Alcoholism In The Sun Also Rises

Buy a drink, down the drink, buy another, down another; make a mistake, drink some more, blackout and do it again. A constant cycle seen through the actions of the characters in The Sun Also Rises as they, some more than others, turn to a depressant liquid that forces them to behave in belligerent, self-destructive ways. Alcoholism has served as a means of escape for these immature, unsatisfied characters. Though these characters live in a constant state of drunkenness, their crime is the inability to face the fact that their impaired senses are destroying relationships and building tensions. These alcoholics drink as if it were their professions, resulting in unexpected and unforgiving actions. In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway uses alcohol-dependent character, Mike Campbell to convey that people turn to substance abuse as a permanent distraction away from life’s unbearable realities.

During the early 1900s, around the 1920s, groups such as the National Temperance Council (NTC) and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) saw numerous problem in America and said problems were described by these groups to be the result of alcohol. According to Dr. S.S. Goldwater, who spoke at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the National Temperance Council on September 20, 1920, alcohol was society’s nemesis and caused mass harm in the forms of higher rates of poverty, industrial accidents, major organ diseases, pneumonia based deaths, and tuberculosis. He also said alcohol was responsible for/aided in muscle tone and memory degeneration, weaker immune systems, too much pressure on hospitals, asylums, and jails, and decreases in skill, the production of

Jake Rodriguez Language Arts - Period 4 May 13, 2015 The Boiling Point of the 1960's The 1960's hid a series of unresolved issues that exploded rebellion and revolt in the American society. One of those issues was alcoholism. In the movies, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest directed by Miloš Forman and The Best Years of Our Lives directed by William Wilder, citizens are portrayed to use alcohol in order to repair themselves.

In “The Shining”, written by Steven King, the reader is exposed to an issue that a lot of families face in the real world that of which is alcoholism. The story’s main character, Jack Torrance, struggles from this issue due to his troubled past regarding an abusive and alcoholic father as well as his struggle of becoming the very man he loved, yet hated as a child. By exposing the reader to alcoholism, they are instantly aware of the outcomes of it and how it can affect someone. King uses this method to help enhance the story, to allow the contents of the book to become real and relatable to the reader, and most importantly, to allow the reader to actually sympathize with the main characters.

Brett seems to be one of the worst because she is continually called a drunk by everyone else. The count even points out to her, “You’re always drinking, my dear. Why don’t you just talk?” (65). However, while all of the other characters continue to get drunk each day, Brett realizes she cannot keep living that way. She calls the drinks “poisonous things” (149), and says to Jake, “I can’t just stay tight all the time” (187). She does not want to stop drinking because it will force her to come to terms with her miserable life, but knows she needs to. This awareness is another positive trait in Brett’s character.

Alcoholism is a major issue that still plagues our nation to this day. Jeannette Walls experienced this issue first hand through her father, Rex, as depicted in her memoir The Glass Castle. Jeannette’s father was an alcoholic, evident of him always disappearing for days at a time to go on drinking binges and always spending most of the money that the family earned (Jeannette included) on alcohol. Jeannette was not the only one subjected to one’s alcoholism; my wife was also a victim of alcoholism. She was not the alcoholic though, I was. My alcoholism almost destroyed my marriage on numerous occasions. I was verbally abusive toward my wife and I made our day-to-day lives extremely unbearable. Are Rex and I the only ones who affect our worlds and our loved ones through alcoholism? Unfortunately no, we are not. Our nation and our world is filled with people suffering from this pandemic of alcoholism and it has thrived since the early days of alcohol’s discovery. What can we do as a society to better understand and prevent alcoholism? What is it going to take to get control of our lives back from alcohol that has had

Jake Barnes, like the other characters, uses the consumption of alcohol to escape what realities he face at home, but also to forget the things of his past. Jake is one of the main characters and the protagonist of the story. He is a World War I veteran that has lost his “manhood” because of the war. He has love for a woman, Brett that not only wants him, but everybody else as well. He knows he can have her emotionally, but physically it is impossible and will only be a burden on their relationship. We can see that Jake really does not want to be such a heavy drinker for there are a handful of times throughout the story where he surprisingly turns down a drink or two. Jake only seems to be a social drinker, but he goes out so much and with people who drink just because they can that he cannot help but to join along with them. When Brett comes around, she seems to be the main force driving him to drink. She brings the Count to his home and brings champagne and wine there for them to sip upon. And when Jake sees her leave with the Count and other men, it only depresses him more and makes him want to leave the safety of his home and go out to drink and party to escape the loneliness and hurt that Brett has left him with.

