Study Guide-The Sun Also Rises

129 Pages·2013·1.21 MB·English

The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway
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The Sun Also Rises
By Ernest Hemingway [ study guide ]
Book Summary
Chapter I of The Sun Also Rises introduces us to the novelist Robert Cohn, a graduate of Princeton
University who married a wealthy woman and founded a literary journal soon after college. When
Cohn's wife left him, he became involved with a woman named Frances Clyne, and they traveled
together to Paris, where they are living at the start of the novel's action. It is the mid-1920's.
Cohn visits the story's narrator and main character, Jake Barnes, in the Paris offices of the newspaper
for which Jake works. Later, Jake picks up a prostitute named Georgette, and the two of them join a
group including Cohn, Frances, and some others. The group goes dancing at a nightclub, where a
woman named Brett (also known as Lady Ashley, because she is, by marriage, a titled British
aristocrat) appears. Cohn is attracted to Brett, but she leaves the club with Jake.
Jake tries to kiss Brett, but she withdraws, telling him that although she loves him, she "can't stand
it." (Apparently, Jake has been castrated in combat during the Great War and cannot consummate
his love for Brett.) They rejoin their friends and are joined in turn by a Greek Count named
Mippipopolous before Jake returns to his apartment, where he lies in bed, drunk and miserable. The
next day, Cohn speculates that he may be in love with Brett, and Frances tells Jake that she believes
Cohn plans to break up with her.
When Brett and the Count visit Jake's apartment, Jake tells Brett he loves her and asks if they can live
together. She replies that doing so is impossible because she would be tempted to cheat on him. She
also tells him that she is about to travel to San Sebastian, a coastal town in the Basque region of
Spain. Later, Brett admits to Jake that she feels miserable, apparently due to her unfulfilled love for
him.
Jake receives a postcard from Brett in San Sebastian, as well as a note from Cohn saying that he's
leaving the country for a while; it is rumored that Frances has gone to England. Jake's friend Bill
Gorton visits Paris, severely intoxicated. They are joined by Brett, back from San Sebastian, and Mike
Campbell, her fiancé. Mike, too, is falling-down drunk.
Jake writes to Robert Cohn in Spain to say that he and Bill will meet Cohn at Bayonne (near the
French-Spanish border) to go fishing together near the Spanish village of Burguete. Mike invites
himself and Brett along, and they arrange to rendezvous in the nearby town of Pamplona. Then Brett
reveals to Jake that Cohn was with her in San Sebastian. Jake and Bill depart Paris via rail and arrive
in Bayonne in the evening. The next morning, Jake, Bill, and Cohn travel to Pamplona; however, Brett
and Mike are not on the train they were scheduled to take. The following day, Jake and Bill go fishing
as planned. Cohn has announced his decision to remain in Pamplona. For five days, Jake and Bill hear
nothing from Cohn, Brett, or Mike. While fishing, they befriend an Englishman named Harris.
After receiving telegrams from both Mike and Cohn, however, Jake and Bill return to Pamplona.
There they meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn before walking to the corrals outside of town to see
the unloading of the bulls for the coming bullfights. At a café afterward, Mike browbeats Cohn for
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tagging after Brett. Apparently, Cohn returned to San Sebastian while Jake and Bill were fishing in
Burguete.
Pamplona's yearly fiesta of San Fermin, which will last for seven days, begins. Musicians and dancers
fill the streets and shops — including the wine store, where Brett is placed on a cask so the Basque
peasants can dance around her as if she were a pagan idol. Jake sleeps while his friends stay out all
night and then attend the running of the bulls from the corrals to the bullring, through the streets of
town. Jake meets the 19-year-old matador Pedro Romero, and the next day, after Romero performs
admirably in the ring, Brett cannot help talking about her attraction to him.
The hotelier Montoya visits Jake to express his concern that mixing with rich tourists will corrupt
Romero. Later, at dinner, Brett invites the bullfighter to her table. Montoya looks on with
disapproval. Once again, Mike picks on Cohn. Brett too lashes out at him, then tells Jake that she
feels guilty for having slept with Cohn while engaged to Mike. She asks Jake if he loves her, and when
Jake says that he does, Brett says she is in love with Romero. So Jake helps Brett find the matador in
a café, where they flirt openly. Jake leaves; when he returns, the two are gone. Later, Cohn calls Jake
a pimp, and in the ensuing fistfight, Jake is beaten up. The next day, Mike reports that Cohn found
Brett in Romero's room and beat the bullfighter up, too, after which Cohn cried. Mike admits that he
is upset by his fiancée's promiscuity.
