One of the most striking images I found in The Sun Also Rises was the description of the plaza the day after the fiesta ended (Chapter XIX, begins with "In the morning it was all over."). The incredible calm of the scene, along with multiple parallels to the description of the plaza before the fiesta started, gives the sense that the entire fiesta never happened. To me, the imagery of the plaza gave the fiesta symbolic meaning in the context of the novel as a story of the Lost Generation. The survivors of World War 1 had given so much of their emotional energy to the war and gotten used to the constant action of the war, so now their life at home, in comparison, seemed empty and pointless. Hemingway was trying to recreate those emotions through this fiesta, using the bullfight as an incredible emotional event that, after it was over, made everything else seem dull. Once the fiesta was over the question became, to the both the characters and readers; "What now?"
Hemingway portrays Jake as desperately trying to find excitement in a life that the war made him see was incredibly pointless. That's the reason he is so taken up with bullfighting (and once the fiesta is over, he tries to find other sports like cycling). The problem is, these emotional stimuli are transient, and it is incredibly difficult for Jake, once the fiesta is over, to act like it never happened (the way the people of Pamplona do). The reason he puts up with Brett even though he knows they can never be together is because she is a less transient version of the fiesta. Even though he complains about having to go to Madrid to help her, she is both emotionally stimulating and will always need him to come rescue her. Going back to what I wrote on Sweet Bird of Youth, in Jake's search for a post-war "reason to get out of bed in the morning", his lavish lifestyle works adequately well but Brett is really the closest thing he has to a "point"in his life. This is how I interpreted Hemingway's critique of the Lost Generation.
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