While the book follows Barnes from Paris to Pamplona and back to Paris, all the while lusting after Lady Ashley, the book was very much a cathartic piece for Hemingway, whose own experiences during the trip were emotionally confusing and left a lingering effect on him.
The book is delicately written, and detailed, explaining every drop of sunlight as they travel through the Spanish hills, and you hear the music erupting from the Parisian cafes. Hemingway illustrated every street, every sound, and every person, so expertly, I had never read a novel I could so easily picture before this one. While it seems almost tedious at times, you are able to visualize everything the author must have seen, and in this, he has succeeded in writing something incredible. The emotions of the characters are intriguing, because you never truly feel good about any one of them. At least I didn’t. This book is also different in that there are no clear bad guys, and especially no clear good guys. All of these people are real in their emotions, however dysfunctional, or misplaced they may seem. While they seem to act irrationally from time to time, they all seem to understand each other, and in this, we understand them.
“The Sun Also Rises,” is an interesting book for me. I am adamantly against bullfighting, while it was a lifelong passion of the author. Lady Ashley first experiences the bullfighting festival in one of the chapters, and Hemingway gives detailed accounts of the events, as if you were there. He romanticizes it. Lady Ashley becomes a fan, not only of the bullfight, but of the bullfighters. I found some of these pages hard to read, but at the same time, interesting. Interesting because in a way, it explains to me how someone else sees this. I still cannot agree with them. I cannot condone what they do, and I do not agree with the authors point of view. However, he did teach me. It was really the first book I had read that showed the terrible sides of people, and yet all of the other people around them, accepted them as they were. This struck me because you are taught to behave certain ways, decent ways, and seemingly none of this was true in this novel. Lady Ashley is fickle, and in my humble opinion, terrible to others, treating them like pawns. Jake, is hopelessly in love with her, and
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