Fractured: The Search for Self & Human Connection in The Sun Also Rises
When World War I finally came to an end in 1918, it left in its wake a generation grappling with extreme psychological, moral, and emotional fragmentation. Writers and characters associated with the Lost Generation frequently grapple with fractured identity and an inability to form lasting human connections in the aftermath of World War I. This post-war crisis not only fueled the modernist literary movement but also intertwined themes of disillusionment, fragmentation, and identity. Many writers who emerged from this period rejected the optimism associated with earlier literary styles and instead adopted a cynical style that highlighted the aftermath of the war. One prominent author who adopted modernism is Ernest Hemingway, whose debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, is often cited as a defining work of the movement. The protagonist of The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes, is depicted as a relational figure rather than completely isolated. Through Jake Barnes's fractured sense of self, broken friendship with Robert Cohn, and his unfulfilled romance with Lady Brett Ashley, a deeper understanding of the Lost Generation's struggle to find identity and human connection in the aftermath of World War I emerges.
The Lost Generation
The term "Lost Generation” is generally used to describe the post-World War I generation, as well as a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s, marked by the irrelevance of values and spiritual isolation in the postwar world. Influenced by World War I, Hemingway employs a minimalist style to reflect the serious emotional damage that pervaded society in the postwar era. Jake Barnes experiences isolation in part because of external influences and his inability to express his inner struggles openly, due to the social restrictions imposed by the war and the lack of open community discourse. The post-war reality leaves Barnes disillusioned and alienated, lacking direction and meaning in life; struggling to connect with society, and experiencing a crisis of identity following World War I.
Furthermore, Kilpatrick argues that "Hemingway clearly knew what it felt like to be lonely. Between his family history of mental illness, his own war-related trauma, and the secluded nature of writing life, it is not surprising that his fiction is filled with characters who grapple with profound feelings of disconnection." Hemingway draws on personal experience to shape his minimalist style through Jake Barnes, who narrates a restrained stream of consciousness and a notable lack of inner dialogue– reflecting on his inner self and the dysfunctional relationships that defined his generation. This stylistic technique expertly reflects postwar damage while simultaneously highlighting themes of self-fragmentation and emotional restraint.
Moreover, Barnes uses ironic narration as a form of self- protection. Through Barnes's eyes, the reader observes scenes, details, and conversations that reflect Barnes's harsh dilemma and the complications of his relationships. For instance, when Barnes narrates, "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing," he presents the irony between his "hard-boiled" facade and his private fragility. Another example of Barnes's use of irony is when he introduces Georgette, a prostitute he picks up to avoid being alone, to his friends as "my fiancée, Mademoiselle Georgette Leblanc." Barnes is unable and has no intention of initiating a sexual encounter with Georgette, and ends up abandoning her, ridding himself of the obligation. Barnes's ironic and restrained narrative style exemplifies his emotional numbness.
Consequently, Barnes is a highly subjective narrator. The reader experiences the story squarely through Barnes's eyes. Long argues that Barnes is "Like an optical instrument, his power of vision controls and modifies what is shown, and yet it remains impervious to judgment." As Barnes tells Lady Brett Ashley, "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it," he is lying to both of them. His impotence deeply consumes him, as much as he tries to act indifferent to it. Barnes conveys his intrusive thoughts about his injury to the reader when he narrates: "Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny," then, "My head started to work. The old grievance." Barnes tries to appear detached, revealing his inability to be honest about his trauma.
Similarly, Barnes reveals his cynical worldview when he explains, "I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together." By stating this, "The reader soon learns that he must never accept any statement at face value or any detail or scene as a set piece of photographic realism, for Barnes sees nearly everything as having a grisly significance.” This narration style artfully presents the internal conflict between desire and resignation reflected through the character's minimalist dialogue and narration. As a result, Barnes's cynicism bleeds into each of his relationships.
The Fractured Self
Comparatively, Barnes's injury signifies a loss of traditional masculine roles, reinforcing themes of emasculation, disconnection, and the novel's pervasive postwar identity crisis. Barnes does not expressly state the full extent of this injury, referring to it only as an "accident", but through inference, it is assumed that his injury causes him to be impotent. Tarnóc contends that Barnes's omission of the term "impotence" helps him maintain his sanity as he hides behind the mask of a stoical outsider. Due to his injury, Barnes is unable to fulfill traditional masculine roles, such as settling down and starting a family. This is evidenced by his unfulfilled romantic relationship with Ashley, which this paper subsequently explores. Kilpatrick asserts that "It represents not just physical trauma but a symbolic rupture in his ability to connect fully, adding to his condition of isolation." Barnes's wound remains an ever-present marker of his emasculation, alienation, and disillusionment, representing the demoralizing effects of war on men. Barnes’s wound destabilizes traditional models of masculinity, leaving him uncertain of his place within the postwar social order.
