To start off lets begin with the character I dislike the most; Robert Cohn. It seems that I am not alone in the loathing of Cohn. In fact just about everyone in this book hates Cohn. Even Brett who showed some initial interest in Cohn began to dislike him.
"Was I rude enough to him?" Brett asked. Cohn was gone. "My God! I'm so sick of him!"
"He doesn't add much to the gayety."
"He depresses me so."
"He's behaved very badly."
"Damned badly. He had a chance to behave so well." (p 185)
"Well," I said, "don't ask me a lot of fool questions if you don't like the answers."
"I didn't ask you that."
"You asked me what I knew about Brett Ashley."
"I didn't ask you to insult her."
Oh, go to hell."
He stood up from the table his face white, and stood there white and angry behind the little plates of hors d'oeuvores (p 47)
Like what the hell Cohn . Take a flippen chill pill. Really though this scene gets on my nerves. I really dislike people (or characters) who take everything way too seriously. Jake did nothing wrong he is just telling Cohn the facts about Brett. Cohn then has to jump to the rescue and defend his ladyship. Really is that necessary Cohn? His prewar values are completely different than everyone else's values in this book, and it makes everyone have a bad time.
Next lets move on to Micheal. We all know Cohn is a little annoying but Mike just tears Cohn apart. When Mike gets drunk he gets very brutally honest. He says the first thing that comes into his mind.
"Shut up," Cohn said. He stood up. "Shut up, Mike."
"Oh, don't stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won't make any difference to me. Tell me Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted? I know when I'm not wanted. Why don't you know when you're not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren't wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer. Do you think that's right?" (p 146)
Ouch. I mean I was thinking all those things about Cohn in my head, but to go say them out loud to his face is a little over the top. Mike is just too mean to be likable. When he is not drunk he's a pretty funny character and a lot like Jake. Jake and Mike are basically in the same boat. They both like Brett but Brett just finds new people to love and flirt with.
Brett just has a unquenchable thirst, she can't ever settle down and she just lives in the fast lane. She claims to love Jake but is engaged with Mike, goes off to San Sebastian with Cohn and then falls in love with Romero. She is a person that sees something and will do whatever she wants to attain it. These type people are almost never satisfied. They think they will get satisfaction from something but when it doesn't come they move on. Brett is a perfect example of this and is never happy just with one person. I don't loath her, like I do Cohn, but she is just doesn't know when to stop and got on my nerves a few times.
Jake and Bill are obviously the best characters in the book. The best part in the book is when Jake is feeding Bill lines and he is just going off on random ideas.
Overall the characters are very real. They are so real that they make me laugh and cringe when things happen in the book. Hemingway did a great job making his characters have a certain level of depth, he didn't give away too much at one time; we only got bits and pieces. As those pieces came together we got a deeper sense of the characters personalities and how they fit into the novel.
Brett just has a unquenchable thirst, she can't ever settle down and she just lives in the fast lane. She claims to love Jake but is engaged with Mike, goes off to San Sebastian with Cohn and then falls in love with Romero. She is a person that sees something and will do whatever she wants to attain it. These type people are almost never satisfied. They think they will get satisfaction from something but when it doesn't come they move on. Brett is a perfect example of this and is never happy just with one person. I don't loath her, like I do Cohn, but she is just doesn't know when to stop and got on my nerves a few times.
Jake and Bill are obviously the best characters in the book. The best part in the book is when Jake is feeding Bill lines and he is just going off on random ideas.
"It wasn't a bicycle," I said. "He was riding horseback."
"I heard it was a tricycle."
"Well," I said. "A plane is sort of like a tricycle. The joystick works the same way."
"But you don't pedal it."
"No," I said, "I guess you don't pedal it."
"Let's lay off that," Bill said.
"All right. I was just standing up for the tricycle."
"I think he's a good writer, too," Bill said. "And you're a hell of a good guy. Anybody ever tell you were a good guy?"
"I'm not a good guy."
"Listen. You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are Lesbians under
their skin." (p 120-121)
This banter between Jake and Bill is hilarious and actually made me laugh out loud. Even after Bill called Jake impotent he was still able to get going again and make me laugh. Jake is the serious "straight man" who asks all the questions and facilitates the banter while Bill just rambles on and on about random things that make people laugh. Jake and Bill are also both out of the loop in Brett's man-chasing game which makes them a little more likable.
I like this post for a number of reasons. But mainly because it acknowledges that realism in the depiction of character will often (usually? always?) mean representing characters who "behave badly" at times--who are self-absorbed, arrogant, inconsiderate, whatever. And there's the added level in this novel of trying to gauge how much we actually don't like Cohn, and how much we're just under Jake's influence. (Likewise, we "like" Bill because he's really fun on the page--and we realize that this has everything to do with how Jake sees him and portrays him.)
ReplyDeleteI get impatient sometimes when readers talk about "likeable" characters, as if when reading a novel we just want to endorse everything these idealized versions of humanity do. I often wonder how likeable some of us might be if we were characters in a novel. Maybe it's perverse in a way, but I do *like* reading characters whom I don't necessarily "like" personally.