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Hemingway Masculinity Analysis

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Ernest Hemingway is known for his terse and iceberg style of writing. Despite this, he weaves intricate stories with rich characters and deeper meanings that often reflect himself. Jake’s struggle with masculinity and his injury are a common theme throughout The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway has also had issues with his masculinity and insecurities. Throughout The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway projects his own issues and personality onto his characters, especially when concerning the struggle of masculinity, and specifically in the case of Jake Barnes. Hemingway’s childhood was infused with many hardships and roadblocks that continued to affect him later in life. He was extremely competitive and participated in boxing, football, and track, although …show more content…

However, Jake Barnes could never achieve and participate in this craze due to the injury he sustained during WWI. This damaged his self-esteem and due to the location of the injury, his masculinity, “Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror...of all the ways to be wounded” (Hemingway 38). Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that one must achieve self-esteem before self-actualization. Therefore, “Jake will never achieve the psychological stability he craves because he finally accepts...philosophies about his injury...these ideas...will always leave him vulnerable to the fear that he will...be an invalid” (Fore). Not only does this ruin his self-esteem but ruins his relationships as well since he is impotent as a result. The steers in the novel that calm down the bulls symbolize Jake, “‘It's no life being a steer...They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so.’” (Hemingway 145-146). The bulls represent masculine males, as they usually gore a steer to calm down. Being ‘gored’ is how Jake constantly feels when he is rejected by Brett or made to feel inferior by bullfighters or his friend group. Later on in the novel, a man is gored by a bull. Romero fights this bull and kills it further extending the idea that bullfighters are much more masculine and superior to a common man. Jake sees himself as less than a regular man, and is therefore no match for a

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This only further proves my point that jack represents savagery in this novel. Due to Jacks overwhelming desire to hunt a pig he along with a small group of boys go into the jungle to try their luck. Because of Jacks carelessness, though the fire is extinguished and they lost a chance of being rescued. We also learn in this chapter that the fire symbolizes the hope they share a group, when the fire went out so did their hope, but when they relight it they regain some of their hope. Piggy being the “fat nerd” of the group his thoughts and beliefs are immediately shot down, its only when Ralph tells them to do the suggested task do they listen.

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Jack makes the boys believe that the beast will not hurt them as long as they do what he says, this gives Jack more control over the boys. When Jack and his hunters go hunting, they find a sow and kill it. When they

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Often when one thinks of the standard father-son relationship, rather stereotypically there’s an essence of rigidity. Masculinity and the stubborn adherence to its tight standards in how men should behave, how they should talk, or how they should even feel about other men, even in their own families. Even the simplest “I love you,” or any variation is replaced between men with awkward or utterly empty silences, censoring the feelings of familial or brotherly or friendly affection between them, even if they are strongly there. In A River Runs Through It, throughout lies a demonstration of such omission of actual feelings about many ranges of feelings and thoughts- which also is a reflection of how often men as individuals who are socialized in certain societies submit to ideas of

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In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a relationship unfolding, a complex relationship difficult to understand. The relationship is revealed by a conversation between a man and a woman, a topic of conversation that people rarely discussed in the period that the story was set. After researching interpretations, it is consistently said “She is pregnant, and he wants her to have an abortion” (Weeks 76), to which I agree that this conversation is about abortion. With the man seemingly pushing the topic and the girl hesitant and questionable, it is unsure as to the result of their conversation. However, it is my belief that she chose to follow her heart and not get the abortion.

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748 Words | 3 Pages

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway takes place in the 1920s in Paris. The novel starts out focusing on Robert Cohn, while the rest of it is narrated by Jake. He is an expatriate, is madly in love with Brett, and has a war injury. Jake Barnes was raised Catholic and has had an on-again-off-again fling with Brett. He talks about Brett and his religion differently than how he thinks about them.

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Following the desperate chase after the sow, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push...the spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands” (Golding 135). Unlike before, this scene conveys that Jack and the boys in his tribe are capable of killing and committing brutal acts. While Jack hesitates to kill a pig at the beginning of the book because of his fears of blood and death, he eventually becomes obsessed with hunting and violence, killing a sow by vigorously “stabbing downward with his knife” and slitting the sow’s throat.

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The struggles presented between these two characters bring to light issues in human relationships that weigh into everyday life. Hemingway’s short story reveals to readers how relationships affect communication, decision

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987 Words | 4 Pages

Ernest Hemingway’s characters are frequently tested in their faith, beliefs, and ideas. To Hemingway’s characters, things that appear to be grounded in reality and unmovable facts frequently are not, revealing themselves to be hollow, personal mythologies. Hemingway shakes his characters out of their comfortable ignorance through traumatic events that usually cause a certain sense of disillusionment with characters mythologies, moving them to change their way of life. His characters usually, after becoming disillusioned, respond with depression, suicide, and nihilism. However, this is not always the case.

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541 Words | 3 Pages

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

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