The Sun Also Rises : Notes, Including Life and Background, General Introduction, List of Characters, Commentary, Notes On Main title: Characters, "The Hemingway Code Hero", Review Questions and Essay Topics New Ed. author: Carey, G. K.; Roberts, James Lamar publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (US) isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: 9780822012375 ebook isbn13: 9780822071983 language: English Hemingway, Ernest,--1899-1961.--Sun also subject rises. publication date: 1968 lcc: ddc: 810.9 Hemingway, Ernest,--1899-1961.--Sun also subject: rises. Page 1 The Sun Also Rises Notes by Gary Carey, M.A. University of Colorado Including Life and Background General Introduction List of Characters Critical Commentaries Notes on Main Characters "The Hemingway Code Hero" Review Questions and Essay Topics Selected Bibliography Incorporated Lincoln, Nebraska 68501 Page 2 Editor Gary Carey, M.A. University of Colorado Consulting Editor James L. Roberts, Ph.D. Department of English University of Nebraska ISBN 0-8220-1237-5 © Copyright 1968 by Cliffs Notes, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U.S.A. 1999 Printing The Cliffs Notes logo, the names "Cliffs" and "Cliffs Notes," and the black and yellow diagonal-stripe cover design are all registered trademarks belonging to Cliffs Notes, Inc., and may not be used in whole or in part without written permission. Cliffs Notes, Inc. Lincoln, Nebraska Page 3 Contents Life and Background 5 General Introduction 10 List of Characters 13 Critical Commentaries 15 Notes on Main Characters Jake Barnes 61 Brett Ashley 62 Robert Cohn 63 Pedro Romero 64 The Hemingway Code Hero 66 The Nada Concept 69 The Discipline of the Code Hero 70 Review Questions and Essay Topics 74 Selected Bibliography 77 Page 5 Life and Background Ernest Hemingway's colorful life as big game hunter, fisherman, and Nobel Prize winner began in quiet Oak Park, Illinois, July 21, 1899. Ernest was the second of six children born to Dr. and Mrs. Clarence E. Hemingway. His mother, a devout, religious woman with considerable musical talent, hoped that Ernest would develop an interest in music but Ernest was a disappointment. He acquired his father's enthusiasms a love of hunting and fishing in the north Michigan woods and it is that phase of his childhood which formed important impressions and is reflected later in such Nick Adams stories as "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River." In high school Hemingway played football and also boxed and it was the latter which was responsible for a permanent eye injury that caused the army to reject his efforts to enlist in World War I. Boxing, however, proved finally to be an asset to Hemingway, for it gave him a lasting enthusiasm for prize fighting, material for stories, and a tendency to talk of his literary accomplishments in boxing terms. Hemingway's writing career began early; he edited the high school newspaper and, after graduation, got a job as reporter on the Kansas City Star, after he was turned down by the Kansas City draft boards. Hemingway's sights, however, were still set on Europe and he was at last successful in his attempts to serve the war effort: he joined a volunteer American Red Cross ambulance unit as driver. Shortly thereafter, Hemingway was seriously wounded at Fossalta on the Italian Piave and he recalls that life slid from him, "like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by a corner," almost fluttered away, then returned. It is thought by some literary critics that it was this experience which gave Hemingway an obsession with his own fear and the need to test his courage throughout the rest of his life. Page 6 After a dozen operations on his knee and a recuperation in Milan, Hemingway returned, with an aluminum kneecap and two Italian decorations, to join the Italian infantry. These vivid experiences later provided background for A Farewell to Arms, the most famous of all the novels Hemingway wrote about war. War the cruelty and stoic endurance that it requires forms a major part of Hemingway's writing, beginning with the In Our Time collection of stories published in 1924 to his post-World War II novel, Across the River and into the Trees. In addition to World War I action, Hemingway later covered the Greek-Turkish War in 1920, and, later, the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Following World War I, Hemingway returned to northern Michigan to read, write, and fish, and then to work for the Toronto Star in Canada. He lived briefly in Chicago (where he came to know Sherwood Anderson) and in 1921 he married Hadley Richardson; the couple moved to Paris and Ernest worked as foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. His newsbeat was all of Europe, and while still in his twenties he had interviewed Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Mussolini. These years 1921-1926 are recorded in a posthumous collection of essays, A Moveable Feast (1964). It was Sherwood Anderson who gave Hemingway a letter of introduction to Gertrude Stein, who was living in Paris, and it was that letter which gave Hemingway entrance into the world of working authors and artists who visited her home. It was Miss Stein, in fact, who mentioned a garage keeper's comment, "You are all a lost generation," a casual remark, yet one which became world-famous after Hemingway used it as an epigraph to his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises. The term "lost generation" was instantly meaningful to Hemingway's readers. It signified the attitudes of the postwar generation and