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| The last page of the early manuscript to the novel |
I swam out to the raft, puled myself up, and lay on the hot planks. A boy and a girl were at the other end. The girl had undone the top strap of her bathing suit and was browning her back. The boy lay face downward on the raft and talked to her. She laughed at things he said, and turned her brown back in the sun. I lay on the raft in the sun until I was dry. Then I tried several dives. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom. I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark. The raft made a dark shadow. I came out of the water beside the raft, pulled up, dove once more, holding it for length, and then swam ashore. (234)
Everything was fresh and cool and damp in the early morning. Nurses in uniform and in peasant costume walked under the trees with children. The Spanish children were beautiful. Some bootblacks sat together under a tree talking to a soldier. The soldier had only one arm. The tide was in and there was a good breeze and a surf on the beach. (241)
"He wanted to marry me, finally."
"Really?"
"Of course. I can't even marry Mike."
"Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley."
"No. It wasn't that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn't get away from him, he said. He wanted to make sure I could never get away from him. After I'd got more womanly, of course."
[...]
"You know I'd have lived with him if I hadn't seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well."
"Outside of your personal appearance."
"Oh, he'd have gotten used to that."
She put out her cigarette.
"I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children."
"No."
"I'm not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up."
"Good."
[...]
"I'm going back to Mike." I could feel her crying as I held her close. "He's so damned nice and awful. He's my sort of thing." (246-247)
The last words of the novel have over the years become iconic, perhaps one of the greatest, if not most well-known, endings in modern literature. So it all comes down to those ambiguous line. What exactly has happened in this story? Several years ago, one student in the class wrote this:
These last two chapters had me constantly wondering whether any progress had been made. We discussed Jake’s moment of enlightenment on Friday but evidence of this new understanding were not very overt in these last chapters. The book even ends with Jake and Brett sitting sadly in a taxi, just as they did at the beginning of the novel (Chapter Four). Hemingway seems to have made their relationship circular, never progressing. However, Brett does break it off with Romero as not to hurt him, a gesture that is contrary to her previous relationships with men in which she allows them to follow her like puppy dogs, no matter how badly it hurts them.
Indeed. Brett is going back to Mike. Jake has consumed three martinis and is working on the fifth bottle of rioja alta he ordered for dinner when he and Brett leave the restaurant. He seems to be reverting to the way he was at the end of the fiesta when he gets so drunk that the "bed went sailing off and I sat up in bed and looked at the wall to make it stop" (228). So pick one of the two questions below and answer it in 200-250 words.
1. So: has any progress been made for Jake? Is he still part-Robert Cohn romantic? Has he become some other version of himself by the end? Is he better off at the end than he was in the beginning? You don't have to answer all these questions, but you get the idea of the parameters of this question. Go ahead and quote a couple times here.
2. While we're on the subject, what do you think of Brett Ashley? There are some critics and readers who argue that she is the real hero of the novel—and I could be one of them. How do you see her by the end of the book? Is she the real hero? Is she heroic at all? Quote once here.
See you tomorrow!
So after thinking about my responses to both of these questions, I’ve sort of answered both of them, as my answers are intertwined. I think Jake has made minimal progress in this novel, I actually found myself slightly irritated by how similar the last two chapters were to the first few, at least for Jake. I was irritated because I like to see, over the course of a novel, change and development in the characters, with the most change appearance in the ‘hero’, or the ‘main character’ (you may already see where I am going with this). As I thought about it, and read your questions, I realized that Brett went through more change than anyone else. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell what was going on in Jake and Brett’s conversation when they first reunite, and I look forward to unpacking that in future classes, but I did pick up on the changes to Brett’s character. As you pointed out, she is going back to Mike, rather than moving on to someone new, like we’ve known her to do, but I think there is a stronger indicator of her change: her treatment of Pedro Romero. In the past, Brett has been perfectly happy letting men, as your previous student wrote, “follow her like puppy dogs”. She would use them for personal gain, even having them set her up with other men (in Jake’s case), with minimal thought to how they felt. But she refused to live with Romero, not because she didn’t want to, but because she knew it would be bad for him: “‘You know I’d have lived with him if I hadn’t seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well’” (246). As Brett’s character develops the move of anyone in the book, much more than Jake’s, I agree that she is the ‘hero’ of the novel. While she is morally dubious at times, and doesn’t necessarily fit what I usually picture as a ‘hero’, she is the character who changes the most through the story, making her, in my opinion, the ‘main character’, or the ‘hero’ of the story.
