The Code Hero in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises "You are all a lost generation," Getrude Stein said of the post-World War I generation. A member of that "lost generation," Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises to enlighten society to the disillusionment of the soldiers and their need to leave the United States. The war taught them not to trust their elders nor their country's ethical system. They went into war believing that they would fight for their nation's patriotic ideals and achieve heroic status. Yet with the development of bombs, submarines, and advanced warfare, masses of soldiers were killed at one time by machines rather than men. They felt they had no opportunity to prove their honor and courage; their feelings of value were destroyed. Society's definition of manhood no longer suited these soldiers. Jake Barnes, an injured war veteran in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, is one of the several soldiers who moved to Paris to create a new code that defines manhood, one in which he could live by and apply to every day life.
Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918
Ernest Hemingway, Paris, circa 1924.
American Author Ernest Hemingway with then-wife El...The code hero is not revealed primarily through the actions of the protagonist Jake. Jake's experiences with and perceptions of the two characters Pedro Romero and Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises help to clarify Jake's new code of ethics. The champion bullfighter Pedro Romero epitomizes the code hero while the idealistic writer Robert Cohn represents the antithesis.
Robert Cohn's disregard for the beauty of sports disgusts Jake. Cohn did not participate in boxing because he enjoyed the struggle, but because he was a coward According to Jake, "He [Robert] cared nothing for boxing, in fact he dislike it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he felt on being...