by Ben Lewis

Created on: July 27, 2008   Last Updated: October 09, 2009

Male insecurity in, THE SUN ALSO RISES, by Ernest Hemingway

On the theme of "male insecurity", this novel is rich. Its post W.W. I setting begins in Paris, France giving it the ambience of a very dated black & white film. The characters are all privileged class and some of them seem to have no work to do, unless bar & bed hopping count as such.

The novel is in first person. The protagonist and narrator is Jacob Barnes, (Hemingway) who seems to be an American journalist working for a news medium that is never named, except for vague references to a wire service. His sporadic visits to the office don't seem to interfere much with his drinking and carousing within his circle of idle rich friends.

Two of them are age 34; Barnes, called "Jake" by the others, is older but not "over the hill". There are at least two others whose ages are not clear.

Perhaps the most pathetic of the group is Robert Cohn, "from one of the richest Jewish families in New York". It's said that he learned boxing in college to counteract the inferiority he felt by being a Jew at Princeton.

He took his insecurity with him to Europe and tried unsuccessfully to get Barnes to travel with him to South America. Cohn has left prize fighting and is now a writer with one promising book just making its debut in the US. But neither success in boxing, as a novelist, or his inherited wealth could shore up his ego he always felt inferior.

Another man in their group, Mike, who at the moment was Cohn's chief competitor for Brett, (Lady Ashley) once used this ploy to expose Cohn's indecisive nature:

Mike: "Robert, tell us right off what you'd rather do than anything?"

Cohn: "I don't know."

Mike: "Oh, don't think; just bring it right out."

Cohn: "I think I'd rather play football with what I know about handling myself now."

Mike: "I was wrong about you. You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development!"

Cohn: "Someday somebody will push your face in. Anyway, cut it out about me."

This was typical when his lack of personal and social adjustment caused him to behave badly even with the circle of "friends" whom he more nearly needed than wanted except for one, Brett, known officially as "Lady Ashley". She acquired the title through a brief marriage to an English nobleman and it complimented her own inheritance, which was not grandiose but adequate.

But I am not yet done with Cohn. Many an exchange between Cohn and Barnes reveal his struggle with indecision. He, Cohn, had a two-year relationship

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