Emasculation in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

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2013-03-21T09:31:20Z
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The major conflict of the novel evolves from the main character’s impotence. However, what makes this novel special and why I chose it as a subject for my thesis is that here sickness gains a new understanding. Jake’s impotence is primarily metaphorical, the product of Hemingway’s wonderful “psychological symbol-building” (Baker, Wastelanders 88). Jake’s war wound and the consequent loss of his penis literally mean the loss of masculine agency, and the incapability to live up to the traditional forms of masculinity. In my thesis I would like to prove that the loss of manhood, the central idea of the novel, is not primarily figured by the phallic war wound, but is the result of an injury that is more of an emotional kind. [...] In my reading this decline of manhood is due to the emotional emptiness and disappointment caused by the war on the one hand and to the emerging New Woman phenomenon of the period on the other hand. These factors shattered traditional values and led to a consequent reversal in gender roles. Men had to redefine themselves and their masculinity accordingly to the new situation unless they rather chose to find happiness with their male companions, a possibility also proposed by the book.

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masculinity, American fiction
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