The Rites of War and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

Abstract

This essay uses Samuel Hynes and Eric Leed to argue that Jake Barnes’s journey in The Sun Also Rises , culminating in the violent act of the bullfight, manifests a structural replication of his war experience and, additionally, of what Barbara Ehrenreich theorizes as the origins and passions of war. This replication ultimately proves salubrious. Moreover, Jake’s ringside position as spectator and mediator literally re-enacts the role of aerial observer, while also speaking to the transitional nature of modern total warfare toward a paradigm that Jan Mieszkowski has described as placing center stage social mobilization, spectatorship, and narration rather than combat.