Comparison Of Jake In As I Lay Dying And The Sun Also Rises

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While Faulkner writes with complex, disorganized sentences, and Hemingway writes more simply, both authors have distinctive styles that capture the feeling of discontentment in their fictional characters, such as Jake in The Sun Also Rises and Darl in As I Lay Dying, by supplying insight on their daily life and the environment surrounding them. While Jake’s discontentment is created by a war injury and Darl’s sadness is caused by his mother’s death, Jake tries to conceal his emotions while Darl chooses to confront his issues directly. In The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes is described as being both physically and emotionally damaged because of a war wound that impaired him during WWI. This is the cause for Jake’s discontentment. After his injury …show more content…

When Jake talks to Brett about his wound for a short moment, he says, “Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it” (34). Jake tries to ignore his emotions as well as the discomforting awareness he has of the injury. After he says that he doesn’t think about his wound, Hemingway doesn’t supply additional information on Jake’s feelings to show that the character doesn’t want to continue revealing his hidden thoughts to Brett. At the end of the novel she says, “Oh Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.” And Jake replies, “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so” (251). Hemingway perfectly captures Jake’s feeling of discontentment as well as the concealment of his emotions. Jake is troubled by the thoughts of his impotency and by keeping his response short and precise, the quotation highlights Jake choice to ignore his feelings. “Typical of Hemingway’s dialogue style, the brief, seemingly empty exchanges between characters express the depths of their disillusionment” (Ostman). With the use of this quotation from a secondary source, it is evident that Hemingway uses an uncomplicated dialogue to show the discontentment that Jake continuously lives through each day. While Hemingway uses a simplistic style to demonstrate Jake’s discontentment, William Faulkner writes with more intricate and elaborate

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