The Sun Also Rises: the story our history books fail to tell

Quoting the poet Gertrude Stein in his epigraph, "you are all a lost generation", Earnest Hemingway preludes his novel, The Sun Also Rise, with a somber tone. Throughout this tale of a motley crew of expatriates traveling from Paris to Pamplona, Hemingway highlights the tragic loss of masculinity, the aimless wandering of the post World War I generation, and the unrequited love between multiple characters.
The story begins with a simple description of Robert Cohn: a Princeton graduate who was ostracized for being Jewish and ultimately falling prey to the claws of social-climbing women. However, through the narration of the main character, Jake Barnes, we discover more about Barnes than we do Cohn. Jake is a war veteran (unlike Cohn) who hides behind a complacent façade and only truly reveals his opinions and desires through his observations of others. After several chapters, we are also introduced to Lady Brett Ashley; a sexually independent woman who revels in her numerous affairs with various men (including most of the men in Jake's group of friends), Brett is immediately characterized as the most masculine of the bunch based on her sexuality and freedom from the need to commit. Though other characters are also thrown into the mix, such as Mike, Bill, Harvey, and Pedro Romero, these three are the essentials to the story.
Following the group from the alcohol infested night scene of Paris in the 1920's, to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, Hemingway allows for subtle conflict to explode violently. Each character is ultimately tied to the other through sex, the war, false friendship, of simply coincidental acquaintance. What remains constant, however, between the characters is a sense of lost purpose and, naturally, that they're all alcoholics.
Earnest Hemingway has been praised for his simplistic style of prose yet in this first book, it becomes strikingly apparent that Hemingway's attitude for "less is more" is undeniably correct. As a journalist and short-story author, Hemingway had already concreted his status as a writer before The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926; however, this novel became one of the quintessential stories depicting the postwar era of the 1920's. With ease, Hemingway eloquently describes the struggle between Jake and Brett and their unrequited love while also highlighting the loss of masculinity between all the male characters as they struggle to control Brett. It is perhaps, also, that in this simplistic style of writing, Hemingway more clearly conveys to the reader how lost this group of characters (and ultimately, his generation) really is. The dialogue between each character hides their true thoughts and feelings and is so brief it's a wonder they know anything about one another to actually consider themselves friends. Only through Jake, the narrator, do we hear the contradicting thoughts of a man who drowns himself in alcohol to make up for his impotence and lost innocence the war has taken from him. We can only assume that through the dialogue that Hemingway provides us, that each man (and Brett) struggles with the aftermath of the war either through denial, humor, sarcasm, sex, or massive amounts of alcohol.
This novel is horribly filled with angst yet a must read even for the most unromantic at heart. The simplistic style of Hemingway allows for a tragic romance that most high school boys wouldn't label as a 'chick novel' and ought to read simply to recognize a great writer and to truly understand an era that our history books do not adequately describe. Though most would term this novel a pessimistic one which highlights the darkest effects a war can have on a man, it is surprisingly optimistic in the end. As Hemingway wrote, "the sun also rises"; despite a lost generation that wanders around hopelessly in search of anything to fill the void the war has left in them, the Earth continues to spin and the sun continues to rise and fall, completely indifferent to our short comings and inadequacies.