On the last day of the fiesta, Cohn has left town, presumably to return to Frances. Jake and Brett
pray at the Pamplona cathedral before she visits Romero. Then Jake, Brett, and Bill attend the
bullfight, in which Romero, beloved of the crowd, performs spectacularly. Brett leaves town also, in
the company of the matador.
The rest of the group splits up. Jake travels to San Sebastian, where he relaxes alone in cafés and on
the beach. Soon, however, a telegram from Brett arrives, begging him to join her in Madrid. Jake
finds Brett in her hotel room there, devastated by the end of her affair with Romero. Brett reveals
that itwas she who ended the relationship, and that she intends to return to Mike.
Plot Overview
The Sun Also Rises opens with the narrator, Jake Barnes, delivering a brief biographical sketch of his
friend, Robert Cohn. Jake is a veteran of World War I who now works as a journalist in Paris. Cohn is
also an American expatriate, although not a war veteran. He is a rich Jewish writer who lives in Paris
with his forceful and controlling girlfriend, Frances Clyne. Cohn has become restless of late, and he
comes to Jake’s office one afternoon to try to convince Jake to go with him to South America. Jake
refuses, and he takes pains to get rid of Cohn. That night at a dance club, Jake runs into Lady Brett
Ashley, a divorced socialite and the love of Jake’s life. Brett is a free-spirited and independent
woman, but she can be very selfish at times. She and Jake met in England during World War I, when
Brett treated Jake for a war wound. During Jake and Brett’s conversation, it is subtly implied that
Jake’s injury rendered him impotent. Although Brett loves Jake, she hints that she is unwilling to give
up sex, and that for this reason she will not commit to a relationship with him.
The next morning, Jake and Cohn have lunch. Cohn is quite taken with Brett, and he gets angry when
Jake tells him that Brett plans to marry Mike Campbell, a heavy-drinking Scottish war veteran. That
afternoon, Brett stands Jake up. That night, however, she arrives unexpectedly at his apartment with
Count Mippipopolous, a rich Greek expatriate. After sending the count out for champagne, Brett tells
Jake that she is leaving for San Sebastian, in Spain, saying it will be easier on both of them to be
apart.
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Several weeks later, while Brett and Cohn are both traveling outside of Paris, one of Jake’s friends, a
fellow American war veteran named Bill Gorton, arrives in Paris. Bill and Jake make plans to leave for
Spain to do some fishing and later attend the fiesta at Pamplona. Jake makes plans to meet Cohn on
the way to Pamplona. Jake runs into Brett, who has returned from San Sebastian; with her is Mike,
her fiancé. They ask if they may join Jake in Spain, and he politely responds that they may. When
Mike leaves for a moment, Brett reveals to Jake that she and Cohn were in San Sebastian together.
Bill and Jake take a train from Paris to Bayonne, in the south of France, where they meet Cohn. The
three men travel together into Spain, to Pamplona. They plan on meeting Brett and Mike that night,
but the couple does not show up. Bill and Jake decide to leave for a small town called Burguete to
fish, but Cohn chooses to stay and wait for Brett. Bill and Jake travel to the Spanish countryside and
check into a small, rural inn. They spend five pleasant days fishing, drinking, and playing cards.
Eventually, Jake receives a letter from Mike. He writes that he and Brett will be arriving in Pamplona
shortly. Jake and Bill leave on a bus that afternoon to meet the couple. After arriving in Pamplona,
Jake and Bill check into a hotel owned by Montoya, a Spanish bullfighting expert who likes Jake for
his earnest interest in the sport. Jake and Bill meet up with Brett, Mike, and Cohn, and the whole
group goes to watch the bulls being unloaded in preparation for the bullfights during the fiesta. Mike
mocks Cohn harshly forfollowing Brett around when he is not wanted.
After a few more days of preparation, the fiesta begins. The city is consumed with dancing, drinking,
and general debauchery. The highlight of the first day is the first bullfight, at which Pedro Romero, a
nineteen-year-old prodigy, distinguishes himself above all the other bullfighters. Despite its violence,
Brett cannot take her eyes off the bullfight, or Romero. A few days later, Jake and his friends are at
the hotel dining room, and Brett notices Romero at a nearby table. She persuades Jake to introduce
her to him. Mike again verbally abuses Cohn, and they almost come to blows before Jake defuses the
situation. Later that night, Brett asks Jake to help her find Romero, with whom she says she has fallen
in love. Jake agrees to help, and Brett and Romero spend the night together.
