Literary Devices in The Sun Also Rises
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Bulls and bull-fighting are the two most critical symbols in The Sun Also Rises. The bulls symbolize passion, physicality, energy, and freedom. As a combination of these factors, in their interacti...
Setting
We'll always have Paris: the first few chapters of the novel take place in a loosely fictionalized version of the famous community of expatriate writers and artists that Hemingway really lived in d...
Narrator Point of View
Jake is a classic First Person narrator. We see everything as he does, and the only thoughts and commentary we get are from him. Our understanding of the other characters, events, and relationships...
Genre
Today, Hemingway's style is one of the most copied around: it's gruff, it's stoic, and the sentences are shorter than the average length of one of Hemmy's beard hairs.But way back when, his radical...
Tone
You get the feeling that the comedy of this book is there to mask what Hemingway himself called "a damned tragedy." Its characters engage in witty, often hilarious dialogue, but underneath their wi...
Writing Style
These three words are often used to describe Hemingway’s distinctive prose style. He turns away from the lush, rich style of his precursors, or even of some of his contemporaries (contrast The Su...
What’s Up With the Title?
Like so many great novel titles, this one comes directly from the Bible. More specifically, it can be found in the passage from Ecclesiastes quoted in the second epigraph (for more deets, check out...
What’s Up With the Epigraph?
You are all a lost generation. – Gertrude Stein in conversationOne generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth...
What’s Up With the Ending?
Best. Ending. Ever. In the last words of this novel, Hemingway delivers a memorable and hard-hitting diagnosis of his generation: "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" The speaker, Jake, is referring sp...
Plot Analysis
Life in expat Paris: lots of drinking, eating... and a little bit of working.As the novel opens, we meet our expatriate friends in their adopted home of Paris. They all have different feelings abo...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
The Sun Also Rises is a somewhat nontraditional narrative. Only a few pages into the first chapter, the book’s conclusion is revealed: Jake and Brett cannot end up together. The book is propell...
Three Act Plot Analysis
This follows the structure of the novel very closely—Hemingway himself divided it into three "Books."The cast of characters is introduced. Jake and the crew hang out in Paris. Cohn struggles wit...
Steaminess Rating
The Sun Also Rises is extremely charged with sexual tension—if you’re on the lookout for it. Sex is always something implied, something that everyone knows about but no one discusses. We know t...
Allusions
W.H. Hudson, The Purple Land (2.3)Horatio Alger (2.3) H.L. Mencken (6.2, 12.39) A.E.W. Mason (12.31) Circe, character in Greek mythology (13.52) Ivan Turgenieff, a.k.a. Turgenev, Sportsman’s Sket...