The Sun Also Rises Theme of Exile
Nationality is a funny thing in The Sun Also Rises. While all of its characters are defined partially by their roots, there is an overwhelming sense that national boundaries are no longer satisfactory in the aftermath of the Great War.
The community we encounter in the novel is one of American and British expatriates living in France, in self-imposed exile from their respective homelands. The pressing need for escape, self-invention, and individuation from one’s country plays into the choices of the characters Hemingway shows us, as well as the fractured and unstable image of society he portrays.
Questions About Exile
- Do we have a sense of where Jake really calls "home?"
- Is Jake’s identity as an American something he is proud of at all?
- Jake and Cohn are both Americans in Paris—but for very different reasons. What are their reasons for being there?
Chew on This
Hemingway’s expatriates are responding to the unsettling sense that the old order of the world no longer applies in the wake of the First World War.
The reason that these characters are so lost is because they're expatriates, not because they're members of the generation that served in WWI.