The Sun Also Rises
The novel is a love story between the Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley.Jake Barnes is a man whose war wound has made him helpless. Barnes is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, and Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with a numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona.In the opening scenes, Jake plays tennis with his college friend Robert Cohn, picks up a prostitute, and runs into Brett and Count Mippipopolous in a nightclub. Later, Brett tells Jake she loves him. They bothe know that the relationship would not work out. Jake is later joined by Bill Gorton, and Brett's fiancé Mike Campbell, who arrives from Scotland. Jake and Bill travel south and meet Robert Cohn at Bayonne for a fishing trip in the hills northeast of Pamaplona . Instead of fishing, Cohn stays in Pamplona to wait for the overdue Brett and Mike. Cohn had an affair with Brett a few weeks earlier and still feels possessive of her despite her engagement to Mike. After Jake and Bill enjoy five days of fishing the streams near Burguete, they rejoin the group in Pamplona.They begin to drink a lot and Cohn begins to become resented by the others, who taunt him with anti semitic remarks. During the fiesta the characters drink, eat, watch the bulls, attend bullfights, and bicker with each other. Jake introduces Brett to the 19-year-old matador Romero at the Hotel Montoya; she is smitten with him and seduces him. The jealous tension among the men builds—Jake, Campbell, Cohn, and Romero each want Brett. Cohn, who had been a champion boxer in college, has a fistfight with Jake and Mike, and another with Romero. Even though Romero was beat up, he performs really well in the ring. They all eventually leave Pamplona; Bill returns to Paris, Mike stays in Bayonne, and Jake goes to San Sebastian on the northern coast of Spain. As Jake is about to return to Paris, he receives a telegram from Brett asking for help; she had gone to Madrid with Romero. He finds her there in a cheap hotel, without money, and without Romero. She announces she has decided to go back to Mike. The novel ends with Jake and Brett talking about what they could have been. A Farewell to Arms
Frederic Henry is an American paramedic serving in the Italian army is introduced to Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, by his good friend and roommate, Rinaldi. . Frederic attempts to seduce her, and their relationship begins. Frederic doesn't want a serious relationship, but eventually he begins to catch feelings. On the Italian front, Frederic is wounded in the knee and sent to a hospital in Milan, where Catherine is also sent. Later, the growth of Frederic and Catherine's relationship really starts to grow as they spend time together in Milan over the summer. Frederic and Catherine fall in love as Frederic slowly heals. After his knee heals, he is diagnosed with jaundice but is soon kicked out of the hospital after being discovered with alcohol. By the time he is sent back to the army, Catherine is three months pregnant.Frederic returns to his unit, and soon discovers morale has severely dropped. Not long afterwards the Austrians break through the Italian lines , and the Italians retreat. Frederic and his men go off trail and quickly get lost, and a frustrated Frederic kills a sergeant for insubordination. After catching up to the main retreat, Frederic is taken to a place by the "battle police," where officers are being interrogated and executed for the "treachery" that supposedly led to the Italian defeat. However, after seeing and hearing that everyone interrogated has been killed, Frederic escapes by jumping into a river. He heads to Milan to find Catherine only to discover that she has been sent to Stresa.Catherine and Frederic reunite and spend some time in Stresa before Frederic learns he will soon be arrested. He and Catherine then flee to Switzerland to avoid being arrested. After interrogation by Swiss authorities, they are allowed to stay in Switzerland.Frederic and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labor. After a long and painful birth, their son is stillborn. Catherine begins to hemorrhage and soon dies.
The Old Man and The Sea
The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as "salao",[a] the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straights of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and, by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and a long time passes while holding onto the marlin. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary. He determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin.On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.On his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new one, kills more, But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton., Santiago knows that he is entirely unlucky now, and defeated now, but not when he caught the marlin, He tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon reaching the shore Santiago struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. A few fishermen gather the next day near the boat by the fish's skeleton. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands. Manolin brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again.
The novel describes the brutality of the civil war in Spain. It is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of Robert Jordan. Jordan is an American who has lived in Spain during the pre-war period, and fights in the International Brigades for the Republic against Fransicos Francos's fascist forces. He is ordered by a Soviet general to travel behind enemy lines and he winds up destroying a bridge, in order to prevent enemy troops from responding to an upcoming offensive. On his mission, Jordan meets the rebel Anselmo who brings him to the hidden guerrilla camp and initially acts as an intermediary between Jordan and the other guerrilla fighters. In the camp, Jordan encounters María. Maria is a young Spanish woman whose life had been shattered by her parents' execution and her rape. His strong sense of duty clashes with both the unwillingness of the guerrilla leader Pablo to commit to an operation that would endanger himself and his band, and Jordan's own new-found lust for life which arises from his love for María. Pablo's wife, Pilar, usurps Pablo's leadership and pledges the allegiance of the guerrillas to Jordan's mission. When another group of anti-fascist guerrillas, led by El Sordo, is surrounded and killed, Pablo steals the dynamite detonators and exploder, hoping to prevent the demolition. The enemy, has prepared to ambush in force and it seems unlikely that the blown bridge will do much to prevent a rout. Jordan understands that he must still demolish the bridge in an attempt to prevent Fascist reinforcements from overwhelming his allies. Lacking the detonation equipment stolen by Pablo, Jordan and Anselmo coordinate an alternative method to explode the dynamite by using hand grenades with wires attached so that their pins can be pulled from a distance. While Pablo, Pilar, and Maria create a distraction for Jordan and Anselmo, the two men plant and detonate the dynamite. Anselmo dies when he is hit by a piece of shrapnel. While escaping, Jordan is maimed when a tank shoots his horse out from under him. Knowing he would only slow his comrades down, he bids goodbye to María and ensures that she escapes to safety with the surviving guerrillas. He refuses an offer from Agustín to shoot him and lies in agony, hoping to kill an enemy officer and delay their pursuit of his comrades before dying. The narration ends right before Jordan launches his ambush.
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