It has been suggested that the final chapter of The Sun Also Rises is unnecessary, as the conflicts of its major characters were for the most part resolved by the end of Book II. But most novels feature some sort of denouement (literally, “unraveling”), a dramatization, by the author, of the ways in which the world has been changed by the action of the book. (Think of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the final pages of which show us the protagonist’s once-perfect lawn now overgrown, with Nick Carraway preparing to return to the Midwest.) One sense in which The Sun Also Rises is a Modern, even radical, book is in its insistence that change (or change for the better, at least) is a myth. After 250 pages overflowing with almost-uninterrupted violence, alcohol abuse, and sex, the novel’s characters end up exactly where they began: Cohn is presumed to be with Frances; Bill is in Paris; Mike is still engaged to Brett, who still plans to marry him; and Brett is, of course, miserable, and turning to Jake for comfort—comfort he is all too willing to provide, at the expense of his own sanity.
The early Moderns presumed that technology would make life easier, happier, better. Similarly, the Great War was called “the war to end all wars”—as if human beings had finally evolved to the point where wars would be unnecessary. And yet it is precisely technology, in the form of airplanes and submarines, machine guns and mustard gas, that made the conflict of 1914–1918 so universally devastating. Unlike the American pilgrims on the French train, and even the English tourists from Biarritz, the veterans of World War I who populate The Sun Also Rises know the brutal truth that nothing has changed—that nothing can change, because human nature can’t change. Thus, the only possible ending for this book is one that mirrors the beginning, with the awesomely attractive and yet profoundly destructive Brett once again taking advantage of Jake’s decency and desire. In fact, Brett has actively refused to change—for Romero, who requested that she grow her hair out (that is, behave more conventionally for the sake of his pleasure). On the other hand, she does resist his charms and insist that Romero leave her for his own good, and this, indeed, seems evidence of growth.
The bulk of the chapter is therefore taken up by a series of strangely quiet scenes in which Jake Barnes eats, drinks, swims, and so on. Remember, however, the scene in which he is joined while sunning on a raft off of San Sebastian by a boy and girl at the raft’s opposite end who do little besides talk quietly but are obviously in love. The point about this episode, and the others like it in Chapter XIX, is that Jake is alone. He is rehearsing for the rest of his sorrowful life. This is a bitterly sad book, because Jake’s injury is apparently permanent. Jake can only be tortured by women to whom he is attracted, feeling a desire for them that he cannot satisfy.
Once again and to the very last, black humor abounds. A bike racer cannot ride properly due to the boils that have developed in his crotch; ride is slang for sexual intercourse. (“Want to go for a ride?” Jake asks Brett in the final scene. Of course, the ride he would prefer is impossible.) A soldier near the beach has only one arm, the other having been symbolically castrated. In the Hotel Montana, Jake cannot make the elevator to Brett’s floor work. Finally, after Brett’s almost obscenely absurd contention that she and Jake “could have had such a damned good time together,” we observe a policeman directing traffic who, Jake says, “raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.”
Note the contrast between Spain and France that is reiterated in this chapter. In France, there is “a safe, suburban feeling,” which stands in opposition to the wild, frontier quality of Spain. “It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain,” Jake tells us. He also tells us that living in France is a simple matter of paying for the things you want, while in Spain the situation is much more complicated. Money is not enough. (“The Spaniards . . . did not know how to pedal,” says a bike racer; Hemingway is punning on peddle, meaning “to sell.”) France, therefore, is a kind of cleaned-up illusion about life, while Spain, in this book, represents life itself: unpredictable and often difficult. Remember, however, that Jake returns to Spain, and it is in Spain that the book ends. Despite his Sisyphean situation, Jake Barnes nevertheless chooses to engage with the world and all its insurmountable difficulties. He chooses life.