ReplyDelete1. I would argue that yes, progress has been for Jake, or, at the very least, Jake is beginning to make progress. Much of the last chapter deals with drawing comparisons — the beginning of the fiesta and the end, the differing cultures of Paris and Spain, the sport of bike racing and bullfighting, etc. — and I think that it is in these comparisons that the changes come to light. The chapter opens by describing a quieter version of Pamplona than we have seen throughout the rest of the novel, and as the fiesta winds down it signals the end of period, but it also serves as a transitional stage and marks the opportunity for a new beginning. Yet another aspect of this chapter that points to Jake’s growth, is how Mike remains so unchanged, especially in comparison to Jake. Mike is still “‘Old Mike the spender,’” and “‘Old Mike, the gambler’” whereas Jake is now able to enjoy “drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone” (236). Once Jake arrives in San Sebastian, swimming in the undulating ocean rollers serves a rather cathartic experience for him. He discovers cycling and “sportif” and it becomes clear that this new culture surrounding sportif will replace the fraternity and values Jake previously held with the bullfighters and aficionados. So yes, though ultimately Jake and Brett end up in the same scenario in which they began, with Jake helping Brett and them sitting together in a melancholy cab ride, there has been progress. I think that there is a newfound acceptance and awareness surrounding their situation and the fact that they will never be together: “‘Oh Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together’” (250). Furthermore, I believe that the reason that Brett constantly returns to Jake for emotional support is because she believes that he is able to handle the pain and inconveniences she causes him. Yet when Brett tells Jake to stop drinking, that he does not need to be drunk, she is finally acknowledging the pain she has caused him and signalling to Jake that he does not need to put up with it any longer. Though we do not see it in the book, I believe that Brett’s acknowledgement symbolizes Jake’s being able to move on and liberate himself from Brett. In other words, Jake is now capable of progress.
ReplyDelete1. At first glance, one could argue that it doesn't seem like Jake has made any progress at all: he rushes from a place where he is so at peace and happy to help Brett when he gets her desperate telegram (this really frustrated me), he still kind of seems to let her walk all over him (they kiss in the end of the book which has got to be so hard for Jake), and it seems like the book kind of comes full circle and repeats itself with very similar scenes from the beginning of the book (the taxi ride is mirrored from the beginning of the book). However, the final line of the book proves how much change Jake has undergone. Brett tempts and tortures Jake, per usual, "Oh Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together." And Jake responds with, "Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?" (251). With this line, Jake proves how much he has grown from the beginning of the story. Brett no longer has him eating out of the palm of her hand and hanging onto her every word, no matter how much it hurts him. He's not about to fall back in with Brett and her endless cycle of torture and manipulation of him. He knows better than that now. Of course he's still a part-Robert Cohn romantic who is devastated by Brett and her inability to find stable love and relationship with him, but he is now no longer pitifully hopeful that one day she will change. He says it's pretty to think that they could have had fun together, and he looks back on a time where he believed her and believed he could be happy with her. Now he realizes that that is more of just an unrealistic idea and is not the reality, and he's glad that he's come to terms with this and will no longer be hurt anymore by getting his hopes up and believing her.
