English 015 - Americans Abroad
Honesty In Poverty
Honesty In Poverty
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Ross Stern
Money plays a significant role in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited; it greatly influences over a character’s honesty. Money triggers a course of events that direct Jake, Mike, and Brett in The Sun Also Rises and Charlie in Babylon Revisited toward lives lacking purpose and meaning. During this meaningless existence, money allows the characters to be dishonest with themselves; they use money to bounce from one activity to another never having time to examine their grim situations. However, once the money is gone, the characters are forced to be honest with themselves; they can no longer hide behind the lavish, activity-filled lifestyle that their money created. It is only at this penniless crossroad that the reader can actually get a glimpse of a character’s true nature. Without money, Jake, Mike, and Brett in The Sun Also Rises display personal weakness; they realize the bleakness of their lives but continue to put off reality. On the contrary, Charlie in Babylon Revisited epitomizes strength in character by using his poverty as a means to re-establish an honest life.
Initially, money gives the characters in both stories the ability to travel. At this point the characters are still honest with themselves; they have examined their lives and they realize their desire to escape the drudgery of “average” working life. In The Sun Also Rises, Robert Cohen expresses this need to escape when he initially asks Jake to travel with him: “I can’t stand to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it” (p. 19). To the characters in both stories, “living life” seems to indicate finding adventure in a life without the burdens of work; their ideal life is filled with fun and excitement. Unfortunately, this attitude towards life lays the foundation for the denial and dishonesty that the characters will display in their travels. Essentially, the traveling Americans are looking to become disillusioned; they desperately want to escape reality. Later in their experiences, when the characters mask their unhappiness abroad behind the same money that initially allowed them to travel, their dishonesty with themselves will depict their desperation to escape the real world.
Once money has given the characters in both stories the ability to travel, it allows them to cover up the grimness of their situations. In The Sun Also Rises, the reader witnesses Jake, Mike, Robert, Bill, and Brett achieve this façade of happiness by “buying” constant activity. These characters continuously drink, party, and travel within the foreign countries they visit. Jake alludes to this when he claims that, “There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost all the disgusted feeling and was happy” (p.150). For a moment, Jake realizes that he and his companions are avoiding reality and being dishonest with themselves; however, before he truly has a chance to assess his current situation, the wine drowns out his misery and he becomes content.
Charlie’s actions in Babylon Revisited parallel those of the Jake, Mike, and Brett in The Sun Also Rises. Charlie “remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, [and] hundred franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab” (p.389). He also recalls “champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at two and ended up in a blurred and vague twilight” (p.389). Like Jake and his companions, Charlie buys happiness.
Because of their financial situations, the characters in both stories are able to bounce from one activity to the next. They do this deliberately so that they never have time to examine or think about the lack of purpose or meaning in their lives. Charlie describes “making months into days” (p.391). He claims that “the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and [he] was gone” (p.386). Life moves too quickly for Jake, Robert, Mike, Bill, Brett, and Charlie to ever stop and assess it. Money allows all of them to be dishonest with themselves.
In both stories, money eventually runs out for the characters. When it does, the constant activity ceases to exist and the characters are forced to examine their current living situations. Only at this point is the reader truly able to see a character for whom he or she actually is; money no longer hides a character’s inner feelings.
In The Sun Also Rises, Jake, Mike, and Brett all show weakness in character when there is a lack of money and constant activity. Each of them realizes the grimness of his or her current situation; however, the unanimously insist on postponing reality. At the end of the novel, Jake realizes that he and Brett can never be together. He appears to have come to terms with reality when he claims that “it is pretty to think” that he and Brett would have been a good couple. In actuality, Jake is scared of the truth. He feels the need to drink even though Brett pleads that he does not: “‘ I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine’” (p.250). Mike also displays weakness in character when he no longer has money; like Jake, he runs from his problems and reality. This is clearly seen when Mike and Bill are drinking and gambling and Mike runs out of money. The jovial ranting quickly turns to serious conversation as Mike describes his financial situation; he claims that he has “two weeks allowance that should be here” (p.233) and that he will live on “tick” in pub in Saint Jean until then. Directly after displaying an honest knowledge about his personal problems, Mike declares, “Come on, let’s have another drink” (p. 233). Once again, Mike defers reality by drinking. Brett has a similar reaction when she runs out of money and faces reality after the break up with the bullfighter. She pours her heart out to Jake about the condition of her life and the immorality of her actions: “I’m thirty four you know. I’m not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children” (p.247). Here, she is sober and honest with herself. Sadly, shortly after her self realization, the reader sees Brett back in a bar spending Jake’s money and surpressing reality with alcohol. Without money, the reader is truly able to see the Jake, Mike, and Brett for the weak, shallow individuals that they are. When confronted with sobriety and a lack of activity Jake, Mike, and Brett examine their situations, become afraid, and quickly defer reality. They continue the personal dishonesty seen in the greater portion of the novel. These weak characters will most likely continue to live meaningless disillusioned lives, unlike Charlie from Babylon Revisited who uses his poverty as a means of reformation.
