Thesis: Nature has a greater power over the people and gives them more enjoyment and strength, fills people with freshness and adds a lot of bright feelings in contrast with city, which is heavy and puts a person in limited surroundings that have pressure over the people inside it.
Nature stands out in the works of Ernest Hemingway and takes control over people’s lives and their fate. In the novel The Sun also Rises it has a significant role as a power that helps people feel freedom and be with their inside world.
The main characters come to do some fishing this episode puts the main accent that all of them lead an empty life that is insignificant. The world of nature is opposed to cruelty and violence that fills the city life. Nature is a total philosophy. As soon as it appears in the pages of the novel it is possible to see that the author assigned it with several ideological and aesthetic functions. The problem of a man and nature is important making this theme developed in this literary work. Nature helps the main character of Fiesta to stand the difficulties of life and works as a spiritual healer to his moral and physical wounds and serves as an eternal source of joy.
The question of unity between man and nature, the idea of the eternity of nature and the fragility of human life is raised with the help of the episode of fishing in the story. All nature’s power and beauty is contrasted with the depiction of city that holds everything inside. The city has no fresh air, so it is hard to breathe there.
Alcohol and other negative features are available in the city making the easiest and fastest way for the person to experience the destruction of life and its beauty. There is no chance for a person to find healing in the city because it is full of violence, ugliness and evil. The image of nature, saving and eternal power, extends substantially through the novel Fiesta where it grows to the extent of a symbolic character and remains eternal, as a hero. Nature is opposed to human vanity. And to emphasize this, Hemingway’s novel is prefaced with two epigraphs.
The first one is of the lost generation, and the second of Ecclesiastes, begins with majestic words: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever”. The episode when Jake and Bill go fishing and enjoy their time together is one of the most important episodes in the novel. The author helps the reader to see the total difference of nature and how it influences the relations between people and opposes it to the picture of city life. There in the city everything is uncertain and double sided. No one can be sure of the feelings of others and violence is predominant over the life in general. Nature helps Jake to feel the clean and open side of the life and forget about his injures. Relaxed and fresh feelings are predominant for the characters when they decide to go outside the city’s chaos and stuffed air.
The author makes a stronger accent on the accepting of the nature by the characters and intensifies that they are the part of the city, a part of chaos and violence. The party came to the countryside and here comes the moment when the reader can clearly see that they are the lost generation. They cannot understand the beauty of nature and enjoy the power of it on the contrary they bring their city’s violence with them making it harder fighting of nature against the evil of town.
Taking into consideration the fact that all of them finally enjoyed their stay outside the city and experienced the nature’s beauty and power, it is clear that nature is very symbolic and powerful character that has a greater impact on the main characters that anything else.
All of the characters are not able to feel the beauty of nature but destroy it. Through the whole their tri they are focused on themselves and cannot get a full look of the nature surrounding them. They are focused on their inner problems, their thoughts and are excited about their plans for the future. However, neither their lives nor plans for the future are not valuable and significant in the general meaning and are even empty and pointless in regards with the life in its broad meaning. No one of them can focus on the nature and see its beauty of details and the smallest features.
The only moment when the author depicts the nature and changes the focus of the whole novel to the nature itself is when six trout fishes are lying dead on the stone and the author gives the full look of it. This episode emphasizes the pointless life of the main characters and aimless existence of the human generation in general. They enjoy the wrong beauty — the beauty of destruction and see their future in ruining the nature for the sake of pointless and sinned life. When they are back in the city there is no such freedom and beauty anymore. City is pointless and empty leading the people to the future that has no meaning that can be significant.
Chaotic features are produced by their way of life that is made of drinking and relations with the opposite sex. There is no enjoyment of the beauty because there is not any beauty in the city with its sinned and aimless society. Even Jake that has a sense of beauty and is able to enjoy life as it is cannot see the pointless life and understand that the generation of people he lives with is lost and has no chance to have the right way in life. However, the author made it possible for Jake to be different than the others by making a sacrifice of his physical ability.
This also adds to the feeling that to enjoy life and its beauty one should give out something and live without it. For others it is impossible to see the nature and experience its beauty making it sad and vain existence for them.
By way of conclusion, the nature is the only source of all the good and beautiful in the life and in order to see that one should sacrifice some of the personal powers. Nature has no limits and offers a good opportunity to be the person one is without putting on any masks or costumes. Nature gives one the power to be real and feel the beauty of life, see the future in bright colors and move forward to the unlimited aim and to have plans for the future. Nature lets the person be beautiful and do creation instead of destruction.
The opposition to city is clear and depicts all the vanity of life inside the city. The reader can see the negative side of life and is limited by city’s walls and restricted from thinking about productive and positive future by destructive character of the existence. No one can fight the ugliness of the inner side of the city and everybody is under its silent power. It is much easier for people to stand on the evil side than fight against it and the author helps the reader see that in the contrast with the nature. Though the episode with the nature is significantly smaller with depiction of the city life, it is more powerful and influential over the reader. However, by giving so little place to nature depiction he intensifies the destructive power of city that restricts people’s freedom and worsens their lives.