Like Hemingway's later novel A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises offers the reader two stories in one: a war story and a love story. What's remarkable about this book — truly radical, really — is the fact that it features no scenes of battle whatsoever (not even in flashback) and no love scenes. Hemingway took on an enormous challenge when he wrote this, his first full-length novel. Most readers would agree that he rose to that challenge and perhaps surpassed it.
Some necessary historical background: World War I (or the Great War, as it was known at the time) began in August 1914 with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The war pitted the Central Powers (Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) against the allied forces of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy, who were joined in 1917 by the United States. Largely as a result of the entry of the U.S. into the conflict (by which time Russia had withdrawn and Italy was effectively defeated), the Great War ended in victory for the Allies. Both sides agreed to an armistice on November 11, 1918.
Other nicknames for World War I were "the War to End All Wars" and "the War to Save Democracy." There was a feeling on the part of many Americans who were drafted in 1917 and 1918 (as well as those like Hemingway himself who enlisted for service in the armed forces of other allied nations before the U.S. entered the fighting) that they were involved in a conflict that would change the world in fundamental ways. Additionally, most returned home after the armistice far more worldly and sophisticated than when they left. And yet, the Americans who hadn't served were as provincial and isolationist as they'd been before the war — more so, in fact, as a new mood of conservatism swept the country.
