The Tragedy of Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises
The summer has unfortunately come to an end, and I’m back in the classroom, teaching American Literature. It will be the seventh time I’ve taught this class at Jefferson, and the ninth or tenth time that I’ve read The Great Gatsby. Previously, I’d prepared by watching lectures on the novel and reading through the scholarship as well as Fitzgerald’s letters, but this time, I wanted to do something different, so I reread Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
I was twenty-three or so when I first read it, back when I was a young graduate student getting my MFA. Even then, I found it extraordinary, especially as a first novel. I had read other books of Hemingway’s by that time but not this one. And in rereading it now, I’m struck by how surprisingly modern it is. Things other contemporary critics see as failings, such as Akhil Sharma in his re-review for The New Yorker, made me feel as though I was reading a different book. Sharma (and others) have made claims that the novel “from the very first paragraph…is virulently antisemitic.” And the quibble I would make is that the characters, not necessarily the novel itself, express an antisemitic ideology.
For one, the question of the novel’s antisemitism has haunted it since its release. Hemingway famously complained that if readers could not see that the novel wasn’t antisemitic, they were fools, claiming, “If you think this book is anti-Semitic you must be out of your mind.” But as critics like Jeremy Kaye have noted, “I am not so sure that the characterization of Robert Cohn is an open-and-shut case of anti-Semitism.” This is something I’ve long believed about the novel, and in this second reading of The Sun Also Rises, I find Robert Cohn to be an almost Gatsby-like figure, one who acts as a mirror for Jake and whose ending is ultimately just as tragic.
From the very beginning of the novel, when Jake introduces us to Cohn, he takes great pains to get us to understand him. He says that “being treated as a Jew at Princeton” made Cohn what he is, that he threw himself into boxing because it allowed him to “counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he felt.” And throughout the novel, because the characters perpetrate that same kind of behavior on Cohn, Cohn’s history, in so many ways, seems to be repeating itself. Even his use of boxing as a solution to prejudice is recreated. When Jake and company’s antisemitic insults reach a boiling point, Cohn knocks them out.
In regard to Cohn’s exit from the novel, Jake says, “That damn Cohn. He should have hit somebody the first time he was insulted, and then gone away. He was so sure that Brett loved him. He was going to stay, and true love would conquer all.” This description is not the kind of ending you would expect for the novel’s “primary whipping boy.” While Jake may be criticizing Cohn’s idealism, there’s also something innocent about that idealism, something refreshing, especially compared to everyone else’s cynicism. And yet, for all of Jake’s stoicism and machismo, he’s knocked out rather quickly by Cohn, unable to consummate his relationship with Brett, following her around the same way Cohn does. That’s what makes Cohn’s accusation of Jake being a “pimp” so precise. Jake believes himself to be so sophisticated, so cool and relaxed—a true aficionado—that he can watch as the woman he loves repeatedly falls for other men, though—undoubtedly—alcohol seems to help Jake forget the pain, if only temporarily, stating, “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
Also, Cohn’s identity—for himself—doesn’t seem to focus on his Jewishness. He doesn’t seem particularly religious, never mentioning synagogue or Jewish holidays. He doesn’t dress in an orthodox fashion. While he’s wealthy, he doesn’t seem concerned over money or greedy or stingy. There’s little to suggest that Cohn is Jewish other than the fact that everyone else keeps bringing it up. And ironically, the ones that are most concerned with money are those same antisemitic characters.
Mike is constantly in debt. Brett seems broke every other page. And Jake regularly makes remarks about his own finances, so much so that it appears to be a major thematic through-line, culminating in the moment where he states: “I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time.”
To me, the novel seems to say the truth is that the whole world runs on money, and it’s not confined to one ethnicity or religion. As Mike states toward the novel’s end, regarding creditors: “They’re not really Jews. We just call them Jews. They’re Scotsmen, I believe.” Money is a pervasive, modern force that weasels its way into every facet of our lives. It controls us, defines us, rewires us. And even when you have it, it won’t necessarily make you happy, noted by Brett when she observes sarcastically, “‘Yes. I’ve had such a hell of a happy life with the British aristocracy!’ ”
At the novel’s start, Robert Cohn is the only character who hasn’t completely surrendered his idealism, like Bill, Jake, Mike, and Brett, who inflict one another with “[a] big horn wound. All for fun. Just for fun.” They are bulls, “[a]nimals. Brute animals.” And that’s what makes the novel so fascinating and compelling. It complicates our understanding of our world and ourselves through imperfect people and portrays the messiness of life. Jake’s identity as a Catholic seems especially important here too, a faith that puts guilt and confession at the center of its religious life because “[W]e pay for all the things we do,” as the novel suggests—“[e]ither…by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money.” By the novel’s end, all of the characters have paid a price, and no one leaves the page cleanly.