BA essay Supervisor: Per Sivefors 15 credits Examiner: Johan Höglund Level: G3 2EN20E 17-01-2014 “A hell of a good guy” Homosocial Desire and Ethnicity in The Sun Also Rises Emma Karlsson Abstract The focus of this essay is to investigate homosociality in terms of ethnicity in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. The main method used in the investigative analysis is close reading of the novel, and the essay relates this close reading to theories expressed in a number of critical essays and articles regarding the novel itself and other subjects relevant to the analysis. Furthermore, the relationships between the main character and other male characters are compared. The main findings of this essay are that homosociality is a central theme in Hemingway's novel and that homosocial desire often decides how the main character Jake Barnes reacts to the statements and actions of other characters. Furthermore, the amount of homosocial desire aimed at one character is most often decided by the ethnicity of that character. Contents 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Theory and method............................................................................................................................ 3 3 Analysis ............................................................................................................................................. 6 3.1 Robert Cohn ............................................................................................................................... 8 3.2 Bill Gorton ............................................................................................................................... 13 3.3 Count Mippipopolous .............................................................................................................. 17 3.4 Pedro Romero .......................................................................................................................... 19 4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 24 5 Works cited ...................................................................................................................................... 27 1 Introduction Male bonding in Hemingway’s works is something that has been thoroughly investigated by many critics. However, there are today not nearly as much existing research on homosociality in Hemingway’s novels as there are on male bonding, although male bonding is a concept that exists within the concept of homosociality. This essay will investigate the presence of homosocial desire in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and analyze the theme in regards to ethnicity. The Sun Also Rises is a novel filled with male bonding and around some of the main characters is a sphere of homosocial desire in which some characters are central and others consciously and unconsciously excluded by the group within that sphere. One aim of this essay is to investigate who these characters are and what their functions are in, and outside of, the homosocial sphere. Choosing the theme of homosocial desire in the novel enables me to look at all relationships between all male characters. Along with the width of analytical possibilities, I chose the aim of homosociality in The Sun Also Rises as there are few known texts that touch upon this subject in the context of this particular novel and I hope to contribute something new to the discussion. The characters’ ethnicities will be the primary point of analysis within the concept of homosociality as I will argue that ethnicity has the strongest influence on whether a character is homosocially desirable to the main character. The novel is set in the 1920’s. It is about a group of expatriate Americans who travel across Europe spending most of their time in Paris and later Pamplona, Spain, attending the weeklong San Fermín fiesta, watching the bullfights and partying. The narrator and protagonist, Jake Barnes, suffered an injury in the First World War which made him impotent. His impotence makes a relationship with the love of his life, Lady Brett Ashley, impossible. The novel is both about Jake’s physical and emotional journeys, and his learning to accept that letting go of Brett is inevitable. 1 Jake’s impotence plays an important part in the reasons for Jake’s position in the group of male characters and will be connected to some points of analysis in this text. This is one of many reasons for which I have chosen Jake to be the main object of analysis, besides the fact that he is the main character. The analyses of other male characters will all be connected to Jake and his love for Lady Brett Ashley, the only real female character in the novel and the woman Jake can never have. The analyses in this essay will often be connected to Lady Brett Ashley since, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick puts it in her book, “no element of [the pattern of homosociality] can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole” (1). Furthermore, the fact that Jake is impotent will be looked at as something that affects his homosocial relationships in both positive and negative ways. The analysis will be divided into different sections, each focusing on one of Jake’s relationships to Robert Cohn – the annoying “hangaround” of the homosocial sphere, Bill Gorton – Jake’s fellow World War I veteran with whom he goes on a long fishing trip in Spain, Count Mippipopolous – the Greek count who charms Lady Brett Ashley, and Pedro Romero – the young, handsome bullfighter who leaves Pamplona with Brett at the end of the novel. The method used in this essay will be a close reading and analysis conducted through comparing the novel to the theories expressed in different books and articles on The Sun Also Rises, homosocial desire and ethnicity and whether these theories are confirmed in the novel. As there are certain characters that I find especially interesting for my analysis, I will focus on the parts of the novel where they are included. Moreover, I will also pay particular interest to the most eventful sections (e.g. the argument between Frances and Cohn, the first bullfight, when Mike gets violent etc.), when very interesting behavior is displayed by some of the characters. Regarding theory, Sedgwick’s book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire will be used extensively throughout the essay and it is the theory of this author that will be used in regards to homosocial desire in The Sun Also Rises. As said earlier, there are many critical essays and articles touching on the subject of male bonding in Hemingway’s novels. Some of them 2 will be used in this essay, one of them being the article “Men Without Women” by Leslie Fiedler as it also contains an interesting analysis of Brett’s function as a character, who is very relevant in the context of this essay. I will also analyze the potential of Pedro Romero as the “latin lover” stereotype along with comparisons of Count Mippipopolous to the stereotypical Greek and Robert Cohn to the stereotypical Jew. The possibility that Jake feels no homosocial desire towards Robert Cohn because he looks down on him as less of a man on account of his being Jewish will also be analyzed. This essay will through the methods previously stated aim to prove that the character Jake Barnes has, because of his impotence and his relationship with Brett Ashley, mixed feelings of homosocial desire and jealousy towards other male characters and that his homosocial desire is strongly influenced by the ethnicity of the object of desire. 2 Theory and method To Sedgwick, and in this essay, it is very important to differentiate between “homosocial” and “homosexual”. Homosocial is an adjective that means “something that relates to social relationships between people of the same sex” while homosexual is an adjective that means “sexually attracted to someone of the same sex”. Sedgwick emphasizes that homosociality is not a concept that exists within homosexuality. At times they are polar opposites since homosociality “is applied to such activites as ‘male bonding’, which may . be characterized by intense homophobia, fear and hatred of homosexuality” (1). On the other hand, as is seen today, there is a presence of homosociality between homosexual men spending time together in groups as both couples and single men. A third, and relatively new version of homosocial relations is the so-called “bromance”, defined in Merriam- Webster's Online Dictionary as “a close nonsexual relationship between men”. These examples show that homosocial desire is an evolving concept which is very much applicable to social relationships today. 3 I said before that male bonding is something that exists within homosociality, and I will now elaborate on that. Male bonding is a term that means “bonding between males through shared activities excluding females” (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary). Male bonding, then, is something happening in the present. As previously explained, homosociality refers to structures of relationships, meaning that homosociality is a much wider term. Another reason for my choosing homosocial desire is Lady Brett Ashley. Though the male characters in The Sun Also Rises often engage in the same or similar activities when spending time together, I dare claim that Brett Ashley is present for up to half of that time. This excludes