Some thoughts on Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

For me this is a book about damaged people who don't know how to live their lives. They drink, they fuck, they cheat, they travel, they drink more, but the big void unseeingly hanging over them doesn't disappear. The Great War wasn't their fault like it was not Pedro Romero's fault that Brett started an affair with him and he got beaten by Cohn. And like Romero they keep doing their job the best they can despite the constant pain.

Jake, the protagonist, is literally damaged. He tries to compensate it by living the life, fishing, enjoying corrida, hanging with friends, reading, still he can't be with Brett. Brett would love to be with Jake, they understand each other like no one else, but Brett needs sex in her life and she constantly changes partners, trying to fill the void. Mike just lives like there's no tomorrow, spending money he doesn't have and drinking even more than his friends while pretending he and Brett are together. Poor Robert Cohn doesn't belong with them, he's an outsider, he lived most of his life in the shadow of his wife, then of Frances, now he tries to live for himself and falls in love with Brett. But for Brett he's just a filler, a temporary solution, and he just can't accept the fact.

Could their lives be different? Would be Jake and Brett happy if they could be together? I think, the key figure is the Greek count, an old man who accepted the life as it is, who enjoys company of Brett but doesn't get jealous when she goes away to someone else, who appreciates a good drink but doesn't get drunk like a pig, and who was in the war like most of them (not the WW1, another war when he was young) but found his place in the world afterwards. Maybe, when they get old, some of them become as wise as this count. We don't know.