Honors Literature Blog

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Ernest Hemingway develops the theme of being in undesirable situations through imagery, allusion, and paradox. A main sub-theme that really ties in with this is corruption.

In a large portion of this book, Ernest Hemingway is describing the scenery around him. In doing so, he is using the literary device of imagery. He first gives a very good idea of where he is, and what is going on around him, so that the reader feels more involved. “I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotande, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dome, it’s tables running out to the edge of the pavement.” After he’s finished describing his surroundings in depth, he’ll explain the events that unfold at his ending location. Once he has put the reader in this mindset, he makes way for an explanation of how many of the main characters hate where they are a lot of the time – among which are Lady Ashley and Robert Cohn. This helps along the theme.

At the beginning of the book, he describes how his friend, Cohn, read the book “The Purple Land” by W.H. Hudson – which is an allusion. He talks about how this book temporarily changed Cohn’s views on the world and on life, and suddenly made him desperate to get away. “The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described…Cohn, I believe, took every word of ‘The Purple Land’ as literally as though it had been an R.G. Dun report.” This is yet another representation of the theme, in which Cohn’s current situation was undesirable, and he wished to get away (to South Africa), so that he could fulfill unlikely fantasies from fictional books.

Another literary device Ernest Hemingway uses is Paradox. In the first chapter of the book, he has the following to say about his friend, Robert Cohn: “He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy…” However, as it shows Cohn throughout the story, he progressively gets more and more angry and violent. Towards the end, Cohn reaches the peak of his anger, and a fistfight ensues. This can all be directly related to Brett, since she is what the conflict is about with all of the main characters. This is a perfect example of the sub-theme, which is corruption. Someone who is perfectly nice and shy (and engaged) let himself get sucked into a 5-way love triangle, and virtually ruin his entire romantic life.

The reason all of the events in the book happen is because of the theme – undesirable situations. It is the reason for the entire central conflict, as well as what drives the plot forward. Brett finds herself in an undesirable situation with all the men she dates, and as a result, the men she dates find themselves in an undesirable situation with one another, and all the while, they are living in a place they find undesirable, or have to deal with people or situations they find undesirable. From beginning to end, this theme is maintained, thus making the ending – and the book – quite undesirable.