When Charlie has no money, he displays great strength in character by deciding to face reality; with his innate strength, Charlie will most likely be able to restore his life. Charlie honestly reflects on his past and the mistakes he made: “All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realized the meaning of the word ‘dissipate’—to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something” (p.389). Here Charlie realizes that money pushed him down a path filled with disillusionment. In his wanderings he lost three years of his life, his daughter, and his wife. However, Charlie does not attempt to escape reality; he uses his pain and poor economic standing as a motivation to make his life better. Charlie is proactive in rebuilding his life; he does not sit back and hope things naturally improve as Jake, Mike, and Brett do in The Sun Also Rises. Charlie now limits himself to “one drink every afternoon, and no more” (p.388). The reader also sees Charlie “let go” of his ghosts from the past—Lorraine and Duncan. Charlie claims that, “his own rhythm was different now” (p.391). Charlie is not only courageous enough to leave behind his past, he is also intelligent enough to plan for his future. Charlie has leased a new apartment and is planning on taking a French governess to Prague with him. He is ready to have his child. Without a great deal of money, Charlie is down to earth; he now realizes what is important in life and is doing what he can to restore it.
As seen in both stories, the world is a harsh and unforgiving place. People use money as a defense mechanism; they use it to distance themselves from reality by constructing a fantasy world. However, this fantasy world is far from perfect. It does not last forever; it simply creates an illusion of stability and happiness that peaks and eventually shatters. By this time, some individuals have already reached the point of no return; their lives are in total disarray and they do not have the inner strength to change. Rarely do people possess Charlie’s determination to fight a losing battle. Essentially, money is a dangerous commodity; as seen in both stories, its effects on people are strange and often unexplained. It poses a threat to both strong and weak individuals. The Sun Also Rises and Babylon Revisited serve as warnings against the damaging effects of money on individual’s lives.
Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 01:20 PM
Comments
This is solid work. The essay is bolstered from the start with a carefully developed intro that lays out the whole scope of the argument. Your organization allows you to really develop an argument: to establish a certain reading of money, and then measure these narratives against each other in accordance to your reading. Though I had a couple of reservations along the way, in general I was convinced by the claims you make – in your hands, money does indeed seem like a significant problem in these books.
You might have been more careful about establishing the initial promise of money – though you claim that it allows characters to escape drudgery, your quote suggests something else: a desire to pack more into a rapidly receding life. A little more engagement with this would have allowed you to deepen the irony of money in both books: it makes life pass by even faster, after all.
Your attention to each character is well-managed. Since you’ve worked out your argument, you’re in a good position to zero right in and look at how each of the SIR characters act when money runs out – and the picture ain’t pretty. I’m not sure you’ve done Jake justice – he does confront more of what’s wrong than most others in the novel. But you do a good job of connecting even him with an almost frantic escapism, which is, in turn, connected to money.
The celebration of Charlie’s post-money behavior is a nice, developed contrast: your analysis is building on itself here. I could have used a little more convincing that he really is low on money – governesses and gifts for Honoria, after all, do take some cash – and he seems notably better off than Marion & her husband. Nevertheless, you use references to the irrational spending of pre-depression days in Paris convincingly.
The conclusion tips towards ‘life lessons learned’ – it would be better to keep focus on analyzing how these books work. I know you had some trouble coming up with a further move to top off an argument that seems quite complete. You might have honed your idea about money just a little more at the end by making final reference to the disparity of economy that (by your lights) ruins these travelers: travel itself leads to this, as the dollar blows away local currency.