplicated.

Robert Cohn's romantic idealism — his belief that a week in San Sebastián with Brett signifies something lasting — is met with disdain by the other characters, but Hemingway uses it as a contrast to show how thoroughly the war generation has had sentiment stripped away. Love persists in the novel, but only as a wound, a habit, or the specter of something that came too late.

In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, masculinity isn't a fixed trait — it's a fragile act constantly at risk, shaped by rituals, wounds, and social displays among men who feel they’ve already lost something they can't get back.

Jake Barnes's war injury — unnamed but clearly leaving him sexually unable — lies at the heart of the novel not as melodrama but as a structural irony: the man who epitomizes stoic, "masculine" behavior is the one physically prevented from fulfilling the very act that those codes celebrate. His restraint around Brett isn't a noble distance but rather a discipline born from necessity, and Hemingway keeps the reader aware of the disconnect between the facade and the underlying pain.

Robert Cohn serves as the novel's cautionary tale — a man who confuses romantic passion with masculine value. His struggle to accept Brett's indifference, and his clinging to their affair in Pamplona long after it's over for her, shows he’s mistaking sentiment for strength. The other men, including Jake, harshly critique this failure, but their disdain also reveals a sense of self-protection.

The bullfighting scenes change the perspective entirely. Pedro Romero represents an ideal that the expatriates can only observe: a young man whose courage is physical, unpretentious, and untouched by the war's disillusionment. When Brett goes after Romero, she seeks a masculinity that the Lost Generation can’t provide. Her eventual decision to let him go — unwilling to taint what she sees as genuine — indicates that Hemingway recognizes this ideal as delicate and worth protecting, even if his protagonists are unable to embody it.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway takes apart the American Dream by placing its restless seekers in postwar Europe, where ambition turns into aimlessness and attempts at self-creation lead to self-destruction. Jake Barnes, the narrator, represents the empty shell of the self-made man: he’s a skilled journalist, a veteran, and a man of modest means who navigates Paris with apparent ease—but his war injury has made him literally unable to achieve the life the Dream seems to promise. This injury serves less as a personal tragedy and more as a structural metaphor: while the machinery of aspiration remains intact, the fulfillment it was meant to bring is forever out of reach.

Robert Cohn stands out as the Dream's most devoted believer and its most tragic victim. A Princeton-educated novelist with money and ambition, he pursues Brett Ashley as if winning her over were a business deal—something attainable through persistence and self-betterment. His boxing career, his novel, and his trip to South America are all framed as projects aimed at elevating himself. The disdain the expatriate community feels towards him stems partly from snobbery, but it also highlights how openly he clings to the Dream's transactional nature, which the others have quietly abandoned.

The fishing interlude at Burguete creates a stark contrast in the novel: Jake and Bill Gorton, temporarily free from the pressures of drinks, desire, and performance, find a sense of genuine ease. The fact that this peace can't last—their return to Pamplona, to Brett, and to the cycle of spending and disappointment—reinforces Hemingway's point that the Dream's promised arrival never materializes. The novel concludes with Jake's stark, heartbreaking realization that romantic fulfillment with Brett is simply unattainable, serving as an epitaph for an entire generation's dreams.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway never directly depicts the First World War; instead, it lingers as both a physical and psychological wound that subtly influences every scene. Jake Barnes's injury from the Italian front leaves him unable to engage sexually, and Hemingway presents this not as melodrama but as a profound silence: Jake seldom articulates what he has lost, yet that absence infuses each tense moment with Brett Ashley. Their relationship orbits around an unattainable core, which is the war itself.

The novel's expatriate setting — the cafés of Paris, the fishing trip to Burguete, the fiesta in Pamplona — reflects a shared sense of displacement. The characters drink not just for enjoyment but to numb their feelings. Mike Campbell's financial collapse and emotional instability, Robert Cohn's restless anger, Bill Gorton's compulsive irony: all of these illustrate a generation returning home without a viable way to live. While the war isn't explicitly blamed, its presence fills the air like smoke in a room.

The bullfighting scenes in Pamplona sharpen the theme by providing a controlled, ritualistic take on the violence that the war rendered chaotic and senseless. Pedro Romero confronts death with skill and poise — traits that the veterans notably lack. Jake admires Romero precisely because the matador embodies what the war stripped away from the men around him: a clear code of conduct.

The novel's well-known closing exchange — Brett's nostalgic musing about what could have been, followed by Jake's straightforward "Isn't it pretty to think so" — serves as the war's final reckoning. The possibility of what might have happened is lost; what remains is the challenge of enduring that truth without delusion.