Hemingway as a Pessimist

Schmigalle, Gunther. “How People Go to Hell:” Pessimism, Tragedy, and Affinity to Schopenhauer in The Sun Also Rises. Rev. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway Review vol. 25 (2005): 9-21.

This criticism offers a somewhat gloomy view of the novel for the reader, but it constructs this view from a philosophical source, Arthur Schopenhauer. Schmigalle’s point of view is that, after careful reading of Schopenhauer’s work on philosophical pessimism, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises falls into the genre of tragedy because of its close connection to this philosophical traditions of pessimism. Though Schmigalle has a total of seven points in which he argues his outlook on the novel’s narration, his first, The Epigraphs, is the most important in our situation. The passage from Ecclesiastes in particular, Schmigalle writes, is “not on regeneration but on repetition”(11) ultimately means a “non-existence of progress.”(11) Interpreting the exert in this way is how Schmigalle connects Hemingway to Schopenhauer. This section of the criticism will be the main focus of this commentary for the sake of helping the reader to answer the research question.

At first glace, this might seem a dismal way to look at the novel but Schmigalle reminds the reader that philosophical pessimism is different from everyday pessimism in that philosophical pessimism is simply a more realistic way of looking at the and its overall negatives.Its rather easy to agree with Schmigalle that The Sun Also Rises is full of negatives, but does Hemingway ever lead us to believe that the SAR characters overcome these negatives? On the Contrary, Hemingway makes his characters repeat their mistakes. As a result, repetition plays a large role in the novel and if the reader keeps this in mind, he or she can see what Scmigalle is getting at. For example, this idea leads the reader to see the epigraph from Ecclesiastes as a description of the world and it’s never ending repetition, not its regeneration. This repetition is the reason things seem new but in actuality, they have happened many times before. With this view, the reader might consider if Jake’s struggle is worth any value; I believe Schopenhauer and Schmigalle would say no.