The way in which Ernest Hemingway’s novel is representative of the Avant Garde movement in American literature is with his use of gaps and fragmentation in the dialogue of the novel, the implementation of the idea of there being no absolute truths and that there has been a breakdown of traditional religious belief systems due to the disillusioning effects of World War One.
With the dialogue between the characters, emotional responses are suggested rather that fully explained even when the characters seemed to be engaged in an intimate conversation. For example when Bill and Jake are on their fishing trip, there is a lot more being suggested under the surface of their short lines and snippets of conversation. For instance when Bill asks Jake about “this Brett business” (128), this central theme of the novel, Jake and Brett’s relationship, is spoken of for not even half a page. Yet the reader still gets the sense that the Jake is going over the subject and is having emotional response to what’s being said, but Hemingway does not tell the reader exactly what those response are, but instead leaves us to fill in the gaps. But for the reader this does not happen readily, as knowledge of the characters nature is also not fully explained but is shown through the characters dialogue with each other and with their actions throughout the story.
The idea of there being no absolute truths and the break down of traditional religious beliefs can be conveyed through Jakes struggle to find meaning and values in this new world where the old values have disintegrated. Jake’s struggle can be seen with the line, “Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it”(152). In the Victorian age, there was this idea that as an individual and as a society, there were theses absolute truths that could be understood and that were provided by the established religious tradition. Daniel Joseph Singal speaks of these Victorian ideals in his article “Towards a Definition of American Modernism” by stating that “at the core of [the Victorian] culture stood a distinctive set of bedrock assumptions. These include a belief in a predicable universe presided over by a benevolent God and governed by immutable natural laws” and that human beings were capable or arriving at fixed truths about life (114). While fishing with Bill in Spain, Jake speaks of being a technical Catholic (128-129). This idea of being technically apart of a religious tradition perhaps is one of the reasons why the old ways of thinking about religion fell apart. The Victorian mindset seemed to be that one is born into this religious tradition and this tradition is the very foundation of society so one should try and live according to these ideals; ideals that one can supposedly gain or learn simply by adhering to the established rules in which their civilized society has interpreted this religious wisdom. Yet many of these Christian nations, with centuries of religious wisdom, ended up in a gigantic slaughter so there is clearly something wrong. The idea that there is a shift happening in thinking and reasoning is summed up in the line “Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned what from what it was all about”(152). What this idea is suggesting is that maybe we’ve been gong about this backwards. Perhaps we shouldn’t assume that there are these fixed ideas about the meaning of life that are obvious to the “civilized” and that are clearly found or provided for by simply being apart of an established religious order. Perhaps we should work the other way around, as is suggested by Jake, instead of starting with an absolute conclusion, perhaps we should try and learn how to live in life and from that, maybe we will form some idea about what our values are instead of just assuming they are intact or easy to identify.
This book represents the gigantic shifts in attitudes, values and reasoning that became about after the First World War. But as the lives of these characters indicate, the shift is not an easy one. As constraining and narrow as the old dogmatic and absolute truths of the Victorian generation are, the prospect of not having any central meaning to life, of having to develop ones own values from the wisdom gained through life’s lessons is a daunting task. Yet the new ideas that are being to emerge at this time will continue to develop and help to shape America in the twentieth century.

Work Cited

Singal, Daniel Joseph. Towards a Definition of American Modernism. American Quarterly 1981.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York, Scribner, 2006