Moreover, Barnes's constant geographical movement also underscores another paradox of the novel: traversing does not lead to psychological or emotional transformation. While travel initially functions as escapism, the shifting environments ultimately highlight Barnes’s psychological dislocation rather than offering relief. His journey from Paris to Spain is a juxtaposition between physical locations and emotional dislocation, emphasizing the moral that the former does not alleviate the latter. Barnes's recognition of this condition is explicitly stated in his declaration that "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another," which also repudiates the notion of escape through relocation. The novel complicates this apparent resignation by suggesting that space exerts a subtle psychological influence. While Jake cannot evade his inner conflicts, the environments he inhabits shape how he experiences and manages his dislocation. As Kilpatrick observes, the environment affects Barnes's capacity to negotiate his emotional pain, even if it cannot eliminate its source. The dialogue with Cohn early in the novel foreshadows this dynamic. Cohn's restless anxiety — his fear that life is “going by" without fulfillment — contrasts sharply with Barnes's weary realism, exposing divergent responses to postwar malaise. Consequently, the novel's shifting settings illuminate the persistence of Barnes's psyche across varying landscapes.
Another potent example of Barnes’s fractured sense of self is evidenced through his spiritual beliefs. Barnes identifies as a Catholic, but his engagement with religion is selective and ambivalent. On one of the rare occasions when Barnes makes an effort to practice his religion, he wanders into a cathedral and narrates his experience:
I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time…
His confession exposes a profound spiritual dislocation. Barnes tries to connect with his religion, but instead of finding solace or mending his apparent fractured relationship with God, he only derives guilt. His mind strays as he tries to pray, highlighting his inability to fully reconnect with the religious framework he chooses to identify with. Barnes has the self-awareness to know that he is not being a faithful practitioner of his faith, but lacks the motivation to make the necessary changes to be more religiously connected. His faith remains present as a cultural identity, but it no longer functions as a reliable source of meaning or comfort, reinforcing the deeper fragmentation that defines Barnes’s emotional state.
Robert Cohn and Broken Male Friendship
Beyond that, readers witness Barnes's isolation through his friendships. His relationships seem shallow, lacking any semblance of a deep, meaningful connection. Kilpatrick asserts, "While outwardly surrounded by people, most of the characters are, inside, islands unto themselves." Although Barnes has several friendships featured in the novel, his turbulent relationship with Cohn best encapsulates Barnes's isolation. Barnes characterizes Cohn as: "a boy, a friendly boy and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and a flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him." Through his blunt description of Cohn, Barnes reveals his critical view of Cohn's character to the reader.
Additionally, Barnes's friendship with Cohn highlights the illusion of male solidarity versus the reality of emotional isolation. Barnes deferentially admits about Cohn: "But I felt sorry for him." This line captures Jake's conflicted stance. There is no real brotherhood here—only irritation mixed with reluctant pity. Despite their frequent social interactions, Barnes never fully embraces Cohn as part of his masculine circle. This is evidenced by how Barnes allows Mike Campbell to confront Cohn during the Pamplona fiesta:
You know you didn’t have a good time at San Sebastian because none of your friends would invite you on any of the parties. You can’t blame them hardly. Can you? I asked them to. They wouldn’t. You can’t blame them now. Can you? Now, answer me. Can you blame them?”
Barnes does not interject because he enjoys Campbell’s public humiliation of Cohn. Campbell’s character is bold enough to say what he truly feels about Cohn, unlike Barnes, who internalizes his disdain. The imbalance in their relationship is further portrayed in the way Barnes talks to Cohn. For example, Barnes lashes out at Cohn after realizing his interest in Lady Brett Ashley:
"You say such damned insulting things, Jake.” "I'm sorry, I've got a nasty tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty things.” "I know it," said Cohn. "You're really about the best friend I have, Jake." God help you, I thought.