Alcoholism is a very serious addiction. Consequently, people had suffered and died from alcoholism. Including a famous poet, Edgar Allen Poe. Poe’s death was tragic, and unknown. Many people think that he died of rabies, but there is no evidence to that. Also, he was known as an alcoholic. Moreover, he had no physical signs of rabies.

With this in mind, it is clear that it can be all too easy to fall into the same sort of alcoholic cycle as Duane and Holly, and that without help, addicts like them may never escape the clutches of alcoholism. To elaborate on what can be done to help people with the disease of alcoholism from a pharmaceutical standpoint, Becker writes:

Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises has his male characters struggling with what it means to be a man in the post-war world. With this struggle one the major themes in the novel emits, masculine identity. Many of these “Lost Generation” men returned from that war in dissatisfaction with their life, the main characters of Hemingway’s novel are found among them. His main characters find themselves drifting, roaming around France and Spain, at a loss for something meaningful in their lives. The characters relate to each other in completely shallow ways, often ambiguously saying one thing, while meaning another. The Sun Also Rises first person narration offers few clues to the real meaning of his characters’ interactions with each other. The

It has been called one of Hemingway’s greatest literary works as it is the “quintessential novel of the Lost Generation.” Its strong language and subject matter portray a powerful image of the state of disenchantment felt in the 1920’s after the war. The interactions between the characters in this novel display a society living without convictions, affirming Gertrude Stein’s quotation at the beginning of the novel, “You are all a lost generation.” To paint this vivid picture of discontentment and disillusionment Hemingway tears away traditional ideas and values by stifling the appearance of God and religion. Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is a poignant take on how the consequences of war can limit or diminish the presence of God and religious faith amongst those living in a post war society.

The Sun Also Rises written by Ernest Hemingway captures the essence of the post-World War I, Lost Generation era. It portrays a group of cynical, disillusioned American and English expatriates living in Paris, France and struggling to find their places in the world. Having seen needless death on a large scale, many living within this time period lost faith in traditional values and in turn became aimless and reckless. Through characterization, theme, symbolism, motifs, and other literary devices, this novel is able to illuminate the hardships that people face in a time of purposeless existence, moral ambiguity, and unrealized love.

The Sun Also Rises was a statement of how the American people had changed after World War I. Hemingway had several characters who had been influenced throughout the novel by alcoholism and other people’s distress. During this time period, people were not at their best. They had just come back from World War 1 and they were about to enter the Great Depression. Through circumstances of war and their own choices, the characters in The Sun Also Rises have crippling personality defects that affect the outcomes of their own and each other’s lives.

The novel The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway captures a glimpse into the lives of people from the lost generation trying to get along with each other. Throughout the novel the characters constantly disagree and fight with each other as well as drink to forget their horrible past and unfortunate present. The main theme of the book revolves around this dissatisfaction with life and all it has to offer, which is proven by Cohn wanting to travel and being dissatisfied with where he lives, Brett being constantly dissatisfied with her partner and sleeps around, and Jake who is dissatisfied with his injury and that he cannot be with Brett because of it. This main theme is seen throughout the book, but is highlighted in the given passage where

These similarities make us believe that Hemingway was recounting his post-war experiences through the lives of the characters in the book. Characters in The Sun Also Rises are considered part of the “lost generation”, a term created by Gertrude Stein to describe the generation that grew up in post-war society. By no coincidence Hemingway is also part of this generation. Post-war life for the characters in the book consists of heavy drinking and partying, a sort of escape from the real world, and the same was a reality for Hemingway. Although France and all of Europe are in shambles after the war, the characters seem to be rejecting reality, partying it up in Paris and living a severely escapist lifestyle. This situation mimics the one Hemingway was actually in after WWI. The war’s effect on Hemingway can be told through the characters as each one represents part of his experience. Using a new historicist critical point of view and putting the story in context with the war and Hemingway’s life allows the reader to discover these connections and be able to more deeply analyze the significance of the book.