Why I Didn't Care for The Sun Also Rises

 The two most important elements of a story are the characters and the plot. I wanted to like The Sun Also Rises, but to be honest, I didn't like the story nor the characters in it.

Almost all of the characters got on my nerves in some manner. The novel centered around Jake, Brett, Cohn, and a few of their friends. There was little to no growth in them, even by the end of the story. Jake was annoying because he was insecure and tended to take it out on others by being bitter with them. He especially bullied Cohn for his weaknesses, and hypocritically mocked him for his attachment to women. It would have been better if he had been able to make some kind of change for his character to grow. Jake also spent the entirety of the story emotionally tied to Brett, with whom he had a very complex relationship. Even though he should have seen that she wasn't an option for him, nor was she even really interested in him romantically, he continued to follow her around. His character would have been stronger if he had become self-aware and wasn't such a hypocrite. Brett was also irksome to me since she treated others, especially Jake, poorly throughout the novel. I understand that she had some kind of trauma that made her think and act in certain ways, but it still doesn't excuse what she was doing to all those men. Like Jake, she does not learn anything nor grow as a person. Even Cohn never stood up for himself, and often was no better than Jake when it came to Brett. This may have been a stylistic choice on Hemmingway's behalf, but I found that it made for an unsatisfying ending with no resolution.

Additionally, I did not like the plot of the novel. It was very slice-of-life oriented like a soap opera and often didn't feel like it had much of a point. The characters would be like, 'Let's go do this thing in this place.' They would go do it, get drunk, bully each other, and then do something else. In fact, most of the story centered around them vacationing and drinking, and it just wasn't very enjoyable nor relatable to me. Many of the plot points served to be symbolic. For example, they went to watch bullfighting at the festival in Spain. The bullfights were a metaphor for how the characters interacted with one another. The writing style of Hemmingway tends to be more symbolic and 'below the surface'. Everything that is important in the story needed to be figured out through subtext. Generally, I prefer stories like Mrs. Dalloway where things were more laid out rather than nuanced. I also found it odd that there were no dialogue cues throughout the story, and it made the conversations seem flat.