The existing tension between Barnes and Cohn illustrates Barnes’s emotional indifference to Cohn and the lack of male solidarity. The dynamic between them underscores the novel's portrayal of postwar masculinity as superficial, marked by performative camaraderie. This dynamic ultimately masks the pervasive underlying isolation and emotional detachment of the Lost Generation.
Accordingly, Barnes and Cohn illuminate how alcohol, travel, and ritual serve as substitutes for genuine connection. They never derive any joy from it, as it functions only as a purposeless distraction from their troubled inner lives. For example, as Barnes recounts, “Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed like they were all such nice people.” Here, Barnes's drunkenness serves as a distraction from his feelings of disgust, albeit an artificial one. The alcohol masks his unpleasant feelings, but ironically, the reader knows his true feelings will resurface once the effects of the wine wear off.
As a result, alcoholism combined with hedonism reflects the desperate attempts of the Lost Generation to escape the emptiness they feel, illustrating how it affects every aspect of life, both individually and socially. This is further evidenced by Barnes's response to Cohn's restlessness, when he retorts, "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." Barnes reveals his cynicism, yet this view does not prevent him from participating in travel excursions. Liu asserts, “For one thing, there is an apparent lack of common goals of the group members other than having a good time, and an utter lack of sexual fidelity… the group itself is transitory, seeming to be a tribe with little identity." The mobility and transience of Barnes and Cohn further heightens their dysfunction. Together, Barnes and Cohn's reliance on alcohol, travel, and ritual highlights the futility of escapism, illustrating how the Lost Generation's pursuit of pleasure ultimately deepens their alienation and emotional emptiness.
Barnes's difficulty with human connection is further evidenced by the collapse of social bonds during the Pamplona fiesta. Long maintains, "The joy and pleasure, the good humor and the camaraderie generated in the mountains are dissipated and then destroyed by the working out of the conflict over Brett's affections: Cohn, Romero, Mike Campbell, and even Jake are seriously involved." When Barnes discovers the affair between Cohn and Ashley, this becomes the catalyst for conflict between them. Barnes conveys his growing contempt for Cohn when he relays to the reader, “I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn– nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody." Barnes is conflicted about his feelings, knowing that his growing hatred for Cohn is "immoral." This conflict in feelings towards Cohn stems from Barnes's inability to engage in a physical relationship with Ashley. Barnes admits his envy for Cohn in the following lines:
I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that little spell of superiority at lunch– that and when he went through all that barbering.
The end to the revelry is foreshadowed when Barnes observes, "I had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again." The jealousy Barnes internalizes toward Cohn eventually culminates in physical violence, which Barnes conveys: "I swung at him, and he ducked. I saw his face duck sideways in the light. He hit me, and I sat down on the pavement." When Cohn later apologizes to Barnes, Barnes is apathetic to Cohn's pleas for forgiveness, imparting to the reader, "I did not care I wanted a hot bath." Barnes and Cohn do not communicate again after this incident. The audience is only informed that Cohn has departed Pamplona early. In this way, the instability of postwar masculine identity is exposed through the breakdown of Barnes's relationship with Cohn. This breakdown accentuates how postwar trauma erodes trust and camaraderie.
Lady Brett Ashley and Unfulfilled Romance
Most notably, through Barnes's unfulfilled relationship with Ashley, Barnes experiences the paradox of intimacy without its realization. Ashley is portrayed as both an object of desire and a symbol of modern freedom. Cohn memorably dubs her "Circe", claiming she turns men into swine. According to Honeini, Ashley "always conceives of Jake as weak, sick, and scarred, and she cannot consider him in any alternative context." Ashley's perspective on Barnes stems from their meeting, which Barnes describes to Cohn: "She was a V.A.D in a hospital I was in during the war." Tomkin's argument that "On the one hand, the uncertain material actuality of Jake's war wound dictates that Jake—as an object of sexual desire and/or possession—must defy the evaluative context of sexual exchange that Hemingway cultivates within his text," concurs with Honeini's. The pointlessness of Ashley's wish to have a sexual relationship with Barnes highlights the book's focus on painful loss and the ensuing desire for the impossible. Barnes exhibits his despair when he communicates:
This was Brett, whom I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course, in a little while I felt like hell again.
Barnes recognizes that it does not matter how masculine he acts around others; at night, alone, it all comes crashing down. Kilpatrick contends that Barnes's inability to escape his isolation is due to Ashley acting as "the bait in the trap that binds Barnes to her.” This is further evidenced by Barnes's inner stream of consciousness, stating, "I lay awake, thinking, my mind jumping around. Then I could not keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett, and all the rest of it went away." Barnes's unfulfilled longing for Ashley illustrates how his physical limitations and emotional desires are irrevocably linked.