Jake then meets up with Mike and Bill, who are both extremely drunk. Cohn soon arrives, demanding
to know where Brett is. After an exchange of insults, Cohn attacks Mike and Jake, knocking them
both out. When Jake returns to the hotel, he finds Cohn lying face down on his bed and crying. Cohn
begs Jake’s forgiveness, and Jake reluctantly grants it. The next day, Jake learns from Bill and Mike
that the night before Cohn also beat up Romero when he discovered the bullfighter with Brett; Cohn
later begged Romero to shake hands with him, but Romero refused.
At the bullfight that afternoon, Romero fights brilliantly, dazzling the crowd by killing a bull that had
gored a man to death in the streets. Afterward, he cuts the bull’s ear off and gives it to Brett. After
this final bullfight, Romero and Brett leave for Madrid together. Cohn has left that morning, so only
Bill, Mike, and Jake remain as the fiesta draws to a close.
The next day, the three remaining men rent a car and drive out of Spain to Bayonne and then go
their separate ways. Jake heads back into Spain to San Sebastian, where he plans to spend several
quiet days relaxing. He receives a telegram from Brett, however, asking him to come meet her in
Madrid. He complies, and boards an overnight train that same day. Jake finds Brett alone in a Madrid
hotel room. She has broken with Romero, fearing that she would ruin him and his career. She
announces that she now wants to return to Mike. Jake books tickets for them to leave Madrid. As
they ride in a taxi through the Spanish capital, Brett laments that she and Jake could have had a
wonderful time together. Jake responds, “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so?”
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About The Sun Also Rises
Like Hemingway's later novel A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises offers the reader two stories in
one: a war story and a love story. What's remarkable about this book — truly radical, really — is the
fact that it features no scenes of battle whatsoever (not even in flashback) and no love scenes.
Hemingway took on an enormous challenge when he wrote this, his first full-length novel. Most
readers would agree that he rose to that challenge and perhaps surpassed it.
Some necessary historical background: World War I (or the Great War, as it was known at the time)
began in August 1914 with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The war pitted
the Central Powers (Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) against the allied forces of Great
Britain, France, Russia, and Italy, who were joined in 1917 by the United States. Largely as a result of
the entry of the U.S. into the conflict (by which time Russia had withdrawn and Italy was effectively
defeated), the Great War ended in victory for the Allies. Both sides agreed to an armistice on
November 11, 1918.
Other nicknames for World War I were "the War to End All Wars" and "the War to Save Democracy."
There was a feeling on the part of many Americans who were drafted in 1917 and 1918 (as well as
those like Hemingway himself who enlisted for service in the armed forces of other allied nations
before the U.S. entered the fighting) that they were involved in a conflict that would change the
world in fundamental ways. Additionally, most returned home after the armistice far more worldly
and sophisticated than when they left. And yet, the Americans who hadn't served were as provincial
and isolationist as they'd been before the war — more so, in fact, as a new mood of conservatism
swept the country.
This reactionary period manifested itself in a number of ways:
 Rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations proposed
therein.
 Ratification in January 1920 of the Eighteenth Amendment, which forbade the manufacture
and sale ofall intoxicating beverages.
 The so-called Great Red Scare, set off by the spread of communism in Europe following the
1917 Russian Revolution, and by labor unrest in the States. Like the McCarthy Era of the late
1940s, the Red Scare period involved widespread suspicion and denunciation of Americans as
communists and/or socialists.
 The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1915 and dedicated to attacking African-Americans,
Jews, Roman Catholics, and others. The Klan's membership had grown to five million by 1924,
the year beforeThe Sun Also Risestakes place.
 Legislative restrictions on immigration, especially from southern and eastern Europe, in the
Immigration Act of 1921 and the Johnson Act (1924).
One result of the ugly postwar mood was a series of novels by U.S. writers critical of American
provincialism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and racism. These include Sherwood Anderson's
Winesburg, Ohio (1919); Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922); and An American
Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser. The journalist H.L. Mencken was the unofficial leader of this
movement to satirize, criticize, and thereby strike blows against what many saw as a moral failure on
the part of American society at large.
A second, related response on the part of American writers involved leaving the country altogether,
and many—best-selling novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and Modernist poet Ezra Pound, among others —
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did just that. They joined disaffected English-and Irishmen like Ford Maddox Ford and James Joyce in
Paris, in a social and artistic circle that formed around the writer Gertrude Stein, herself an American
expatriate. Stein is responsible for one of the epigraphs that introduce The Sun Also Rises ("You are
all a lost generation") and it was she who served as a creative writing teacher to Ernest Hemingway,
who left the States in 1921.
