Corruption In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

Since religions and beliefs began to form, corruption has always been present in their midst. Sometimes it is due to greed, like indulgences, other times it is due to power and authority. In The Sun Also Rises, this same exploitation is prevalent in the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religions (the faiths of three characters: Jake, Bill, and Cohn). The type of corruption present in the novel is that having a faith, or one that has a higher morality, makes you superior to those that do not. Ernest Hemingway uses irony and negative connotations to develop this theme that religion is corrupt. Throughout the novel, the reader learns about Jake’s struggle with his Catholic faith as he is not too dedicated to it. Bill asks him on page 128, “are you really a Catholic?” with Jake responding, “Technically” (Hemingway). Bill asked because he could not tell by the way Jake acts, and Jake answers this way because he is not a fully practicing Catholic but still belongs to the faith. Jake grew away from his faith because he was angry with God for his injury from the war and has a hard time accepting that God would let this happen to him. In this scene, Hemingway shows how religion is corrupt when one can be part of the faith and be associated with its morality even if they still do not exercise it currently. This theme is thus developed by the

He seems to be Hemingway’s extreme criticism of religion in general as Bill even jokes about his own faith. On page 91 Bill comments, “So that’s what they are. Goddamn Puritans” (Hemingway). This scene is ironic for two reasons. One, because Bill is Protestant and is saying that the Catholics on the train get to eat first because they are more moral than he is yet he labels them with a Protestant faith. And two, Bill is essentially saying that the “more moral in faith” scenario is corrupt, but uses a word like Puritan in the