ReplyDelete1) I don't know if their relationship has progressed, but I do think Jake has learned a lot about the choices he has made, specifically within the relationships he has with others. Jake’s relationship with Brett largely stays the same, but think they come to a bit of an unspoken understanding in the last few pages of the novel. Brett knows that Jake will always be there for her, and Jake knows that there is nothing he can do to change Brett or make their situation happier. But I think they both would rather live with this reality than not have each other at all. The last words of the novel suggest that they are going to stop trying to force their relationship to go in any certain direction. Jake knows that Brett will never marry him, and I think he realizes here that it’s about time he stopped trying to run away from that reality. Brett’s decision to leave Romero to protect him shows growth, and a realization of how her actions affect the people who love her, and who she loves. But, technically speaking, they are exactly where they began: not together, but very much in love. So I don’t know if their relationship has progressed, but I do think Jake has, in his understanding of what he can and cannot control. He knows he would rather love Brett from afar than not be around her at all.
ReplyDeletePrompt One: I don’t think that Jake has made much progress. In the end, when visiting Brett in her hotel room, there is a scene where he would welcome the “upbringal of [his] bags,” which reminds me of earlier when he was in his concussed state with the phantom suitcase (244). If before he was packing up to leave behind his disillusioned life, seeing clearly the world for once, now Jake has chosen to return to his old ways: coming when Brett calls him, even if it is at his own expense. Despite not having made much progress in his relationship with Brett, I do think that he has learned some things along the way. He enjoys his wine (when alone, Brett is still a bad influence) and perhaps realizes the futility of his time with Brett. But then why does he return? I don’t really know. What is clearer to me though, is how his last line is both a return to the original cynicism, but also development in that he can finally see through the faulty relationship. This time, Brett and Jake have switched roles and she is now the “romantic” (what she calls him earlier in the book) and he has been through enough to not fall for what he knows can’t exist in their world.
ReplyDeleteI think Brett Ashley is neither a hero nor a villain; she does not have the malicious motives of a villain, but she is so fundamentally broken and unhealthy that, to me, she does not have the status of a hero. At the end of the book, I would argue that we see Brett making what she knows is an unhealthy decision: marrying Mike. She even says he is “so awe full” (247), but she likes it. She regularly turns Jake away because she thinks she cannot be with him, but, from what we know as the reader, Jake’s only shortcoming is his impotency; she is in love with him, but refuses to be with him because she cant have sex with him, which I would argue is a bad perspective, one that Mippi would advise against. However, Brett is more nuanced than just being a psychologically wounded alcoholic; at the end of the novel, we see that she has chosen values, like Mippi said. Hemmingway shows how Brett has changed when she says “Don’t get drunk, Jake,... You don’t have to”(250). From the first scene in which we see Brett, we know she is an alcoholic, but in the finale, she tries to help Jake stay away from more drinks. Hemmingway ends the novel before he resolves the narrative; Brett has chosen some of Count Mippipopulus’ values, but has not learned how to fully live in such a broken world.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure if she’s the hero of the novel, but she’s the one who most clearly changes by the end. Despite a short-lived period of contentment in San Sebastian, Jake still comes when Brett beckons to be the shoulder she can cry on, and he gets drunk again once he sees her, for all that he claims he’s doing it because he likes the wine. There may be a greater awareness of his values in that he spends a lot more space describing his San Sebastian surroundings in a fairly happy way, but overall, his actions haven’t changed. Brett, on the other hand, has become a little less selfish than she was at the beginning. For all that she still relies on Jake to get out of her fixes, she lets go of Pedro Romero, not because it was meaningless sex, but because, “‘I’m not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children’” (243). She knows that she would have been happy living with Pedro, but that it would not have been good for him. She cannot change and live up to his romantic ideals, whether it’s something as shallow as appearance, where he wishes she would be more “womanly” and grow out her hair, or her deeper trauma and issues that she would inflict on his purity. This awareness is strikingly different from her behavior earlier in the novel when she insists on getting together with Pedro, saying, “I don’t say it’s right. It is right though for me. God knows I’ve never felt like such a bitch’” (184). Breaking up with him is an unselfish move, and one that causes her a lot of pain, which she has been avoiding before now. Her shaking comes back, like it was before she pursued him. She even cries over letting him go, unlike her casual dismissal of Cohn. She does still rely on Jake to help, but it’s almost as if they’ve switched roles from the beginning; Jake is very drunk and doesn’t think it will work, while Brett says, “‘We could have had such a damned good time together’” (247). However, there is a sense that she is getting the love she thinks she deserves. Count Mippi endorses a relationship with Jake in the beginning, saying, “‘You are very nice people...Why don’t you get married, you two?” (61). I’m not saying that her relationship with Jake would ever work out; I suspect it wouldn’t. But the fact she doesn’t even try is kind of telling. Instead, she’s going back to Mike, who is at least as messed up as she is: “‘He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful. He’s my sort of thing” (243). However, even if she’s not entirely happy, she is at least sticking to her values of not being a bitch. She has regained some measure of self-respect.
