A
few days ago I was reading The Sun Also Rises and
trying to figure out why both it and Mrs. Dalloway feel vaguely depressing. I thought
maybe it had something to do with the post-war atmosphere. After thinking about
it, I realized that the main characters of all the books we've read have felt
so disconnected from the people around them.
Although Jake, Brett, Clarissa, and Septimus are
constantly interacting with and thinking about their friends/family/etc., they
all share a sense of disconnect. For example: Clarissa has a husband who loves
her, but they have a distant relationship and she often feels lonely. She doesn't
connect with her daughter. She spends about half the book thinking wistfully
about the time in her life that she felt truly connected to others, when she
was young at Bourton. Septimus's emotions are messed up from his experience in
the war - he tried not to feel emotion when his best friend Evans died, and he
married his wife in a desperate, unsuccessful attempt at healthy human connection.
Later, he is unable to effectively communicate what he's going through, and
feels like the entirety of human nature is against him.
Jake lives among a group of people that seem very
exciting on the surface, but deep down he feels like he isn't really one of
them. Perhaps some of this is due to his injury - all around him he sees people
in relationships/affairs but he can never be in one of his own. All of Jake's
friends drink constantly and rarely speak sincerely, which makes it hard to
form real connections with them. His conservative views (re: gay people, black
people, Jews, etc.) distance him from the liberal Paris culture around him. Like
Septimus, he's had life-changing experiences in WWI that his friends haven't
had and don't understand. Brett has so many relationships, but doesn't treat
them seriously and pushes Jake away even though she claims to love him - she also
emotionally distances herself from others.
As we've mentioned many times in class, some of
this alienation comes from the post-WWI atmosphere. Jake and Septimus have both
come away from the war with wounds, physical and mental, that separate them
from others. The culture of irony in The
Sun Also Rises that makes it difficult for Jake to form real bonds with his
friends also comes from the war, with people resorting to jokes and alcohol
instead of facing their emotions.
I find it interesting how differently parties are depicted in The Sun Also Rises as compared to Mrs. Dalloway, especially given that they are both written/set post WWI. In Mrs. Dalloway, parties 'made life happen,' they brought people together and gave Clarissa a sense of meaning. In The Sun Also Rises, they seem rather empty, places that people come to in order to distract themselves. Then again, Clarissa's party was with the upper crust of the English upper class, and the parties Jake attends are in Paris, and full of post-WWI veterans, or at the very least young people affected by the conflict in some way.
ReplyDeleteI like what you are saying about Jake and his friends not having real bonds together and that all they do is drink. Your post made me think deeper about the relationships between the characters and I think that if they didn't drink together, they would not even have superficial bonds and they would drift apart. I don't think if the gang was consistently sober they would give Cohn the time of day ( short of the whole Brett, Cohn, Jake love triangle). When they are in San Fermin it seems like their only purpose there is to party and get drunk. Only Jake is extremely passionate about bullfights. Without a few alcoholic beverages, I don't think the other characters would be so interested in watching the bullfights( Except maybe for Brett because of Romero). It is almost as if drinking is their priority and everything else in their lives is either an afterthought or happens as a result of being drunk.
ReplyDeleteI picked up on a similar depressing vibe. Although Hemingway portrays it a completely different way. Hemingway uses the iceberg principle we learned about in class. Woolf sort of just puts it out there in plain sight. In "The Sun also Rises" it seems cheerful and exciting on the surface-- everyone is drinking, partying and having fun -- but underneath that there is the sense of disconnect and depression that you picked up on. Woolf just shows us how sad Septimus' life is rather than disguising it.
ReplyDeleteI never really thought about the main characters relating this way, but I agree completely. Like you said, I do think that the times affected the tone of the novels, but also I think the authors lives did as well. Woolf and Hemingway both suffered from depression, and I think that also carried over to what they wrote. It's interesting to see that even though the authors had two different writing styles and wrote about two different topics, the main characters still share the same emotions about themselves in relation to their loved ones and the rest of society.
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