Why Try?: Illuminating the Darkness Proposed by Ecclesiastes

Earl, Rovit, and Brenner Gary. "The Sun Also Rises:" An Essay in Applied Principles. Ernest Hemingway, Rev. New York, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1986. 128-142.

Rovit and Breener’s The Sun Also Rises: An Essay in Applied Principles hypothetically accepts the point of view of Jake’s narration in order to explain the search for the post war generation’s idea of “exchange value.” (140) This exchange value is measured by what a person gets out of life compared to what they put in. The article goes on to explain each character’s value system and concludes with Jake’s inability to retrieve his purchase because of his mentality that has been set by his war wound: “for many expatriates the war and the consequent moral vacuum were mere excuses for a life of empty sensationalism…” (140) Yet for others- and especially Jake- “the stock market of morality crashed and the bottom fell out of an instinctive rationale for life.” (140) This “wrestle for meaning” (142) Rovit and Breener’s work explains is exactly what helps Jake to make something out of what appears to be nothing and separate himself from the lost generation in which he lives, challenging the reader to observe the novel as an epistemological quest.

The article claims that the quote from Ecclesiastes “documents in full, unsparing detail the meaningless ant lives of petty, ephemeral humanity making its small noise of pleasure and sacrifice” (141) which Jake supersedes in his struggle for meaning. This view infers that the quote from Ecclesiastes illuminates the meaninglessness of the ever-regenerating world in which we live and that when we’re gone everything we have worked for goes with us. So why try? The reader might choose to accept this view of Jake’s narration and read with dramatic irony, knowing that Jake’s struggle is meaningless while Jake fights onward. Another choice is to at the end of the article. The close of this article suggests that this struggle for meaning and finding our own values as Jake does is worth the fight and echoes Emerson’s belief that “The Sun Shines to-day also.” (142) This final thought seems to point out that it is not about what is left afterward, but what is there in the present, inferring that meaninglessness literally means nothing and Jake’s narrative struggle is of valiance.