Perhaps compelled by this, the introverted Cohn began to assert himself and pursue his heart’s desires. People everywhere were living life for themselves with a greater respect for freedom and mortality disregarding the traditional, prewar societal values. Both at home and abroad he would have noticed the different mood brought about by postwar sentiment. It was only upon his trip to New York and the moderate success of his first publication that Cohn began to build his self-respect. Cohn had never experienced any “true” love outside his books but rather had compromised and conceded his way into the subordinate role in a hopeless relationship. Unbeknownst to Cohn his formerly assumed positions on love had become antiquated by the end of the war. He adopted many of his opinions from the books that he read and his romantic ideas of love were likely adapted from prewar stories. When in attendance at Princeton, to escape the negative feelings of inferiority and self-consciousness, Cohn took to reading, “too much” (11). He had lived a repressed and self-involved life as a Jewish man in an age of anti-Semitism.
Cohn had had no involvement in the war and was thereby little affected from it. His time in Europe was less an opportunity for change and more of an extended vacation. Unlike the unaffiliated entities that he surrounds himself with, Cohn reveres his country of origin. One of the major disparities that differentiate Cohn from the other depictions in the novel is the fact that Robert Cohn, “…would rather have been in America” (13). It seems as though Brett used sex on a platonic level as a means to comfort or sympathize, as must have been the case with Robert Cohn in San Sebastian. To Brett Ashley romantic love is dictated by emotions void of reason and is altogether distinct from, but included in, intercourse. Although he could not fully comprehend her decisions, he is surely aware of the trauma that she carries.
Jake does not doubt or deny her lack of dignity having met Brett while she was a V.A.D., Jake is sympathetic to her fragile and distorted emotional state. This loss of self-respect is a driving force behind Brett’s lustful behavior. I’ve got to do something I really want to do. Jake inquires further into the motives that persuade her and Brett reveals an irrational vulnerability: “I’ve got to do something. Having just recently encountered Pedro Romero, it becomes clear that Brett is unable to differentiate between interest, attraction and love. I’m in love with him, I think” (Hemingway 187). The self-image of Brett’s character is best displayed when confiding in her most faithful and rare platonic friend, Jake: “I’m a goner. Swooned by many but swayed only by temptation, she uses her appearance as a resource and remorsefully obeys her disillusioned heart. Undoubtedly scarred by this, she betroths herself to the bankrupt Mike Cambell and begins to exhibit an emotionally detached promiscuity while in the process of divorcing her wartime husband. On top of her experiences her shell-shocked sailor husband, Lord Ashley, had become emotionally abusive and threatening. Brett would have been witness to every atrocity of the war and party to few, if any of its triumphs. During the war she had served as a member of a Voluntary Aid Detachment. Having lost her first husband and “true love” to dysentery, she married Lord Ashley soon after in the midst of war. Of all the characters in the story, Brett Ashley is arguably the most damaged. Although the two have contrasting attitudes towards love and life, they share a very similar perception of themselves. Hemingway effectively uses the characters of Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn to represent differing perspectives on love brought about by war and postwar sentiment. The dilution and redefining of love in The Sun Also Rises is revealed from different perspectives through its damaged characters in both the romantic and the platonic sense. Ideals of love subsisting from the Romantic era through the Victorian age were in steady decline by the Age of Industry.
After the “Great War” love was among the many emotions left blunted. It frames a loose alliance of the “Lost Generation” and displays a vicarious insight into the forces that drive them. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is a meticulously constructed story situated in the age of disillusionment that followed World War I.
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