This study will provide a review of Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, focusing specifically on two characters, Jake Barnes and Robert Cohn. The study will consider the characters as outsiders, what qualifies them as outsiders and members of the "lost generation," their isolation from each other and their fellow human beings, and the ramifications of their status as outsiders and lost generation members.
On first glance, Jake and Robert could not stand in greater contrast to each other. Jake is a part of the circle of characters in the book, while Robert is clearly an outsider, even a despised outsider. Their relationship reflects this apparent contrast as well---Jake longs to a part of Jake's circle, while Jake has ill-disguised contempt for Robert. Despite these surface differences, however, the two men are in fact both outsiders. The question is, outside of what? As members of the lost generation, from what are they lost? The answers are that both men are outside of life itself, and the redeeming power of love that life can give those capable of yielding to life. They are members of a generation which has lost faith in life, in love, and in their ability to partake fully in life and love.
Immediately we see the relationship of the narrator/protagonist Jake with Robert:
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being a Jew at Princeton (11).
Although Jake is in every way a complex and ambivalent character, in general he has disdain for Robert because he pursues boxing even though he does not even like it. To Jake, such a pursuit shows that Jake is an inauthentic character, a man who lives not according to his own inner-directed...