In spite of his inability to consummate his love for Ashley, Barnes's love is emotionally authentic. Tomkin asserts that after every liaison with the "many non-disabled men," Ashley repeatedly returns to Jake, “whose desirability never subsides.” Barnes's inner reflections on Ashley further evidence this:
Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
The preceding quote highlights Jake's recognition of the transactional nature of his relationship with Ashley, revealing his self-awareness of taking emotional intimacy for granted. By equating his injury with his inability to be with Ashley, Barnes directs all of his resentment toward her instead of the war and his terrible injury. Ultimately, Barnes's reflections reveal how his impotence shapes his moral and emotional identity.
Subsequently, Ashley’s relationships with other men mirror Barnes’s loss. One such example is Ashley’s visit with Count Mippipopolous, one of several instances in which she wounds Jake with her liaisons. Ashley brings the Count to Barnes’s apartment, causing Barnes to become visibly upset:
I dressed slowly, sitting on the bed. I felt tired and pretty rotten. Brett came in the room, a glass in her hand, and sat on the bed.
“What’s the matter, darling? Do you feel rocky?”
“Oh, Brett, I love you so much.”
“Darling,” she said. Then: Do you want me to send him away?”
Ashley further emasculates Barnes by recruiting his assistance in facilitating her seduction of the bull-fighter, Pedro Romero. She pleads with Jake to "stay by [her] and see [her] through this." Barnes conveys the emotional pain it causes him:
That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. Moreover, sign the wire with love. That was it all right.
Ashley is characterized as having impulsive, short-lived, unstable, and unattached romantic relationships. This behavior pattern reveals a more serious internal conflict for her. However, since the real issue is with herself, switching romantic partners or starting a new relationship won't solve her discontent. Her inability to sustain a long-term romantic relationship is partly due to her ex-husband. The novel reveals that, “‘When he came home, he wouldn't sleep in a bed. Always made Brett sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her he'd kill her.’” The novel also discloses that her former husband was a veteran of World War I. One can assume he suffered from immense trauma upon his return home from the war. His trauma had a profound effect on Ashley, as is displayed in her interactions with men.
Equally important is the impact of the well-known final line, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Barnes's closing statement to Ashley has a powerful emotional and philosophical impact. The statement captures the delusion Barnes has long held: the flimsy hope that a future with Ashley could somehow transcend the limitations inflicted by his impotence. Barnes's response exposes the painful gap between desire and reality that defines their relationship and offers no viable solution. Instead of affirming or disputing her imagined future, he reframes it through aesthetic language, labeling the idea itself as "pretty." As Kilpatrick notes, this rhetorical maneuver allows Jake to soften the “dreadful blow” of reality, insulating himself from the full force of loss through ambiguity and tonal restraint. Gottlieb likewise argues that further reading illuminates the psychological complexity embedded in this exchange. Barnes's response, neither encouraging nor dismissive, occupies a space of deliberate indeterminacy that mirrors the broader instability of meaning within the novel. Barnes's words gesture toward longing even as they concede defeat, embodying the novel's pervasive tension between imagined fulfillment and lived fragmentation. The emotional force of the ending thus derives not from dramatic confrontation but from the subdued acknowledgment of irreconcilable realities. In this way, the novel's conclusion crystallizes the tragedy of a generation suspended between longing and impossibility, rendering Barnes's final words both tender and profoundly devastating.
Intersections of Self, Friendships, & Romance
Rather than confronting this loss directly, Barnes adopts ironic detachment and emotional restraint as strategies for navigating relationships that he knows cannot fully succeed. Real intimacy is thwarted by his defensive detachment, a result of his damaged sense of masculinity and selfhood. His declining friendship with Robert Cohn is the clearest example of this. Despite Barnes' initial tolerance of Cohn, the strain of rivalry, jealousy, and unspoken animosity causes their relationship to deteriorate progressively. Barnes frequently reduces Cohn to caricature, describing him as having a “hard Jewish stubborn streak.” This narrative distancing highlights Barnes's incapacity to maintain true male solidarity. Barnes' repressed insecurity erodes even platonic ties, turning friendship into rivalry rather than fostering camaraderie.
