Essay Preview: Jake
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The Relationship between Brett and Jake in The Sun Also Rises?
Without some sort of relationships you and I would not be here today. Obviously, relationships are important and significant things. A relationship is a complex bond between two people, who learn about themselves through each other. In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley’s relationship is like most, complex and eventful but both characters learn more from each other than what is typical in most relationships. However, by the end of the novel, Hemingway’s character Brett has more of an influence on Jake than he has on her.
Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes relationship in the novel changes throughout the course of the novel. The book is unclear how the two came to know each other but it alludes to the fact that they have known each other for some time. At the beginning of The Sun Also Rises it doesn’t start off telling whether or not either of the two are in a relationship. However the reader knows that Jake Barnes has feelings towards Lady Brett because of the first time they meet in a Paris club. “Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.”(Hemingway 29-30).
Jake has an obvious physical attraction to Brett but, in chapter IV the novel begins to explain the real relationship between the two. “Brett’s face was white and the long line of her neck showed in the bright light of the flares. The street was dark again and I kissed her. Our lips were tight together and then she turned away and pressed against the corner of the seat, as far away as she could get. Her head was down.
�Don’t touch me,’ she said. �Please don’t touch me.’
�What’s the matter?’
�I can’t stand it.’
�Oh, Brett’
�You mustn’t. You must know I can’t stand it, hat’s all. Oh, darling, please understand!’
�Don’t you love me?’
вЂ?Love you? I simply turn all to jelly when you touch me.вЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (Hemingway 33-34).
At this point Hemmingway shows that Brett and Jake’s relationship is more then just friendship. However their relationship can never escalate to sexual level because Jake became impotent through an injury to his manhood during his services in the war.
“вЂ?Isn’t there anything we can do about it?’
�And there’s a not a damn thing we could do,’ I said
вЂ?I don’t know she said. “I don’t want to go through that hell again.’
�We’d better keep away from each other.’
�But darling, I have to see you. It isn’t all that you know.’
�No but it always gets to be.’
As one reads the novel one discovers that Brett must always be in a physical relationship without any emotional attachment. Most of Brett’s relationships are simply meaningless sex. Hemingway shows Brett’s kind of relationships throughout the whole novel with her “boyfriends” that she slept with a few times then left them, leaving the men wanting more. An example of Brett’s relationship habits is Robert Cohn. (Heldig 9) At one point he even calls Brett Circe, referencing the Greek myth. At one point in the novel, Cohn and Brett go to San Sebastian where they have sex. When they return Cohn follows Brett around like “a poor bloody steer” at the bull fighting festal when she had already moved on to her next boyfriend (Hemingway 146). “With this evidence of male default all around her, she steps off the romantic pedestal, moves freely through the bars of Paris, and stands conquest, Robert Cohn, fails to see the bearing of such changes on romantic love.” (Spilka 111)
Since her relationship with Jake is unsuccessful, she learns a lot about herself. Her relationship with Jake Barnes demoralizes her because is shows her that she can not have a real relationship on an emotional level do to her addiction to sex. She is desperate to have Jake but he is the only one the she can’t have. This brings her back down to earth, to reality. Brett learns the cruelty of life through her non-existent relationship with Jake and it teaches her about herself. Unfortunately she chooses to ignore what she has learned from Jake and continues to have sex with every man she’s around. In the novel Hemmingway best expresses Brett’s inability to throw off her sexual habits through the passage where Brett’s fiancД© Mike talks to Jake about how Brett is having sex with Pedro the bullfighter. “вЂ?I believe, you know, that she’s falling in love with this bullfighter chap’ Mike said.” (Hemmingway 172). Brett’s “Falling in love”