(The reference to Bryan's death tells us exactly when these scenes are occurring: 1925.) Do note, however, that Jake's physical condition is alluded to - and quickly backed away from. The joking between Jake and Bill, over breakfast and later at lunch, is certainly believable as such, but it's difficult for a contemporary audience to follow, because the references to Frankie Fritsch and so forth have grown obscure with the passage of time. The writer does so in an extended section, rich with dialogue, that is meant to be funny but has not dated well. Hemingway makes explicit here the themes of irony and pity: the irony of Jake's situation (he is a kind of superman who nevertheless can't perform the most basic of manly activities) as well as the pity we feel for him. The woods outside Burguete where Jake and Bill fish for trout are even more different from Paris, and the sense of tranquility that the fishing trip creates in them and us could not be more different from the freneticism of the novel's opening chapters.
In this novel, Pamplona will serve as a kind of anti-Paris, semi-rural and organic where the City of Light is urban and decadent. The author offers it to us by way of contrast to the Paris scenes that went before. This chapter comprises a sort of mid-book idyll. Jake tells us that this goes on for five more days, during which he and Bill hear nothing from Cohn, Brett, or Mike. After napping, they walk back to the hotel. Packing a lunch, they hike together to a trout stream, where they split up in order to fish they meet again for lunch and joke some more, during which the subject of Jake's injury arises and is dropped. After Bill wakes up, they go together to breakfast, during which they joke nonsensically and tease one another. The next time he nosed at the steer and then the two of them trotted over to the other bull.The next morning, Jake awakens early and digs for worms near the inn. The steer came up to him and made as though to nose at him and the bull hooked perfunctorily. The steer ran awkwardly and the bull caught him, hooked him lightly in the flank, and then turned away and looked up at the crowd on the walls, his crest of muscle rising. Suddenly the bull left off and made for the other steer which had been standing at the far end, his head swinging, watching it all. The steer was down now, his neck stretched out, his head twisted, he lay the way he had fallen. "I saw him shift from his left to his right horn." He did not change his direction and the men shouted: "Hah! Hah! Toro!" and waved their arms the two steers turned sideways to take the shock, and the bull drove into one of the steers.
He charged straight for the steers and two men ran out from behind the planks and shouted, to turn him. In the far corner a man, from behind one of the plank shelters, attracted the bull, and while the bull was facing away the gate was pulled up and a second bull came out into the corral. They had backed up another cage into the entrance. "He's got a left and a right just like a boxer."
CHAPTER 12 19 THE SUN ALSO RISES ERNEST HEMINGWAY HOW TO
"Look how he knows how to use his horns," I said. "My God, isn't he beautiful?" Brett said. As we're thinking about the state of bullfighting today on Fathom, we thought we'd take a minute to recall it's heady and glamorous novelization. It's a tragic love story that follows a group of American and English expats around the Left Bank of Paris to the macho bullfighting scene in Pamplona, Spain. Photo: George Eastman House / Flickr CommonsĮrnest Hemingway wrote his epic second novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926.