"Isn't it pretty to think so?" The ambiguity of this question, posed by Jake Barnes in the last line of The Sun Also Rises, is a reflection of the novel's evolving definition of what constitutes a relationship. As the focus of Hemingway criticism has slowly broken from tired discussions of misogyny a space has opened for considering the complex ways his writings address questions of gendered identity. Through this lens critics have asked exactly what kind of man and women Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley represent. For decades critics and scholars have viewed this final line as having a negative connotation, signifying the death of love not only in the novel, but in the era. However, this reading fails to take into account the evolving gender roles the Brett and Jake represent. My essay looks at the novel's protagonists not simply as Brett or Jake, but also as Brett and Jake. Through this lens it becomes clear that Hemingway's portrayal of these characters is not one of the "bitch-goddess" and a defeated male, but of two people who, through their rapidly evolving gender roles and sexuality, are uniquely suited to be side by side when the rubble of the fiesta comes crashing down around them, not merely as friends, but as the only relationship that can truly exist.

A basic premise of this paper is Hemingway's definition of bullfighting as a tragic art form. Americans have been so conditioned to view any sort of contest as sport that it is virtually impossible for us to consider the bullfight in other terms. Once accepted as tragedy, however, the implications of the bullfight as an influence upon Hemingway become manifold. It must be understood that this paper is not meant to imply that the bullfight is the only influence, or even the most paramount, for it is to be recognized that any artist derives from many sources, both external and psychic. I will show that Hemingway was subjected to an intense association with the bullfight at an age and a period in his life when he would have been greatly impressed by the things he found there. To be an afficianado conveys more than interest. It has the connotation of passionate devotion. Becoming so concerned that one cannot talk to another on a lower plane. Hemingway was an afficianado. He probably holds the Anglo-Saxon record for watching bullfights-- some fifteen hundred over a period of ten years.

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It will be the purpose of this study to begin such a consideration by treating but one aspect of Hemingway’s art, that of the relationship between Hemingway’s view of the world, as seen in his short stories, and the diction he uses to create this fictional world. In effect, the problem resolves itself around these three basic questions: (1) What is the world like that Hemingway creates in his short stories?; (2) What is the diction like that he uses to portray this world?; and finally and most importantly, (3) How well suited is the diction for revealing Hemingway’s fictional world? I.e., is there an organic relationship between this basic element of style and vision.

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Hemingway has given us pictures of individual members of society in the United States, in Africa and in Europe from the nineteen-twenties to the present time. In order to present Hemingway's characters as a study in social structure, the following classes will be considered: primitives, peasants, middle class, upper class, aristocrats.

Hemingway claims in Green Hills of Africa that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." If this basic idea is applied to his own work, elements of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appear in some of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and his novel The Old Man and the Sea. All major characters and several minor characters in these works share the quality of natural innocence, composed of their primitivism, sensibility, and active morality. Hemingway's Nick, Santiago, and Manolin, and Twain's Huck Finn and Jim reflect their authors' similar backgrounds and experiences and themselves come from similar environments. These environments are directly related to their continued possession and expression of their natural innocence.

Modernism has been called “a reaction to the carnage and disillusionment of the First World War and a search for a new mode of art that would rescue civilization from its state of crisis after the war” (Lewis, 109) Hemingway attempts this rescue by re-thinking aspects of the novel that were taken for granted in earlier periods, just as the conventions of modern life were taken for granted pre-WWI. Furthermore, his work tries to rectify the dissonance between a pre and post-war self through the exploration of social conventions relating to violence, trauma and masculinity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-256). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.