A Story of the Lesser Men: Male Characters in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

The first 200 words of this essay...

Martin Klekner

English and American Studies

Course: English Skills and Cultural Communication

Time: Wednesday, 19.10 - 20.40, P111

Lecturer: Stephan Delbos

Word Count: 1920

A Story of the Lesser Men: Male Characters in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

There is no greater tragedy than losing the aim of your existence. Many authors have spent their entire lives focusing on this topic. Among them Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest American novelists of all time. A great number of his stories is populated by characters caught up in a never-ending search for life's purpose, by strange individuals, staggering from place to place, always searching, yet never finding. This feeling of insecurity and inferiority is a driving force for his novel The Sun Also Rises. Here, the main characters are ex-soldiers, those men, who - after their terrible World War I experience - were left physically and emotionally crippled. Some called them veterans, others named them "a lost generation"1. Their lack of respect for anything (including themselves) made their lives fake, inauthentic. While staring in the faces of the ones superior to them they had no other choice but to crumble and become