Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Failure of Communication
The conversations among Jake and his friends are rarely
direct or honest. They hide true feelings behind a mask of civility.
Although the legacy of the war torments them all, they are unable
to communicate this torment. They can talk about the war only in
an excessively humorous or painfully trite fashion. An example of
the latter occurs when Georgette and Jake have dinner, and Jake
narrates that they would probably have gone on to agree that the
war “would have been better avoided” if they were not fortunately
interrupted. The moments of honest, genuine communication generally
arise only when the characters are feeling their worst. Consequently,
only very dark feelings are expressed. When Brett torments Jake
especially harshly, for instance, he expresses his unhappiness with
her and their situation. Similarly, when Mike is hopelessly drunk,
he tells Cohn how much his presence disgusts him. Expressions of
true affection, on the other hand, are limited almost exclusively
to Jake and Bill’s fishing trip.
Excessive Drinking
Nearly all of Jake’s friends are alcoholics. Wherever
they happen to be, they drink, usually to excess. Often, their drinking
provides a way of escaping reality. Drunkenness allows Jake and
his acquaintances to endure lives severely lacking in affection
and purpose. Hemingway clearly portrays the drawbacks to this excessive
drinking. Alcohol frequently brings out the worst in the characters,
particularly Mike. He shows himself to be a nasty, violent man when
he is intoxicated. More subtly, Hemingway also implies that drunkenness
only worsens the mental and emotional turmoil that plagues Jake
and his friends. Being drunk allows them to avoid confronting their
problems by providing them with a way to avoid thinking about them.
However, drinking is not exclusively portrayed in a negative light.
In the context of Jake and Bill’s fishing trip, for instance, it
can be a relaxing, friendship-building, even healthy activity.
False Friendships
False friendships relate closely to failed communication.
Many of the friendships in the novel have no basis in affection.
For instance, Jake meets a bicycle team manager, and the two have
a drink together. They enjoy a friendly conversation and make plans
to meet the next morning. Jake, however, sleeps through their meeting,
having no regard for the fact that he will never see the man again.
Jake and Cohn demonstrate another, still darker type of false friendship. Although
Cohn genuinely likes Jake, Jake must often mask outright antagonism
toward Cohn, an antagonism that increases dramatically along with
Jake’s unspoken jealousy of Cohn over his affair with Brett. At
one point, he even claims to hate Cohn. This inability to form genuine
connections with other people is an aspect of the aimless wandering
that characterizes Jake’s existence. Jake and his friends wander
socially as well as geographically. Ironically, Hemingway suggests
that in the context of war it was easier to form connections with
other people. In peacetime it proves far more difficult for these
characters to do so.
