English 015 - Americans Abroad
Identity
Identity
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Meaghan Tanguay
The endings of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” are analogous to each other. It is the only place in both works where reality strikes the main character. Jake’s sexual impedance and Charlie’s shortcomings as a husband and father deprive each man of the necessary confidence to fight for and get the women they love. Overseas Jake and Charlie are part of the in-crowd at the time. Being part of a larger crowd covers up Jake’s and Charlie’s inadequacies as men. It is not until the last scene when both Jake and Charlie are alone that they come to terms with the reality of their faults and give up their fights.
In Spain being a part of the in-crowd gives Jake the illusion of stability and an alternate identity that is not his own. The identity of the whole group helps Jake cover up his personal deficiency. “‘[Jake], fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working.’ Jake replies ‘It sounds like a swell life. When do I work?’ ‘You don’t work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you’re impotent.’ ‘No,’ [Jake] said. ‘I just had an accident” (p120). When Jake is surrounded by his friends, in Spain during the fiesta, their sexual behaviors mask his impotence. Their sexual freedoms and wild, drunken partying cover his sexual aliment so well an outsider would never guess he was different from his friends in such a drastic way. The in-crowd provides Jake in Spain and Charlie in Pairs with veils to hide their insecurities. For Jake this protective identity that he finds in the large group does not make him stronger and in turn it strips him of his confidence, which is evident in the last scene.
On the last page of “The Sun Also Rises” Hemingway leaves the reader with a passionless image of Jake. “‘Oh, Jake,’ Brett said, ‘we could have had such a damned good time together.’ Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against [Jake]. ‘Yes,’ [Jake] said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”(p.251) Jake is apathetic toward Brett’s emotion for him. It is ironic that at this moment Jake notices a mounted policeman as “he raised his baton.” This deliberate phallic symbol Hemingway chooses to place in the scene illuminates Jake’s consciousness at this moment of his impotence. Jake does not have the self-confidence to get over his limitation. Finally alone, Jake comes to terms with his reality and gives up the fight with his illusions despite Brett’s persuasive behavior.
Charlie also does not need a strong personality when he is with his group of fellow Americans romping around Paris. They get what they want, all the time, because they have the money to pay for it. When Charlie revisits the Ritz bar he and his friends made a home in he describes it as, “not an American bar any more-he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it” (p385). While Charlie is with the in-crowd they have a belief they can get anything and do anything they want; simply, by spending money. Charlie was one of “…the men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn’t snow. If you didn’t want it to be, you just paid some money” (p402). Now that Charlie is trying to win his daughter back, looking at the past he cannot believe “how many weeks, or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility?” (p398) Charlie is at a loss and does not know how to prove himself to Marion. Being with the in-crowd in the past things had always come easy to him.
Charlie gets a rude awakening and realizes his failures as a husband and father and provider for his daughter. He cannot easily buy what he wants anymore because what he wants is his daughter and she cannot be bought. Charlie is haunted by reality. “[Charlie] made plans, vistas, futures for Honoria and himself, but suddenly he grew sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made. She had not planned to die” (p397). Charlie is paranoid of his shortcomings and carries much insecurity about being a father because of his past. He contemplates, “the present [is] the thing-work to do and someone to love. But not too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to a son by attaching them too closely: afterwards, out in the world, the child would seek in the marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and life” (p397). Charlie is speaking from his own personal experience and failure to give his wife this tenderness and protection. Charlie loses his fight for his daughter because he does not have any confidence in his abilities as a parent. Confidence he was perceived to have when he was with his friends hanging around Pairs.
Charlie gives up his fight for his daughter in the same pathetic fashion as Jake gives up his fight for Brett. When Lincoln tells Charlie, “I’m afraid we’ll have to let it slide for six months; I can’t take the chance of working Marion up to this state again”, Charlie replies with a defeated “I see” (p402) and walks back to his table. Charlie gives up on the fight for his daughter too easily. Charlie and Jake, on their own, lack passion, vehemence and commitment to get their loves back.
In conclusion, Jake and Charlie’s inadequacies as men are covered up by the in-crowd as well as sharpened in the scenes at end because both men are juxtaposed to strong, confident women characters. The women are their alter-egos. They are everything their men are not. Brett is an extremely sexual and promiscuous woman, which is unusual for women during this time period. Brett treats sex is as if she is a man trapped in a women’s body. She does not hide her sexuality behind anything. She flaunts it all over Spain while Jake hides behind his friends. Brett is able to sleep around and have many partners at the same time and Marion fights hard to protect Honoria even from her own father. As straining and hurtful as is Marion has the confidence to stand up to Charlie. Numerous times she points out his shortcomings as a husband and father. Marion is a serious mother providing and protecting her children and the child of Charlie and Helen. Both women are not passive like the men. Brett has the confidence to go for any guy she wants and unlike Jake she does not give up easily. “I’m mad about the Romero boy. I’m in love with him, I think…Ask him to come over and have a drink [Jake]” (p187-188) and Marion accosts Charlie about his past and present failures. “‘I suppose you can give her [Honoria] more luxuries than we can,’ said Marion. ‘When you were throwing away money we were living along watching every ten francs…I suppose you’ll start doing it again’” (p395). The women are persistent and strong. The role reversals between the men and the women clearly enhance the weaknesses of Jake and Charlie in the last scenes.
Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 09:17 PM