In class, we talked about what we thought the world would look like today if we thought about it in the context of the atonists and Jes Grew. We talked about how the Black Lives Matter movement could be seen as the black empowerment part of Jes Grew. We also talked about how academia had become much more atonist. Overall, I thought that the discussion was very interesting. But something during the not so brief recap of the entire known history of Jes Grew caught my attention. Reed writes, "When he heard of this, old Set ordered the murder of the Bulls and being a particularly mean cuss, ordered that they be tortured 1st. (This led to the sport that the American writer Ernest Hemingway took such delight in)" (Reed 167). This, of course, reminded me of The Sun Also Rises and made me wonder what it would look like if I thought about it in the context of Mumbo Jumbo. As I was skimming through the book to help refresh my memory I noticed how atonist the book seemed so it made sense that Reed referenced it. For example, there is the romanticization of the Basques. But thinking about history in the context of Mumbo Jumbo, The Sun Also Rises could have been an Atonist novel similar to how Harding could have been an Atonist puppet even though his slogan, "a return to normalcy", wasn't in reference to Jes Grew.
Since the overall plot of The Sun Also Rises is clearly Atonist, I decided to try to look at some of the main characters and judge where I think they would land on a scale from Hinckle Von Vamptom to Papa Labas. I started with Jake and decided he would land towards Hinckle Von Vampton simply because he is quite racist and homophobic and is one of the biggest fans of the bullfighting . For example, he makes fun of an African- American's speech and is called an aficionado. As for Bill he is around the same as Jake but is a little more outwardly so. Then there is Brett. Unlike the other two, she isn't racist or homophobic. She even defends some people from Jakes at times and seems involved in the culture in France. However, she doesn't really respect the culture in Spain. As such she is more towards the upper-middle of the scale. As for Cohn, I don't really know where he would fit because his role in the novel was mostly related to Brett.
Its interesting to think of Jes Grew in the context of other books. I agree that Hemingway's writing is mostly attonist, but I would say Jake isn't as attonist as we think he is. He doesn't always rule by logic and thinking, although he tries to. As readers, we see that he has trouble holding back his feelings for Brett and facing the fact that he can never be with her. To me, that is like him trying to hold back his Jes Grew side. But honestly its hard to definitely define attonism and how it portrays itself, so I'm not completely sure about that...
ReplyDeleteI would put Brett closer to the Papa Labas side of the spectrum because it seems to me that she likes to party/dance/have fun more than anybody else in The Sun Also Rises. I don't know if Papa Labas is the epitome of Jes Grew, I see him more as a scholar. That's just my own opinion though. Nice post!
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