David Walsh notes that Hemingway developed his voice during
a time when "the global capitalist system entered a widespread and
historic decline, characterised by the intense violence and destruction of
World War I." The war caused over 16 million deaths, led to the fall of
four empires, and sparked revolutionary upheavals across Europe that challenged
the capitalist elite's ability to control. These included the assassinations of
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, which Hemingway also referenced in his letters.[1]
In 1922, Ernest Hemingway, then a young reporter for the
Toronto Star, was dispatched to cover postwar Germany, three years after the
murders of January 15, 1919. In his reports and letters from that period,
Hemingway openly discussed the political atmosphere in the Weimar Republic,
expressly mentioning the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. He
described Berlin's environment, noting how discussions about the killings were
common in cafes, and highlighted that those responsible remained unpunished—an
indicator of the widespread corruption in the new German government. His
personal letters reveal a young man's moral outrage over the overt
counterrevolutionary violence carried out in the name of preserving
"order."
The novel's émigré characters, Jake Barnes, Lady Brett
Ashley, Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell, and Bill Gorton, are more than just lively
bohemians drifting through Paris cafes and Pamplona bullfights. They embody the
remnants of a social order that led a generation into brutal slaughter in
pursuit of rival imperialist ambitions, offering no real justification for the
mass casualties. Their excessive drinking, shallow romantic pursuits, and
constant travelling stem from an awareness that the civilisation that shaped
them is fundamentally morally corrupt. The term "Lost Generation"
represents more than their personal stories; it signifies a deep social and
historical crisis.
Hemingway's distinctive minimalist prose was more than just
a stylistic choice; it symbolised a rejection of the old order that caused
brutal conflicts. Walsh highlights that this style conveyed a disdain for
oppressive societal norms responsible for violence. After World War I, the
elaborate patriotic rhetoric used to justify sending young men to war became
fully discredited. Hemingway's terse, anti-rhetorical sentences acted as a
silent protest against the falsehoods of capitalist civilisation. His famous
"iceberg theory" suggests that more lies lie beneath the surface than
are visible, reflecting a world where official language often served as a means
of widespread deception.
This lends the novel a subtly devastating critical
perspective. Nothing in The Sun Also Rises is ever explicitly stated: the war's
horror, Jake's wound (rendered impotent by combat), and the difficulty of
authentic human connection in a society driven by money and social status—all
of it exists beneath the surface of concise, "matter-of-fact"
dialogue. The understated tone serves as the social critique.
Money, Class, and
the Illusion of Freedom
A detailed analysis of the novel reveals that its characters
are not truly without class. Their so-called freedom to move between Paris and
Pamplona, dine at upscale cafes, or follow the bullfighting scene is actually a
constructed sense of liberty. These contradictions create much of the story's
tension. Mike Campbell is depicted as impoverished. Robert Cohn's social
anxiety stems from his fears related to his class status as a wealthy American
Jew within European aristocratic circles. The novel's depiction of him also
reflects some period anti-Semitism and shows how class resentment and ethnic
bias are connected.
Brett Ashley's 'liberation' as a sexually liberated woman
mainly stems from her social status, and it does not lead to her genuine
happiness. The bullfight, or corrida, is the only part of the novel that really
highlights values like skill and courage traits that go beyond financial
influence, which explains why Hemingway's characters find it so engaging. The
novel consciously avoids passing moral judgment on this subject. Walsh points
out that Hemingway believed 'if a writer knows something well, he can omit key
details, which enhances the overall impact.' The crucial element missing here
is the economic basis of this 'freedom.' Readers instinctively sense the
significance of what has been omitted.
The Limits of
Individual Rebellion
From a Marxist view, the most authentic and significant
aspect of The Sun Also Rises is also its main flaw: it vividly shows the
tragedy of bourgeois society. However, it offers no remedy besides stoic
acceptance. The well-known ending, with Brett lamenting, "we could have
had such a damned good time together," and Jake's touching reply,
"Isn't it pretty to think so?" is among the most honest conclusions
in American literature. It fully rejects false comfort but ultimately signifies
a dead end.
Walsh describes this as representative of Hemingway's
overall perspective: "The moral and artistic mission Hemingway began in
the early 1920s was founded on the belief that personal courage and strength
are essential for success. However, this view conflicted with the complex
political problems of the 1930s and 1940s and proved inadequate."
