Fiesta, the beast, a Wonderful Nightmare

The beast reality: run, or face it?

“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.” Ecclesiastes

I found myself drinking a lot of wine this week while reading The Sun Also Rises. In fact, anytime I mentioned the novel to a friend, they usually responded with something to the extent of, “that book is nothing but drinking.” I laughed, while noting how tragic and true it is. But how fitting, in post-World War I Europe, for American expatriates especially to want to sink away from their nightmares. Hemingway makes decadence and excesses a staple in the work, artfully noting their obvious dangers.

The most apparent and striking use of drinking in the novel comes in Chapter XV, when the fiesta at San Fermin begins. Preluding to this chapter in the final sentences of the previous, Hemingway notes, “You could not be upset about anything on a day like that. That was the last day before the fiesta” (155). We know something serious is up already, as he then begins the description of the fiesta with aggressive, war-like diction and imagery. Hemingway marks the fiesta’s beginning as an “explosion” (157), and the quaint Spanish cafés have been stripped of their “white whicker chairs” and “marble-topped tables” in exchange for “cast-iron” tables and “severe folding chairs” (157). Indeed Hemingway describes, “the café was like a battleship stripped for action” (157). Within a few sentences, a literal explosion occurs when rockets begin to explode in the sky, leaving balls of smoke like “shrapnel burst[s]”. Then, the “pipes and fifes and drums” enter, pulling together the scene as a full-out battle. Of course, the narrator knows what battle is like from first-hand experience, key to understanding his disillusioned, tragic attitude.

But, as Hemingway describes this explosive scene, he is sure not to leave out mentions of drinking. In fact, we must not forget that what is going on is the Fiesta, a giant party, which Hemingway of course uses as a metaphor. In the first paragraph of the chapter he notes, “The peasants were in the outlying wine-shops. They were drinking, getting ready for the fiesta” (156). From here on, the next sixty pages or so all describe this raging party, one that results in the deaths of quite a few, ranging from bulls to horses to people trampled in the streets, maddened like bulls themselves. The drinking is excessive, and is undoubtedly related to this pulsating, unstoppable metaphor that takes on the role of a beast itself. “But all day and all night the fiesta kept on,” Hemingway concludes chapter XV (173), marking its permanence and prevalence.

A terrific choice of setting, the running of the bulls at San Fermin is an excellent tool in supporting one of Hemingway’s main themes: the idea of a cyclical, deathly, almost ritualistic “celebration” we, as human beings, engage in. Here, in this microcosm, is his tragedy. The fiesta will go on again next year, and for years to come, as it has for many before.

But, the sun also rises. It is our privilege to learn from Hemingway’s drunken, “lost” characters and his beautifully fatal use of the bull ring, to reject decadence of any kind, from drinking to gambling to consenting with (and thus participating in) war, in our own daily lives. Don't forget that San Fernin is also a religious festival - Hemingway notes it on 156 - and his introductory quote is from the Bible; there is always a need to question the prevailing doctrines and customs we accept as standard. Though Bill describes the experience as a "wonderful nightmare" (226), Jake says he'd believe it, and we should believe Hemingway, whose own death was profound in its tragedy. Though we may travel to a foreign "land", literally or symbolically, seeking to avoid our realities, there we will still find those same universal realities, and we can either face or succumb to them.

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