Perversion/ Inversion

Bullfighter

“One way to read the novel is as an inverted novel of initiation. In traditional initiation stories, a young man leaves his home or community, goes through experiences that change his character or worldview, and returns to take his place in his community as a mature person. Jake Barnes, in contrast, leaves his autonomous position in Paris to join the group on their trip to Pamplona. His experiences there constitute an initiation, though not an initiation into the group but an initiation into self-reliance apart from the group. At the end, he renounces the detrimental influence of his friends and especially of Brett. If Brett is the "sun" of the title around whom the men revolve, Jake has succeeded in breaking out of the orbit and becoming an independent person (another sun) himself. Ultimately, the novel propagates the self-reliance and autonomy embodied by Romero, the bullfighter whom Jake admires.”

This selection is from Wikipedia, but it’s appropriate when the course mission statement is built around John Gardner’s idea that all stories follow one of two forms: a stranger comes to town, and someone goes on a journey. In this case, the latter plot has been as perverted as Jake Barnes fears becoming.

The novel begins with the quotations from Ecclesiastes 1:4, "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.” In a very literal sense, Jake’s generation “cometh” and the change is massive between his and the former generation. Stained by the war, these characters display sexual inadequacies, gender role upheavals, inferiority complexes based on religious inequalities, and alcoholism.

While previous travel stories certainly were not always pure affairs or without similar issues, the conflicts present here are amongst the travelers themselves, with the native, Pedro Romero, representing some sort of beacon amongst the darkness.

Jake Barnes holds onto the role of protagonist by acknowledging Romero as a herald of the next generation to “cometh” and the only positive role model in his dealings with the role-bending female of the novel, Brett.