The Sun Also Rises highlights this limitation both
artistically and meaningfully. The characters are unaware of their social
shortcomings and do not see their suffering as tied to larger societal issues.
Instead, their reactions to the war's destruction include seeking sensory
pleasures, embracing expatriate bohemia, and adopting stoicism, where
bullfighting serves as a symbolic stand-in for political involvement.
This flaw is not exclusive to Hemingway; it reveals a wider
issue in petty-bourgeois modernism. Although leading modernists showed
remarkable insight into problems in capitalist society, their focus on
individualism often closed their eyes to underlying class dynamics, limiting
their ability to propose effective solutions. As Walsh notes in his review
of the PBS documentary on Hemingway, "If Hemingway ultimately ranks below
Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald in your view, it partly stems from a
less critical stance towards American society."[2]
Limits of Academic "Political
Unconscious" Criticism
It's essential to briefly examine the dominant academic
perspective today, which tends to reduce 'The Sun Also Rises' to issues like
toxic masculinity, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. This view tends to confuse
surface-level symptoms with deeper problems. Although the novel does depict
some prejudices relevant to its time and setting, focusing solely on these
superficial elements through identity politics restricts a fuller
understanding. It neglects the social forces that shape these prejudices and
overlooks the novel's deeper themes. Rather than offering a comprehensive
social or historical critique, it simply categorises behaviours as acceptable
or unacceptable based on identity.
Marc Baldwin's "Hemingway's Political Unconscious"
exemplifies Western Marxist academic criticism using Fredric Jameson's
framework to analyse literature. The article makes a valuable contribution by
challenging the view of Hemingway as simply an apolitical craftsman of concise,
masculine prose. It emphasises that literary form is inherently infused with
ideology. The core argument—rooted in Lukács, Eagleton, and Jameson—that
"the true bearers of ideology in art are the very forms, rather than the
abstractable content"—is a significant insight of Marxist aesthetics. The
recognition that Hemingway's impressionism, his famous "iceberg
principle," and his narrator's silences are not merely aesthetic choices
but are ideologically charged ways of hiding historical contradictions
represents a notable progression beyond formalist or purely biographical
critiques.[3]
The article points out the shortcomings and distortions in
academic Western Marxism, especially within the Jamesonian school, when it
fails to adopt a truly materialist perspective on literature. Baldwin
accurately observes that Hemingway's narrator, Jake Barnes, does more than observe;
he actively constructs his reality through selective, reifying actions—breaking
down people into body parts, transforming social relations into impressionistic
sensations, and blending historical time into the "perpetual now."
This process reflects Lukács' concept of reification, in
which capitalist social relations transform human beings and relationships into
commodified objects—abstract, interchangeable units. Baldwin's interpretation
of the Pamplona scene, where Jake reduces the gay men to synecdochic fragments
such as "white hands, wavy hair, white faces," offers a clear
illustration of how Jake's attitude sustains the ideological frameworks of his
system.
The connection between the "perpetual now" and
ideological mystification is significant. Baldwin rightly notes that a prose
style that neglects historical context, presenting the world as a continuous,
shimmering surface of sensations, obscures acknowledgement of historical
change, class struggle, and social contradictions that impact the characters.
His statement that "Ideology needs its subjects to reside in the perpetual
now" is a sharp and perceptive observation.
The main theoretical concern in the article is its reliance
on Jameson's structuralist, psychoanalytic Marxism, which treats the text as a
self-contained system of ideological mechanisms. It fails to genuinely engage
with the historical social forces that influenced Hemingway's
development as a writer. Although Jameson's approach is sophisticated, it
resembles what Trotsky referred to as formalist Marxism, since it primarily analyses
ideology through narrative structure. Nonetheless, it overlooks the actual
class dynamics and historical circumstances that shaped Hemingway's development.
