The Sun Also Rises Drugs and Alcohol

We’re not exactly sure what the "positive sense" of drunkenness is that Jake refers to, since people just seem to get into more trouble when they’re drunk in this novel, but we have a feeling it refers to the sense of carefree creative flow that emerges later in the scenes between Jake and Bill. Drunkenness in the wrong social context, however, as in this scene, leans more towards destructive rather than creative.

The "she" here is Brett—of course, we’ve already established that Brett is charming in any situation, but this seems like a particularly interesting and rather unusual comment from the count. Brett doesn’t seem to undergo any real change between drunkenness and sobriety, which is kind of an alarming idea, if you think about it.

Here, drunkenness is actually an effective mode of distraction for Jake—the language in this quote emphasizes the artificiality of this distraction. It "seems" that everyone’s nice, but we know that when Jake’s sober again, he’ll remember what his friends are really like.

This concise quote sums up the difference between Cohn and the rest of the crowd (Jake included—we might as well add "Jake was a good drunk" to the list). Cohn, unlike everyone else, never surrenders himself to the experience of drunkenness, either because he can’t or he won’t.

The fiesta and its requisite state of constant drunkenness is a time of "unreal" events and chaos—a time in which our characters let go of any sober sense of right and wrong they might still possess.

Mike finally articulates something we’ve all been wondering about—he’s perfectly aware of his own abuse of alcohol and its psychological reasons, and consciously chooses to continue it.

Following the Brett-Romero-Cohn drama, the only thing Jake can fall back on is alcohol—however, this time even booze doesn’t do the trick. What he needs, clearly, is something to cure rather than simply cover up his problems.

After the fiesta, Jake returns to alcohol, but it’s different—there’s something less alarming to him about drinking alone, at his own pace, and without the complicating factors of his friends.

Brett and Jake hang on to an old-fashioned idea of gentility associated with hotel bars (and curiously enough, horse racing)—in this scene, the hotel bar is a place of refuge from the pressures of the outside world and the consequences of Brett’s actions.

For the only time, Brett actually begs Jake to stay sober; she doesn’t want to drink herself, and needs him to stay with her in her state of honesty and unhappiness.