Since Bill isn't a great talker nor is he a great
observer, his comments about his surroundings compared to Jake's, the narrator's,
comments not only seem paltry in quantity but are paltry in content. In Chapter X of
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Jake waxes lyrical--within the
confines of Hemingway's minimalistic style--about the beautiful
surroundings:
we came out of the mountains, and there were
trees along both sides of the road, and a stream and ripe fields of grain, and the road
went on, very white and straight ahead, and then lifted to a little rise, and off on the
left was a hill with an old castle
...
In the back seat, Cohn is
asleep, thus making no comments, but Bill was awake. When Jake calls his attention to
the surroundings, he looks around and responds by nodding his head. So much for deeply
felt aesthetic and eloquence.
Later, in Chapter XI, Bill comments on how nice
the Basque people are and then on how cold it is up where they have traveled to for
fishing. He elaborates on this comment by saying:
"My God!" said Bill. "It can't be this cold
to-morrow. I'm not
going to wade a stream in this
weather."
He follows this up
with more remarks on how cold it is and then asks for hot rum punch to warm up with
because the piano playing he has commenced will not keep him warm for long. Aside from a
comment on Jake's appropriation of a bottle of rum for the hot rum punch, his final
comment is on how windy the surroundings are.
This
comparison shows that while Jake engages with his surroundings, making observations and
judgments, Bill clearly does not. He seems only to engage with his own sensory
perceptions, an assessment exemplified by his exclamations over the cold, his demand for
hot rum punch, and his ending comment about the blowing of the wind, which contrasts
dramatically with the passive nod of his head in acknowledgment to his
surroundings.
No comments:
Post a Comment