David Walsh offers a more realistic view. In
his article celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Hemingway's death,
Walsh places Hemingway within a historical context: as a writer influenced by
the imperialist slaughter of World War I, aiming to create a new literary
honesty suited for a world where the old ruling-class beliefs were exposed as
murderous lies. Walsh notes that Hemingway's succinct style carried "a
both moral and political dimension, inherently connected with revulsion against
the old order responsible for the brutal conflict and with the revolutionary
waves that dismantled empires." This shows a materialist outlook that
Baldwin completely lacks. For Baldwin, silences and omissions are ideological
tools used to maintain bourgeois dominance. In contrast, Walsh views them as
formal symbols of a real historical struggle—a sincere effort by an artist to
confront a broken world and find truthful language amid chaos.
Baldwin's framework also fails to sufficiently distinguish
between how ideology influences an external writer and what an artist
intentionally or unintentionally explores. Hemingway was not simply a vessel
for middle-class ideology. As Walsh observes, he was genuinely sensitive to
"the moral atmosphere of the time," which often placed him at odds
with the ruling elite. The FBI kept him under surveillance for decades.
Although his portrayal of the Spanish Civil War was affected by his alignment
with Stalinism, it still reflected an earnest engagement with the antifascist
movement. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" faced criticism from the
Stalinist press because some subtle elements of the GPU's brutal tactics subtly
appeared in the novel, despite Hemingway's political limitations.
This exposes a deeper flaw in Jamesonian cultural Marxism:
it frequently blurs the distinction between authentic artistic achievement and
ideological facade. The most significant Marxist aesthetic works—like Trotsky's
*Literature and Revolution*, Plekhanov's writings on art, and Lukács's early
works—argue that great art can transcend the class biases of its creator,
enabling an artist to convey truths beyond their own ideological viewpoint.
Hemingway, in his prime—such as in the Nick Adams stories, *A Farewell to
Arms*, and much of *The Sun Also Rises*—exemplifies this. The silences Baldwin
interprets as merely ideological repression are also, at their best, a formal
reflection of something emotionally and historically genuine: the deep shock
experienced by individuals whose worlds have been shattered yet are unable to
express clearly what has happened to them.
According to a deeper Marxist interpretation, Hemingway's
decline as a writer in the 1930s and later periods is seen as more of a
political and historical failure rather than an aesthetic one. His connection
to American celebrity culture, his quasi-Stalinist position during the Spanish
Civil War, and his misinterpretation of the Trotskyist critique of Popular
Front politics restricted his understanding. These issues eventually resulted
in a defensive attitude, cynicism, and reticence—traits Baldwin identifies as
fundamental to his approach from the start. This approach was well-suited to
the post-World War I period. Still, it became increasingly inadequate during
the crises of the 1930s and 1940s, which demanded a broader, more historically
conscious artistic outlook. Hemingway failed to rise to this challenge, not
mainly because of his narrative style, but because he lacked the necessary
political insights.
In summary, Baldwin's article presents a complex Marxist
academic critique that sheds light on key aspects of Hemingway's writings.
However, it replaces genuine historical materialism with a focus on structural
ideology critique, thereby overlooking Hemingway's true literary
accomplishments and the specific historical factors behind his limitations and
decline. The WSWS approach to literary criticism—grounded in the actual history
of the 20th century, including Stalinism's role in betraying workers and
confusing the intelligentsia—provides a more profound and accurate framework
for understanding a writer like Hemingway.
Conclusion
The Sun Also Rises remains a crucial read, not despite
its flaws but because of them. It is among the most honest accounts of how
World War I affected a generation and, by extension, the concept of bourgeois civilisation
itself. Its deep pessimism is a form of honest truth-telling. However, it
cannot offer what only the Marxist movement could provide then and still can:
an understanding of the class forces behind the catastrophe and a plan to
overcome them through revolutionary unity of the international working class.
This is not a critique of Hemingway's talent — rather, it acknowledges what art
alone cannot achieve, emphasising the ongoing need for political struggle.
Notes
Hemingway on PBS: The American writer who sought “the truest
sentence that you know” www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/10/hemi-a10.html
[1]
Fifty years since the death of Ernest Hemingway- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/07/hemi-j06.html
[2]
Hemingway on PBS: The American writer who sought “the truest sentence that you
know”- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/10/hemi-a10.html
[3]
"To Make It into a Novel... Don't Talk about It": Hemingway's
Political Unconscious
Author(s): Marc D. Baldwin The Journal of Narrative Technique , Fall,
1993, Vol. 23, No. 3
