Parallels Between The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

Parallels Between The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

During the decade of the 1920's, America was going through many changes, evolving from the Victorian Period to the Jazz Age. Changing with the times, the young adults of the 1920's were considered the "Lost Generation". The Great War was over in 1918. Men who returned from the war had the scars of war imprinted in their minds. The eighteenth amendment was ratified in 1919 which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of liquor in the United States. Despite the eighteenth amendment, most people think of large, lavish parties when thinking about the 1920's. The nineteenth amendment was passed in 1920 which gave women the right to vote, a major accomplishment in the women's right movement. Women traded in their long, pinned-up hair styles for short, stylish bob haircuts. Two great American literary writers emerged from the "Lost Generation": namely Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both men wrote their best novels during the 1920's in which they examined the evils of the time, and the consequences that accompanied the actions of the characters who acted on such vices. There are parallels between the vices of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and the vices of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: namely excessive alcohol consumption, sexual promiscuity, and the power of money.

The first parallel between a vice in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and a vice in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is that of excessive alcohol consumption. The character's in The Sun Also Rises; namely Brett Ashley, Jake Barnes, Robert Cohn, Mike Campbell and Pedro Romero, are residing in Europe were there is no prohibition on liquor. Whet...

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...oney and all the people he know through business contacts and the many parties he had thrown, only Nick and Gatsby's father attended his funeral.

In conclusion, there are several parallels of vices between Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: namely the excessive consumption of alcohol, sexual promiscuity, and the power of money.

WORKS CITED

Fitzgerald, Scott F. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribers, 1925.

Jones. Interview. Celebration. BBS message 1160. 10/11/94.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

McDowell, Nicholas. Hemingway. Vero Beach: Rourke, 1989.

Monique, Interview. Theme. BBS message 1755. 11/03/94.

Rood, Karen Lane, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1980.

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