ReplyDelete1. So: has any progress been made for Jake? Is he still part-Robert Cohn romantic? Has he become some other version of himself by the end? Is he better off at the end than he was in the beginning? You don't have to answer all these questions, but you get the idea of the parameters of this question. Go ahead and quote a couple times here.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to terms in romantic values, I believe that many parts of Jake were actually different from Cohn in terms of values. Whereas most of the characters around Brett who are in love with her try to make her change her own values, Jake does not. As Cohn believed he could change her, Romero wanted her to become more feminine. “He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell… He said it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright” (245). In a sense, Jake knows her values and accepts them. He doesn’t try to change any aspect of it. However, I don’t think Jake has gotten any better than he was in the beginning. He is still follows Brett. Whereas Cohn left from his own will, Jake stays and come back to her, knowing full well that he would. In the beginning, I am not quite sure Jake knew he was being manipulated, yet towards the end, Jake gives off a feeling that he knows and yet still follows after Brett. “That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right” (243). Through these few lines, Jake has literally summed up his relationship with Brett for most of the book. He knows, yet still follows her. Perhaps it is the forces of love? Although at the end of the book on the surface, it seems quaint and dainty with them both, it also seems a bit off-putting.
On the other hand, the last line of the book might foreshadow or show a scene in Jake. “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (250). It almost sounds like the power is shifting to Jake in which he knows Brett will always come back to him eventually as he does with her. That would shift the story quite dramatically. Changes to Jake are very apparent when he talks about his new outlook on Paris. He takes a more cynical approach, almost alluding that his belief in true friendship is gone. The only thing he needs for loyalty is money in Paris. “Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason” (237). This shows that his idea of loyalty and friendship is now broken. Part of this may be because the only people he could relate to and liked are now gone from his life. Cohn, the character we compared Jake to be most alike to is gone, as Jake pushed him away. In addition, Montoya is now gone because Jake broke his trust and loyalty because of Brett. I do believe that Jake has changed on some fundamental levels, however, I don't believe he is at a better place in at the end than in the beginning. In the beginning, at least Jake had multiple relationships to look forward to. Now, I believe Jake is just in a greater sense of disillusionment.
Brett is the real hero of her journey. After reflecting on her throughout the novel, I recognised values of perseverance and optimism rather than qualities of a “bitch.” Though Brett appears to be controlling and cruel because of her ability to manipulate the men in her life, it is important to note that the men give into her manipulative willingly. I would argue that Jake, Mike, Pedro and Cohn could all have easily regained control over themselves, yet they choose to compete for Brett perhaps as a way to assert their masculinity. I would say that Brett is one of the only characters that does not stay stagnant. She does not let men define her or limit her. She also shifts the way society sees women by being having an androgynous appearance and embracing her sexuality. Pedro tries to force Brett to conform to gender roles in order to limit her power thus making her less threatening, “he wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never get away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course”(246). He wants Brett not only to fit into gender roles but also into societal norms of marriage which enforce stagnancy and limit liberal sexuality. Brett also does not let her previous abusive husband to define her. She is able to heal and redefine herself in her ability to express her sexuality and not care what people think about her.
