The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is one of the pre-eminent works of modernist literature. It set the tone for the several decades of literature that was to follow. It delves deeply into the 'lost generation" that was created after the first wold war. A generation that lost any idealism that their predecessors had. A generation that lost any emotional attachment to the world around them. This is a trait that is predominant throughout Hemingway"s novel as the narrator, Jake Barnes, remains clinically detached from the events that transpire around him.

             Jake was an ambulance driver in the first world war and as with many of his peers, his experiences left him with a severe emotional disillusionment with the world as a whole. Not to mention the lack of functioning genitalia which certainly didn"t help him identify positively with the world. Essentially, if it didn"t involve Jake, he couldn"t care less. For example, Jake watches a man get gored through the back by a stampeding bull and die, then waits for the rocket to go off signaling that the bulls were coralled and then simply walks off. He doesn"t concern himself with the health of the (then) wounded man, he doesn"t contemplate whether the running of the bulls was a worthwhile risk in the name of fun and games. He simply watches, then leaves without the slightest tint of subjectivity to his narrative. He remains perfectly objective, simply a watcher in the grand scheme of life.

             And what does Jake watch exactly? He watches as everything goes around in circles, always ending up in the same place as it started. The group as a whole heads out drinking, only to wake up the next morning to repeat the process with nothing changed. Brett, although engaged to a man who loves her, is hopelessly in love with Jake. Jake is forced to watch as she passes along.

             from Mike, to Cohn, to Romero and then back to Mike before finally ending up right back where she started with Jake.