Robert Cohn's fight for respect in The Sun is also on the rise Jake Barnes: "Aren't you a fan?" Spanish waiter: "Me? What are bulls? Animals. Brute animals... A cornada in the back. For fun, you understand." (Hemingway, 67) Why does everyone hate Robert Cohn? At the beginning of Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes, the story's point-of-view character, wants us to believe that he has at least some appreciation for Cohn. He tells us part of Cohn's life, how at Princeton he was a middleweight boxing champion, how despite his physical prowess he felt feelings of "timidity and inferiority... of being treated like a Jew", (Hemingway, 11 ) his turbulent career as a magazine editor and his failed marriage. It's easy to start feeling sorry for this guy. The only mistake he made was falling in love with Lady Brett Ashley. Cohn's infatuation with this heartless girl, combined with the jealousy and competitive nature of the novel's other bon vivant characters, leads to his disgrace. Brett Ashley is, from the start, a careless woman. A woman only by marriage, has affairs with many men, breaks many hearts and drinks a lot of liquor. He wants to be the center of everyone's attention. She may be physically stunning, but she lacks class and restraint. Like the rest of the main characters in the novel, he has a taste for living the good life without regard to the feelings and actions of others. It seems like everyone loves her or has loved her, including Jake Barnes. So Robert's unfortunate attraction to Brett Ashley has already heightened tensions between the male characters. For a significant portion of the novel, Cohn is defending himself from threats and insults from Mike, the man who Brett...... middle of paper ...on, posed no great threat to the group and was more victim of racism and unrequited love. If his interest in Lady Brett was worth anything, it was as a target for the tired feelings of his "fellow" bon vivants; someone should have warned Cohn and told him it would be better to stay in Paris. I suppose these sordid affairs only demonstrate Hemingway's sentiments, as expressed by Bill in the novel: "You are an expatriate. You have lost touch with the land. You become precious. False European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death." . You become obsessed with sex. You spend your time talking, not working." (120) Perhaps Robert Cohn, a victim of this downfall, had better not waste his time on these dark-hearted dilettantes who cherish expensive ideas of entertainment. Works Cited Hemingway, Ernest The Sun Also Rises, 1997.