Art and Life: Where to Draw the Line?

Ernest HemingwayAlthough it is considered to be one of the most influential and iconic books of the “Lost Generation,” Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is one that may not fully warrant the label of “novel”. Fictitious events take place, but the heart and soul of the story stem from the events of Hemingway’s own life. The author became renowned for his ability to accurately delineate the experience of the American expatriate in the 1920’s as a result of his own time abroad. Hemingway was a master storyteller, but many of his tales were derived from his real life travels.

As a product of the “Lost Generation,” Hemingway spent much of his life searching for meaning in a world of uncertainty. He travelled the world in order to find the happiness he and so many others of his generation felt they lacked. It was a time of lavishness, and no one indulged like Hemingway. He found himself lost in a whirlwind of partying and traveling, never really stopping for long enough to take root in any one place. Although he spent time in cities across Europe, he could never really consider any of them home. This nomadic lifestyle, which would certainly have driven me mad, led to a new kind of existence. Hemingway became comfortable in hotels and cafes in a way that may seem impossible to today’s tourist. He was a born wanderer: a traveler without a plan or destination. Jake Barnes and his cohorts are the written embodiment of Hemingway’s society. Although they have exciting adventures over the course of the novel, none of them really ever finds any substance or meaning from their activities. Each one ends the novel very much alone, just as Hemingway was unable to find a person or place to call home.

The idea of traveling as a lifestyle seems wholly foreign to a modern American with responsibilities and obligations. It seems frivolous to run around from place to place just for the fun of it, when there are so many seemingly more important things to be done. But for a man of the 1920’s, Hemingway was just trying to see if a better world existed outside of the suburban perfection in which he had grown up. World War I had brought down society as he had known it, and he was searching for something more. For Hemingway and his characters, traveling wasn’t merely for entertainment and amusement (although one might initially draw this conclusion from the activities of The Sun Also Rises), but instead it was a deep, internal search for meaning in a disintegrating world. He wasn’t necessarily searching for a place to call home, but rather for the idea of home. Salman Rushdie’s idea of “migrant sensibility” best explains Hemingway’s search for meaning, in which he states that some people “root themselves in ideas rather than places”. Unfortunately, after all his travels, he never found the ideas or meaning he so craved.