As a result, his tragic romance with Brett Ashley is defined by this same fracture. Barnes has a deep love for Ashley, but his emotional and physical incapacity limits it. He wavers between tenderness and resignation, knowing full well that he cannot play the traditional role of husband or lover. Their relationship becomes a cycle of relinquishment and longing, climaxing in intimate moments that ultimately end in separation. Barnes's refusal to express the extent of his suffering and his insistence on maintaining ironic composure obstruct any chance of recovery or change. Thus, Barnes reenacts the same pattern of unsuccessful connection in both friendship and romance. Intimacy is not only challenging but structurally impossible due to his fractured identity, which permeates all relational modes.
In the same vein, Barnes inhabits the cyclical nature of desire, disappointment, and ultimately resignation. Ashley and Barnes, in particular, are caught in a tragic dance of unfulfilled love. Jake wants to be with her, but cannot. Ashley seems to care for him, but refuses to live in denial. Their love may be real, but it is impossible, keeping them emotionally cut off from each other and themselves, and fueling isolation. Barnes describes several scenes in which Ashley seems to care for him but is emotionally closed off, for instance: “‘Darling!’” Brett said. I went over to the bed and put my arms around her. She kissed me, and while she kissed me I could feel that she was thinking of something else." This scene exemplifies the cycle of their unfulfilled romance. Ashley gives Barnes limited affection, but her mind is off elsewhere. She is never fully present with Barnes because she knows they can never surpass their current situation.
Barnes functions as an epitome of the Lost Generation's collective struggle, embodying the psychological, emotional, and existential fractures that define the postwar condition. His experiences are not merely individual hardships but symptomatic of a broader cultural phenomenon produced by World War I. The war's devastation destabilizes traditional frameworks of meaning — including masculinity, purpose, and relational stability — leaving characters like Barnes suspended between inherited ideals and lived impossibilities.
Counterarguments
Many critical interpretations portray Barnes as emotionally mature, disciplined, and even stoically heroic, emphasizing his restraint and apparent acceptance of circumstances. Critics like Lehan argue that “A character like Hemingway's Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises (1925) brings a neo-stoicism, an inward resolve, to a world of physical force: the subjective overrides a naturalistic response and gives rise to a neo-realism." This perspective risks conflating emotional suppression with emotional resolution. Similarly, critics often position him as a figure of moral stability amid the novel's chaos. However, Kilpatrick offers a different perspective: "Jake knows that his situation can't be erased by a change of scenery and that the internal pain will travel with him wherever he goes. However, as we see later, while he cannot run away from his own psychological struggles, the places he goes affect his ability to deal with that pain and effectively process it." Barnes's calculated demeanor projects control, yet the narrative repeatedly reveals the costs of this restraint. His silences, deflections, and ironic detachment function less as signs of psychological health than mechanisms of survival within a world that offers no accessible avenues for healing. By maintaining composure, Barnes preserves dignity, but he simultaneously limits the possibility of genuine emotional transformation.
In contrast, challenging interpretations that identify Ashley as the primary source of relational instability, such as Onderdonk, contend that “Brett is castrating to men if only in her all
desirableness, which necessarily pits men competitively against other men-yet she also feminizes the victors, the men she sleeps with." Honeini argues instead that Ashley's refusals to Barnes do not simply indicate romantic indecision but expose the impossibility of their union within the novel's damaged social landscape. Essentially, Ashley’s stance reframes the tragedy of their relationship. The failure lies not in her individual moral deficiency but in the collapse of shared frameworks of mutual fulfillment.
Conclusion
Barnes’ narrative style utilizes the modernist aesthetic, one influenced by the disillusionments of the post-war period. Rather than providing insight into the characters’ psychological states, Barnes’s narrative often seems to hold back, presenting events and conversations with a noticeable lack of commentary. Barnes’s fragmented identity is not limited to his relationships but extends into the very form of the narrative itself. The questions, silences, and ironies of Barnes’s narrative can be seen as expressions of the impossibility of articulating meaning in the post-war era. The attempt at escapism through travel reveals the futility of environmental changes for Barnes’s character. It then becomes evident that the search for identity is not so much a journey towards self-discovery, but rather a constant negotiation with trauma, disillusionment, and emotional detachment.