Hemingway himself had fought, and was wounded, in the Great War, and as his short story "Soldier's
Home" illustrates, the writer-to-be felt profoundly alienated upon his return to the U.S. He moved to
Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and in addition to making the acquaintance of Stein and her cohorts,
he befriended many others (Hemingway was famously gregarious as well as remarkably handsome)
from different countries and social classes, all of whom the war had affected profoundly. While
employed as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway traveled around Europe,
worked at improving his storytelling skills, and socialized tirelessly with fellow veterans and others in
Paris and elsewhere. It is these experiences that provided him with the then-unique and forever-
unforgettable milieu of The Sun Also Rises: the so-called Lost Generation and their exploits in the
cafés and nightclubs of Paris, as well as on fishing trips and at the bullfights in Spain.
Though this is easy to lose sight of amidst the frenzy of Parisian nights and the Spanish fiesta, bear in
mind that the novel's central characters are both veterans: Jake Barnes flew an airplane in the Great
War, while Brett Ashley served in a wartime hospital. In fact, one of the novel's primary dichotomies
is between those characters who are war veterans (Jake; Brett; Brett's fiancé, Mike Campbell; Count
Mippipopolous) and those, like Robert Cohn, who are not. (Bill Gorton's status is unclear; perhaps he
was a war correspondent.) Nearly everything that goes on in The Sun Also Rises is a reaction to the
trauma of the war, both physical and psychic, from the almost unbelievable consumption of alcohol
by the veterans and their compulsive traveling from place to place, to Brett's sexual promiscuity and
the healing fishing trip taken by Jake and Bill. If the Great War hadn't happened, we are meant to
understand, these characters would be doing very different things.
Which brings us to The Sun Also Rises as a love story. Even the most casual reader recognizes that
Jake Barnes and Brett Ashley share a profound mutual attraction. They love one another deeply, and
their carnal desire for each other is fierce. The problem: Jake has been wounded in the war in such a
way that sexual intercourse is now impossible for him. Significantly, the particular nature of his
wound has not ruled out desire, just its satisfaction. (It seems that he has lost his penis but not his
testicles.) Therefore, being near Brett is agony for Jake. He could probably satisfy her sexually, and he
may have done so during the period referred to when they attempted a relationship. But Jake
himself exists in a kind of erotic limbo, like Greek mythology's Tantalus, who keeps bending over to
drink the water he stands in, only to have it drain away immediately.
Note that the cause of Jake's agony was an airplane that crashed. The early Moderns believed that
industrialization, with its laborsaving and communication-enhancing devices, was wholly good, and
that an increase in the mechanization of life could only make living easier, happier, better. The
combatants in World War I discovered that the opposite was true: mass-produced, mechanized tools
of destruction — tanks, planes, submarines, mines and machine guns, not to mention deadly
mustard gas — made life on earth more terrible than ever before. Moreover, in this war, a soldier
might kill and be killed without ever seeing the enemy. The Great War was the first truly anonymous
war; in this conflict, the individual was entirely dispensable.
Thus, Jake is not merely a casualty of war in general, like the characters of Homer, Tolstoy, and
others before him. Bayonets were still in use at this time; Hemingway could have made Jake a victim
of one. Instead, Jake is injured specifically by the Great War's modern aspect — by modernity itself,
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one might say. Hemingway expanded upon this theme in A Farewell to Arms, the hero of which is
famously wounded by an enemy bomb while eating a bowl of spaghetti.
As a result, we have a love story in which it is clear from the start that the lovers will never be
together. At least, they will never be happy together. In the vast majority of stories ever told, there is
at least some possibility that the protagonist, or main character, will get what he or she wants by the
end. In The Sun Also Rises, it becomes quickly evident that Jake will not — cannot — "get" Brett.
How, then, will Hemingway retain our interest in the goings-on he describes? Because we know the
conclusion of the story at its outset, why read on? (The short answer: Hemingway's characterization
of Jake, Brett, and the rest, who are portrayed with such originality and believability that they seem
like real people to us.)
