Hemmingway embodies in Jake the new male mindset after The First World War, almost destroyed and nearly completely tame. Probably physically impotent, he can never truly have …show more content…
She has come to realize that a relationship between her and Jake will never work. The last sentence highlights this when the car stops. This taxi that carries Brett and Jake represents their relationship. When the taxi stops so do they. This represents how the men of the time could become men, by breaking free of women in this novel however rare it is among the characters. It was not so rare in real life. Of Faulkner, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald only Hemmingway died of unnatural causes. Unlike the other two writers Hemmingway never seems to have recovered his manhood, in fact he seems to have lost it in the same unnatural way that Jake lost his. Brett may even may be more of a man than …show more content…
Brett at one point in the novel tells Jake that they cannot be in a serious relationship because she would “tromper” him. Tromper means to be unfaithful to, but it can also mean to “elude.” Romero, the bullfighter, is the true embodiment of Brett’s sexuality. He continually eludes. His job is to make bulls think that they are close to him and then to avoid pull away from them again. Brett does much the same to men. He however starts as the coy female who is likely to tromper, however he morphs into the dominant male, even as Brett does when she tells Jake that they are done. Romero then sticks his phallic symbol, his sword, into the bull. Each time he does this, it demonstrates the change of something it that was not a man into a man. He is telling everyone that reads it that they can rediscover the pride and strength of their