Abraham Han's 20th Century Class Blog

Now that we have finished The Sun Also Rises, Jake's amusing first impression has now turned to a masterful show of Hemingway's beautiful craft. We, the readers now armed with an understanding of the beautiful depth and the dynamics between the characters, will feel a tug in the heartstrings, rereading the first chapter as I did.  In the very beginning description of Cohn and his boxing title there is the subtle undertone of bitterness, mixed with the condescending voice, leaving an impression of inferiority. All these elements now make perfect sense in the context of the whole novel. The fact that Jake feels insecure, and has a sort of inferiority complex at Cohn, was firmly established in Chapters 3 and 4. We learn about the reasons behind why Jake is unable to have a stable romantic relationship with Brett, which explains the sort of bitterness Jake feels, because Jake believes Cohn to be a sort of non-masculine guy, as he is a Jew, a man that is always dragged along and pu...

The first chapter in The Sun Also Rises gave me the impression that the book would definitely be about Cohn and his life from the point of view of Jake (kind of like The Great Gatsby [haven't read the whole book, but from what I remember, I think the narrator follows the dude around places....]). However, I was pleasantly surprised when in the following chapters the focus shifted from the story about Cohn's life to the narrator. Surprised, I looked back to the 1st chapter that I read, and as I began to reread it, I realized that it was fun little literary trick of sorts. Rereading it, I realized that the way that Jake described Cohn also gave insight into Jake, and the reader can also sink into Jake's perspective of the macho masculine manly dudey dude. The impression that the narrator gave me after my first read past under my conscious radar, but on the second read it was apparent that Jake wanted to present facts about Cohn, but also downplay them because he's a bro....

In class, we discussed the narrating style that Woolf chooses to use of the 'free indirect discourse' in her novel Mrs. Dalloway , where the perspectives of the narration melts between one person to another, from a deeply first person level, delving into a characters thoughts and experiences, to also being distinctly from an outward and subjective point of view. Between the wonderful melting of dual-consciousness, and flashes of memory that really captures the human psyche, there was one striking sequence that really struck a chord with me. Near the beginning of the book, after we are initially introduced to Clarissa as a character, Woolf falls into an almost cinematic sequence as she describes the setting at which Clarissa is in, as we, the readers are shown exactly what Clarissa would have been seeing/hearing: " And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all th...