ReplyDelete1. I think that Jake has not made any progress at the end of the novel. Chapter 19 hints at changes in Jake’s values. As described in the beginning of the novel, Jake cannot sleep, but in San Sebastian Jake finds no trouble. He says, “After lunch I went up to my room, read a while, and went to sleep. When I woke it was half past four” (238). Jake’s narration expresses a newfound carelessness and relaxation. Jake’s actions are distinctly different in this chapter than in previous chapters. For example, Jake enjoys his drinking and does so “slowly” (236). Then, Jake receives a telegram. The telegram from Brett states that she is in “TROUBLE” (242). The lack of hesitation that Jake shows to help Brett is proof that he has not changed. This shows the cyclical nature of this book because all of the progress Jake made in the past chapter is destroyed in this moment and he returns to his state from the beginning of the novel. Brett calls on Jake and all the progress in restructuring his values is entirely erased. To enhance this point, Jake even ends his letter with “LOVE JAKE” (243). Brett only calls on Jake when she is in need, but Jake is still veiled by her manipulation shown through the discrepancy in how they both end their respective letters. I think that this evidence shows that Jake ends the book in the same way he began it, although he showed change in the middle of the novel.
ReplyDelete2. Brett seems to have changed a lot by the end. She is the third person in the novel to actually cry and the second to cry in front of Jake. “Then I saw she was crying. I could feel her crying” (247). She seems so sad and fragile in this moment which is a side that she has hidden for much of the book. However, only a few lines down she says that she is “going back to Mike” which shows that she has not actually changed because she is continuing to engage in destructive behavior. On the other hand, she does leave Romero because she realizes that she is a bad influence on him and that she is too old for him. Earlier in the book, she calls herself a bitch, but when she is talking with Jake in the final scene she tells him, “You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch” (248). This line would at least make it seem like she is trying to be a better person. I genuinely do believe that she has changed. On the last page, when she tells Jake that he will be alright without being drunk I think that she genuinely means it. Brett has never before told someone to stop drinking. Brett, although changed, has not turned into a hero because I think that Hemingway believes that heroes are a thing of the past and no such thing can exist in this post-war era.
ReplyDelete2. Yes, I think that Brett Ashley may be the hero of the novel. While the book is narrated by Jake, it tells more of Brett’s story than it does of Jake’s. Most of the main characters in the book are her love interests, and the conversations often center around her. She also embodies a lot of heroic qualities. She is more adventurous than any of the other characters. She is always willing to pack her bags and travel someplace new, while most of the other characters are often stuck in one place until she encourages them to follow her. Also, Brett has a hero-like backstory. She had a difficult past with an abusive relationship and the war, but she has found a way to be relatively successful, which I believe shows perseverance and independence. She also is a typical hero in the romantic areas. She pursues her love interests but never lets them take control of her. I would also argue that she undergoes significant character development, which I believe is an important component of a hero’s story. Her biggest character change comes after she leaves Pedro Romero. She says to Jake that it “feel[s] rather good deciding not to be a bitch” (249). She feels proud of herself and her decisions, rather than ashamed. This is an important development, and I think this emerging pride and newfound sense of morality are heroic qualities. While Brett’s story is tragic, I would argue that she is still the most heroic of all the characters.
ReplyDeleteI talked about this some in class, but yes, I do think Jake has progressed if we are thinking of progression simply as change. However, I do not feel that I can label this change as either good or bad (for a lack of solid words.) We see Jake’s change through the change in his interactions with waiters, which are all too common in the book. Near the beginning of the book, Jake sees a waitress spooning soup into a bowl for an old man who holds a glass of wine. He views this little snippet of life very romantically. Later in the book, we see the German waiter who Bill and Jake basically tell to go to hell. In the last few pages of the book, we see the waiter that Jake so cynically describes: “I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities… he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table.” Jake is no longer a romantic. His last line is “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” He no longer views waiters as the bringers of wine and good times but as money-hungry, selfish people. He goes to Madrid to “help” Brett and accepts the fact that his life is a sacrificial circle. Maybe there is some peace of mind in knowing exactly what your future holds (even if it’s bleak.)
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