The survivors of WW1

The Sun also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
If you are interested in finding out how the First World War affected the lives of the survivors, Ernest Hemingway’s «The sun also rises» is a good place to start - a thinly disguised autobiographical novel of Hemingway’s own experiences in Paris in the twenties. The action revolves around Hemingway,  personified as Jake and those of his friends in an English-speaking, expat environment.
With its cryptic language and multiple characters, the novel is not easy to get into, but as the  novel unfolds, the drama comes to the surface.
The book is essentially an exploration of the inter-personal relationships of a group of people trying to come to terms with the psychological effects and trauma of the war.
Life in Paris is governed by frantic rounds of hard drinking and socialising in a search for peace, happiness and a «normal» way of life.
Nature triumphs in the end as Jake rediscovers peace and contentment in a fishing trip to Spain. Age-old traditions such as the Pamplona bull-fighting, also put life into perspective for the heroes of the book.
In all the noise made recently over the First World War commemorations and the soldiers who died, nothing has been said about the people who survived. Post-WW1 «peace-time» is not necessarily synonymous with internal peace for the survivors.  How a whole generation of people all around the world had to cope with post-WW1 trauma for the rest of their lives, makes an interesting study and should perhaps give us lessons on how we can learn from history…..

Flying Kiwi
Brussels    November 2017