Furthermore, Barnes’s relationship with Robert Cohn exhibits his struggle to maintain authentic male friendships. The illusion of solidarity is present on the surface, but it crumbles under rising circumstantial pressures. Comparatively, Barnes's unfulfilled romance with Ashley showcases Barnes's deep sense of longing and exacerbates the emasculating effects of his genital wound. Barnes’s conflicted relationship with Catholicism further illustrates this fragmentation. Although he turns toward prayer in moments of reflection, his admission that he is a “rotten catholic” reveals that even religion can no longer provide the certainty he seeks. The novel's final line, "Isn't it pretty to think so," however, reveals that Jake has resigned himself to the truth that, despite his deep longing for Ashley, reality deems it a physical impossibility. The Sun Also Rises, therefore, presents a world in which romantic fulfillment is constantly out of reach. Barnes’s resignation is a testament to the tension between desire and the impossible, which is the hallmark of the Lost Generation.
To conclude, Jake Barnes's relational failures in The Sun Also Rises must be understood as systemic rather than purely personal. Barnes’s experiences transcend the individual level, speaking to the cultural dislocation of an entire generation struggling to reconcile past values with the realities of the modern world. The deterioration of interpersonal connections reflects a broader crisis in which narratives of friendship, love, and identity no longer hold inherent power. Barnes seeks connection yet lacks the psychological and cultural support necessary to sustain it. His fractured identity permeates every relational encounter, reinforcing Hemingway's portrayal of a post-war world in which emotional fulfillment is perpetually desired yet fundamentally unattainable.
Bibliography
Briedik, Adam. "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in 'The Sun also Rises.'" The International Journal of Literary Humanities 19, no. 2 (2021): 143-53, www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-sun-also-rises/docview/2713891553/se-2.
Conway, Juliet. "'To Hell with Women Anyway': Flirtatiousness and Male Entitlement in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises." The Hemingway Review 40, no. 2 (2021): 23+. Gale Literature Resource Center accessed February 19, 2026. link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665915517/LitRC?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon&xid=bfd0e2d7.
Gottlieb, Madeline Ilana. “The ‘Pretty’ Lost Generation in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.” The Explicator 76, no. 2 (2018): 75–77. doi:10.1080/00144940.2018.1454393.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. Courier Dover Publications. (2022).
Herminus Efrando Pabur et al., “Analyzing the Disillusionment in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Its Implication on English Language Learning.” IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature 13, no. 2 (2025): 5887–5906. doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v13i2.5446.
Honeini, Ahmed. “Wounded Soldiers Seeking Home: William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures 72, no. 4 (2019): 485–501. EBSCOhost.
Kilpatrick, Stephanie. "Enduring the Void: Hemingway's Characters and the Struggle Against Isolation." Pennsylvania Literary Journal 17, no. 3 (Fall, 2025): 73,84,187, www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/enduring-void-hemingways-characters-struggle/docview/3291536840/se-2.
Krsteva, Marija. “The Lost Generation in Biofictional Writing.” Linguarum Universe 2, no. 1 (2025): 64-68.
Lehan, Richard. “Literary Naturalism and Its Transformations: The Western, American Neo-Realism, Noir, and Postmodern Reformation.” Studies in American Naturalism 7, no. 2 (2012): 228–45. www.jstor.org/stable/23431449.
Liu, Meichen Paris. “Dysfunctional Tribalism in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.” The Explicator 79, nos. 1–2 (2021): 14–17. doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1891012.
Long, Adam. “Tourism Guides and Pilgrimage Motifs: Competing Motivations for Travel in The Sun Also Rises.” The Philological Review 45, no. 1 (2019): 51–61. EBSCOhost.
Onderdonk, Todd. “‘Bitched’: Feminization, Identity, and the Hemingwayesque in ‘The Sun Also Rises.’” Twentieth Century Literature 52, no. 1 (2006): 61–91. www.jstor.org/stable/20479754.
Rouch, John S. “Jake Barnes as Narrator.” Modern Fiction Studies 11, no. 4 (1965): 361–70. www.jstor.org/stable/26278565.
Tarnóc, András. “‘I Don’t Want to Go through That Hell Again:’ Interpretations of Love in Ernest Hemingway’s Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises (1926).” Confluente, January 1, (2022): 78–94. EBSCOhost.
Tomkins, David. “The ‘Lost Generation’ and the Generation of Loss: Ernest Hemingway’s Materiality of Absence and ‘The Sun Also Rises.’” Modern Fiction Studies 54, no. 4 (2008): 744–65. doi.org/10.1353/mfs.0.1578.