The Sun Also Rises is probably Ernest Hemingway's greatest novel, largely because it is more
inventive in its treatment of love and war than the other work that vies for this distinction, A
Farewell to Arms, published four years later. Both are less propagandistic than Hemingway's third
great war story, For Whom the Bell Tolls — which relies partly on flashback for its effect and also
descends at times into the stylistic mannerism that marred Hemingway's later work. Certainly The
Sun Also Rises is vastly superior to the remaining Hemingway novels (To Have and Have Not and
Across the River and Into the Trees, and the posthumously published Islands in the Stream and The
Garden of Eden) as well as the novellas The Torrents of Spring (which preceded The Sun Also Rises)
and The Old Man and the Sea. In fact, the only other volume in the Hemingway oeuvre that stands
up to a comparison with The Sun Also Rises is the writer's debut story collection, In Our Time. That
book's postwar tales, "Soldier's Home" and "Big Two-Hearted River," both share a subject with The
Sun Also Rises. "Big Two-Hearted River" was perhaps a kind of rehearsal for this novel; it is a story
about war's destructiveness that never even mentions war —not once.
The action ofThe Sun Also Risestakes place during the mid-1920s in three locations:
 Paris, mainly the city's Latin Quarter and Montparnasse districts, on the Left Bank south of
the River Seine. Because the University of Paris is located in the Latin Quarter, intellectuals
and artists have frequented this neighborhood for centuries.
 The Basque region of France and Spain. For hundreds if not thousands of years, a distinct
people known as the Basques have occupied three provinces in the southwest of France and
four in northern Spain. The Basque country straddles the Pyrenees mountains, and it faces
the Atlantic Ocean on one side. (The resort town of San Sebastian is located here.) The town
of Pamplona, the setting of much of The Sun Also Rises, is in the Spanish province of Navarra,
in the Basque region's rural interior. The Basques speak a language that is entirely unrelated
to either Spanish or French, and they are credited with inventing the beret (worn by Brett and
Mike in the novel), the espadrille (a rope-soled shoe), and the game of jai alai. The Basques
are fiercely independent, which may partially explain the attraction of the region to Jake,
Brett, and the others; it is a place apart from the rest of Europe and, thus, to some degree,
apart from European history, including the Great War.
 Madrid, capital of Spain.
Character List
 Jake Barnes An American veteran of World War I who lives and works as a journalist in Paris
during the 1920s.
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 Robert Cohn A young American novelist living in Paris at the same time. Unlike Jake, Cohn did
not fight in the war.
 Brett, Lady Ashley An Englishwoman loved by Jake who loves him in turn. She worked in a
military hospital during World War I.
 Bill Gorton Jake's good friend, a writer who did not serve in the war but may have covered it
as a correspondent.
 Mike CampbellBrett's fiancé, an alcoholic Scotsman and war veteran.
 Pedro RomeroAn attractive young matador who shows great promise in the bullring.
 Frances ClyneRobert Cohn's American fiancée.
 Count MippipopolousA wealthy, older Greek nobleman who escorts Brett around Paris.
 HarrisAn Englishman who joins Jake and Bill for games of bridge during their fishing vacation.
 Georgette Hobin A Parisian prostitute picked up by Jake, who joins him for dinner and
dancing afterward.
 Harvey StoneA writer and a friend of Jake in Paris.
 MontoyaA hotelier in the town of Pamplona, in Spain's Basque country.
 EdnaA young American woman picked up by Bill during the fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona.
Summary and Analysis of Full Chapters
Summary and Analysis Chapter I
Summary
Chapter I introduces us to Robert Cohn, who will serve as a foil to the novel's narrator and
protagonist, Jake Barnes. Cohn is descended from two prominent New York Jewish families. He
encountered anti-Semitism in college, at Princeton, and learned to box as a response to it. Soon
after college, Cohn married a wealthy woman with whom he had three children, but his wife left
him for a painter. Cohn founded a journal and then became involved with a jealous and
controlling woman named Frances who was determined to marry him. He traveled with her to
Europe, settling in Paris after a year. They have stayed for two years. Financially supported by his
mother, Cohn wrote a novel that was not well-received by critics.
Analysis
Rather than a series of scenes, the first chapter of The Sun Also Rises consists mainly of
exposition, or background — information we need to know in order to understand and
appreciate the story to come. Most of this background takes the form of characterization.
Strangely, however, the character described is not the novel's hero but his foil, the man who will
serve to highlight the protagonist's strengths and weaknesses by contrast.
Thus, we learn almost nothing explicit about Jake Barnes himself. Instead, Jake tells us about his
tennis partner, Robert Cohn. Apparently, Cohn is insecure, self-conscious, perpetually broke, and
a dabbler in the arts. He allows himself to be controlled by the women in his life — his mother,
his wife, and his lover.
