written artwork - the sun also rises

Question: If you dislike most of the characters in a book and hate the overall feeling the book gives you, does it mean you don't like it?

This is a question I am struggling with because it is how I feel about The Sun Also Rises. Each character is very flawed. They lead lives that are generally selfish in nature and don't convey any hints of compassion, generosity, or gentility. Their lives are ungrounded and unfocused. They meander through life seeking pleasure through alcohol, entertainment, and sex. They don't have a plan.

All of these characteristics and feelings left me frustrated and unhappy. I was frustrated with the characters actions and the way the author used them. I had decided I didn't like this book.

And then I did some research. I read what other people thought were the general themes of the book. I read why Hemingway portrayed the characters the way he did. I read about the underlying cultural issue of the time. And then I understood.

Hemingway is a writer that often focuses on the "Lost Generation." It was a topic of importance to him because he identified himself as being apart of these people. This is the generation of individuals who fought in WWI and came back with a broken spirit to a disillusioned life. Seeing the atrocity of war, they often tried to seek the true meaning of life, or the true pleasures at least. They became lost in alcoholism and affairs. Coping with normalcy was extremely different. While this was happening, the society at large decided to act like nothing ever happened and went on as normal, making this generation feel all the more alone in their trials. After fighting in WWI himself, Hemingway was injured and struggled with the entry into "life as normal."

So instead of writing a book that explains specifically the effect war had on these individuals, he wrote a novel filled with brokenness and confusion. He made us feel what they feel. He showed us the true mental, emotional, and physical struggle that was battled by each individual of this Lost Generation.

And that is something I love. That makes me say this is a book I like.


A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.

My Written Artwork Journey Explained

1. Animal Farm - George Orwell
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Emma - Jane Austen
4. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
5. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
6. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
7. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
9. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
11. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
    
12. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
13. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
14. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
16. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
17. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
19. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
20. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
21. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
22. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
23. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
24. The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
25. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
26. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
27. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
29. Little Woman - Louisa Ma Alcott
30. Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
31. Watership Down - Richard Adams
32. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
33. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
34. Alls Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
35. Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
36. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
37. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
38. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
39. Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
40. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
41. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
42. A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
43. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen