The plot moves forward in Chapter V, as Cohn announces his attraction to Brett. Additionally, Cohn’s questions to Jake provide Hemingway with an opportunity to share background on Brett. According to Jake, she is thirty-four years old and seeking a divorce from her second husband, the British Lord Ashley, so she can marry a Scotsman named Mike Campbell. Jake also says that Brett is “a drunk.”
Significantly, Brett was a kind of nurse during World War I—which is to say that, like Jake, she is a veteran. Not only that; Brett’s “own true love” died during wartime. She has experienced a tragic romance. Again, Cohn did not serve in the Great War, and his relations with women have been prosaic.
The start of this chapter offers the best example so far of the Hemingway style. Notice the short sentences (“It was a fine morning”), and the emphasis on specificity (so many place names, for a single paragraph) and on concrete detail. Also note the intentional repetition: “All along people were going to work. It felt pleasant to be going to work.” Later in Chapter V, most of the text is dialogue—and untagged dialogue, at that (no “he said” or “I said”). This, too, was a Hemingway innovation.