Note that Jake's résumé-like recitation of Cohn's experiences and accomplishments makes no
mention of service in the armed forces. Though it is not quite clear yet, the time frame of this
novel is the years just after World War I; significantly, Cohn did not participate in the fighting.
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Meanwhile, we are learning about Jake himself via the ways in which he describes his friend. "I
mistrust all frank and simple people," Jake tells us. The following remark about Cohn exposes
Jake almost immediately as cynical, even bitter: "As he had been thinking for months about
leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her
departure was a very healthful shock." Jake is also competitive to an unappealing degree. Note
the cattiness in the remark "He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics
later called it. . . ." Jake tells us that Cohn is self-conscious, but the fact that Jake begins his own
story by describing someone else speaks volumes about the narrator's insecurity. For reasons
that will soon become clear, Jake declines at first to tell his own tale.
Chapter I introduces the theme that love can wound a person. Cohn's lover, Frances, literally
hurts Jake by kicking him under the table in an effort to discourage him from inviting Cohn on a
trip to visit another woman. And Cohn's first wife left him for a painter of miniatures. Women are
fickle inThe Sun Also Rises.
Also, by means of references to locales like Ardennes and Alsace made famous by World War I,
we sense here the first intimations that this novel will be a special kind of war story: a post-war
story. For the moment, the war plays no particular part in the novel. But that will change.
Finally, the famous Hemingway style is not as apparent in this chapter as it is later in The Sun Also
Rises and in later Hemingway stories and novels. But note the author's use throughout this
chapter of a limited vocabulary, necessitating the repetition of individual words, and short
declarative sentences ("He was Spider Kelly's star pupil") or chains of these sentences linked by
conjunctions to form long, compound sentences:
"I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always
had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and
that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or
seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had
somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly."
Also, Hemingway tends to emphasize concrete experiences rather than abstract ideas, though he
has less of a chance to do so in this exposition-rich chapter than in later chapters composed
mainly of scenes.
Glossary
middleweight a boxer between a junior middleweight and a super middleweight, with a
maximum weight of 160 pounds.
Princetonan Ivy League university located in the town of Princeton, in central New Jersey.
featherweight a boxer between a junior featherweight and a junior lightweight, with a maximum
weight of 126 pounds.
preppedattended a preparatory school.
miniature-painter a painter of very small paintings, especially portraits, done on ivory, vellum,
and so on.
the Coastthe West Coast of the United States.
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a review of the Arts a journal, perhaps published quarterly and probably containing fiction,
poetry and criticism.
Carmel, California . . . Provincetown, Massachusetts a town on the California coast north of Los
Angeles, and a town at the tip of Cape Cod. Traditionally, both towns have welcomed artists and
writers.
L'Avenue'sa Parisian restaurant.
Café de Versaillesa Parisian café.
fines(French) brandies.
Strasbourga city and port in northeastern France, on the Rhine.
Alsacea historical region of northeastern France, under German control from 1871 to 1919.
BrugesFrench name for a city in northwestern Belgium.
Ardennes a wooded plateau in northeastern France, southern Belgium, and Luxembourg; the
scene of heavy fighting in World War I.
Senlisa town in northern France, northeast of Paris.
Grand Cerfa hotel in or near Senlis, apparently.
courtstennis courts.
kiosque(French) a small structure open at one or more sides.
Summary and Analysis Chapter II
Summary
After his return from a trip to America, Robert Cohn visits Jake Barnes in the offices of the
newspaper where Jake works, in Paris. Cohn suggests a trip to South America, even offering to
pay Jake's way, but Jake declines, suggesting British East Africa and then encouraging Cohn to
enjoy Paris itself. The two share a drink, after which Jake returns to work and Cohn falls asleep in
a chair outside Jake's office.
Analysis
Although the events dramatized in this chapter are trivial, they offer Jake additional
opportunities to react to Robert Cohn, thereby further characterizing both Cohn and himself.
Now Cohn seems "not so simple" as he was before visiting his American publisher and "not so
nice," according to Jake. After an unsuccessful marriage at a young age and his rebound
relationship with Frances, Cohn is discovering that women find him attractive, and this, combined
with the publication of his novel, has given him a swelled head. Also, Jake tells us that reading a
book called The Purple Land has given Cohn unrealistic expectations about life and love; these
expectations in turn have made Cohn dissatisfied.
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