The Sun Also Rises

by

Ernest Hemingway

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Themes and Colors
The Lost Generation Theme Icon
Sport Theme Icon
Masculinity and Insecurity Theme Icon
Sex and Love Theme Icon
Nature Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sun Also Rises, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature Theme Icon

The social scene in The Sun Also Rises takes place mostly in bars, cafes and restaurants. Between the meals and drinks are journeys along Parisian streets and across the square in Pamplona. For most of the novel, there is a noticeable lack of natural landscape. The action is urban and repetitive. There are descriptions of drinking and dialogue instead of the sky or the weather. There is also a sense that since the war, civilization has been moving away from nature and from natural experiences. The characters are dissatisfied with city life and suggest trip after trip to try to find satisfaction, but these urban rituals keep repeating themselves, until Jake's brief excursions into nature, which give momentary peace and escape. There are several of these excursions, including the bullfight, with its display of the violence of nature, and Jake's trip to the sea, where he steps out into the water and finds simple pleasure in being able to see only the sky around him. Then there is also the fishing trip that Jake takes with Bill, which Hemingway describes in language that lacks the undercurrents of emptiness and dissatisfaction present in the city scenes. "This is country," says Bill as they arrive in the beautiful area they have chosen for their fishing – both men feel that the natural landscape has something real and essential in it that the town does not have.

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Nature ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Nature appears in each chapter of The Sun Also Rises. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Nature Quotes in The Sun Also Rises

Below you will find the important quotes in The Sun Also Rises related to the theme of Nature.
Chapter 4 Quotes
I passed Ney's statue standing among the new-leaved chetnut trees in the arc-light. […] He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green new horse-chetnut leaves. – Jake
Related Characters: Jake Barnes (speaker)
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing. – Jake
Related Characters: Jake Barnes (speaker)
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see. You hang around cafés."– Bill
Related Characters: Bill Gorton (speaker), Jake Barnes
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis: