"Don't Talk Like a Fool"

Major Discoveries of the Day:

1. Jake is impotent (unlike the sun, his is not rising).
2. The Sun Also Rises is a war novel taking place post-war.
3. Brett may as well be a manic version of Daisy Miller

On Friday, we talked a lot about manhood. This actually tickles me for two reasons: 1) manhood does not really apply to us, and 2) I keep thinking of Mr. Croker’s dream about being a girl. Anyways, one point we did not discuss was repetition in this novel. Have you noticed it? Characters repeat themselves (or others) so much that I actually stopped keeping track. For instance, the phrase “Don’t talk like a fool” pops up on pages 30, 34, and 88. While the appearances of this phrase are farther apart, Jake says “Come on” six times within three pages and Bill says “daunted” nine times on page 79 (Hemingway 78-80). Hemingway even repeats descriptions! I cannot tell you how many times in Book II he noted Brett “wrinkling the corners of her eyes” (80, 81…). What does that even mean? Does she have crows’ feet?

We have a rule in singing. If you sing a phrase more than once, you cannot sing it the same way every time. If you are going to sing “Halo” by Beyonce, you better sing each “halooooo” with a different level of poignancy each time! How can we apply this principle to Hemingway? He is not singing to us, but perhaps, he wants us to notice the context of these repeated phrases to discern their importance to the text.

Consider the repeated phrase “Don’t talk like a fool”, which shows up on three different pages. On page 30, Brett says this to Jake after he accuses her of counting up all the men who drool over her. It pops out of nowhere in a playful scold. However, in contrast, on pages 34 and 88, Jake is the one who says this phrase. He first says it back to Brett when they are talking about his impotence. Brett starts to lament on how his inability to consummate their relationship is a punishment for her philandering. To this, he replies, “‘Don’t talk like a fool’” (34). He sarcastically throws her phrase back at her, but he seems to actually mean it. Later, he says it to Mike in the presence of Brett. The drunken Mike invited himself and Brett on Jake’s fishing trip and is annoyingly asking Jake over and over again if he minds. To this, Jake shortly replies, “‘Don’t talk like a fool’” (88). He does not say something patient or polite like “It’s no trouble at all” or “The more the merrier!” No, he tries to shut Mike up with a terse negative imperative. What can we make of this? My conclusion is that this phrase shows Jake’s true feelings about people. He wishes they would just stop going on and on like fools. As we have discussed, he is easily peeved, so it makes sense that the insensitive, drunken chattering of his peers would drive him a little mad. I cannot help but wonder if his temper will ever snap in the later parts of this novel. How much foolishness can one man take?