The Sun Also Rises Character Analysis

Categories: The Sun Also Rises

As the book begins, the reader is described a character known as Robert Cohn. The narrator is seemingly unknown, but has had previous connections to Cohn in the past. This story serves as a shared narrative between the two and opens up with the fact that Cohn was from a wealthy Jewish family, and had been the middleweight boxing champion at Princeton. Although he was a very nice young man, upon starting at Princeton, he was bullied for being Jewish, and the other people there were very mean to him.

This lead him to take his anger out on people that, while possibly deserving it, had not provoked a physical fight. Cohn liked knowing that if someone treated him wrongly, he could beat them to a pulp. As the introduction continues, we learn that the protagonist is very self conscious now due to the fact that his nose had been broken in a fight. Because of this, no girl would pay him any attention to him and he ended up being unhappily married for 5 years to the first girl that cared for him.

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She doesn’t love him, but only loves his money, and convinces Robert to move to Europe. While he is there, we finally get a good look at the narrator, and co-protagonist of the novel, Jake Barnes. While in Paris with Barnes, Cohn’s paper is considered poor by Barnes. He has been laughed at by many critics, and even his own friend has said that it is quite bad.

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The turning point is that it was praised by an American author, which greatly heightens Cohn’s ego. The third chapter starts with Barnes locking eyes with a prostitute named Georgette, they go to a restaurant together, and later to a dance club. While there, Barnes sees his love, Brett. She asks him to leave the club with her and get in a taxi, as they are in there, he kisses her once. They then have an awkward conversation about how the want to be together but just can’t due to untold reasons. At the end of the chapter, Robert goes home and says goodbye to Brett.

From the beginning of the book, the reader is shown that this will, most likely, not be an uplifting novel. By starting the book off with the protagonist sharing the sad and desolate background of his friend, Robert Cohn, we are shown right off the bat what the mood of this novel is, desolation. All of the main characters ,that are not stuck up, hate Paris and being there in the first place. The only problem is that not a single one of them know where they would truly even want to go if they left. They feel trapped in their current life, job, and situation. This feeling of helplessness and desolation is continued throughout the entire first three chapters as various events unfold and comments are made. Whether it be a casual comment about how they hate the city and feel that it’s dirty, or a large scale event such as Barnes love being forbidden to him and Brett, everything about what this story is trying to tell so far is that of true and utter desolation. Not only those examples but also at the very beginning of the novel, Cohn’s backstory was the saddest of all. His back story consists of a child growing up and going to Princeton only to face various prejudices because of the fact that he was Jewish. This is all wrapped together by the fact that to get his anger out, he had to participate in a sport, boxing, that he did not even like. By the end of his time at Princeton, no one remembered him, or even knew he existed outside of his trainer. At the end of the day, it was evident that this book was meant to tell the tragicness of the world. The true, gritty, and unforgiving, truth.

Chapter 4 starts off with Barnes laying in his bed reminiscing about his time in the war. He thinks about his injury and about how liaison whos was an italian who had come to see him, telling him that he had made a greater sacrifice than his life. He thought about how after he felt better, he had been shipped to england and met Brett. He felt that it would not work out from the beginning, thinking that she only wanted him for the physical aspect of a relationship. After his thinking is done and he falls asleep, he gets woken up by Brett having a heated argument with the owner of his building. This prompted him to see what was going on, and upon seeing him, Brett asked Jacob if he wanted to get a drink with her and go out for the night with Brett and h

Updated: Feb 02, 2024
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The Sun Also Rises Character Analysis. (2024, Feb 09). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-sun-also-rises-character-analysis-essay

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