History of the Critical Reception of the Sun Also Rises Term Paper

Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. Specifically, it will offer a history of the critical reception of "The Sun Also Rises." This will show how the text was interpreted since the time of its publication, highlighting those critics who made a major contribution to new ways of interpreting it. Critics have looked at this book for decades, and many have come up with some interesting interpretations that challenge the reader to think more deeply about what they read.

THE SUN ALSO RISES

Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" is an enduring classic, which has raised numerous criticisms since its release in 1926. From the day it was released to present times, critics continue to read and review the book, and so, the book is continually being reevaluated, with new interpretations corresponding to changes in society and culture. One critic noted its immediate success and influence on the reading public.

It was an immediate but not a sensational success, with 26,000 copies sold in the first year. Then, gradually, people began to notice what a widespread effect it was having on the new generation, the one that came of age after World War I. Hemingway, as Lord Byron had done a century before, gave the young people attitudes to strike and patterns of conduct to follow. They not only wrote like him, if they wrote, and walked with his rolling slouch if they had seen him, but also drank like his heroes and heroines, cultivated a hard-boiled melancholy and talked in page after page of Hemingway dialogue (Cowley 50).

They were the "lost generation," and dozens of critics have noted how they not only identified with Hemingway's works, the emulated them, and took them directly to their hearts and minds, and "The Sun Also Rises" was their anthem.Critics have usually heralded the book for its form, its characterization, and its dialogue. However, there have been other reviews of the novel that dug deeper, looking into religious issues, the masculinity of the characters, and how the novel portrayed the survivors of the First World War.

Another critic believes the novel is quite anti-Semitic, and notes, "When he [Hemingway] writes about the values of Catholicism in "The Sun Also Rises" there is a strong implication that Protestantism fails to understand the issues" (Berman 33). He goes on to note that the time-period when the book was written was notoriously anti-Semitic, and Hemingway's adherence to this social thought of the time is evident throughout the novel. "That is a large issue in the text of 'The Sun Also Rises.' In this novel Catholic intellectual authority is levelled against Jewish skeptical presumption in the guise of progressive Protestant style" (Berman 33). Berman also cites several other earlier critics who also subscribe to the anti-Semitism theme in the book.

With respect to Cohn, Michael Reynolds identifies certain "signals" obvious to "the American reader in 1926" about his group identity: because Cohn comes from a rich and old New York family he belongs also "to the Jewish establishment, which many thought to be a threat to the American way of life" ("SAR In Its Time" 53). And, his individual "dislikable characteristics" are "never" separated from his "Jewishness." In fact, when Reynolds examines the historical context, he concludes flatly that its anti-Semitism is directed not at Cohn as an individual but at "a rich New York Jew who did not know his place" (54) (Berman 33).

Critics do not have an answer to why Hemingway wrote so critically of Jews, but they do agree that character.....