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The Sun Also Rises And The Remains Of The Day Essay

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Everyone in life has his or her own individual struggles that can impact his or her daily life and can change the way he or she has to live his or her life. In the novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway and The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main characters share the struggle of impotence. The word impotent has two different definitions, one being the inability to take effective action, or helplessness. The second meaning is the inability for a man to have sex. No matter which type of impotence a person may have, it can be a daily struggle for anyone affected by it, which is displayed in both novels. The two novels share a common theme of impotence that not only affects their characters’ lives, but also the …show more content…

In The Sun Also Rises, a big conflict in Jake’s life is his inability to find happiness in his life due to impotence, which causes him to drink heavily and be cynical towards most things in life. Along with that, his struggle creates a storyline with Brett that centers on the fact that they can never be a true couple because of his injury. Another way Jake’s impotence affects the course of the novel is the emasculate feelings it causes him to have. His struggle with his masculinity causes tensions between him and the other men in the novel who have similar emotions. These feelings between Jake and the other men result in many fights and arguments between them all. The course The Remains of the Day is driven by Stevens trying to break through his emotional impotence by traveling to visit Mrs. Kenton and speaking to her about Darlington Hall. The novel’s main conflict is Stevens against himself, as he is fighting his inner battle with impotence. An example of this struggle would be Stevens finding it difficult to adapt to the new progressive and casual essence of Darlington Hall. Dealing with this struggle is what drives Stevens to think about and relive the past. Everything that happened in both novels did so because of the main character being impotent.
If the protagonist of each novel had not been affected by impotence both stories would be drastically different. Without physical impotence, Jake and Brett would

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