The Sun Also Rises

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Using this resource from the University of Oxford, explore the concept of the “lost generation,” a Gertrude Stein coinage that Hemingway uses as an epigraph to the novel. If this generation is so disillusioned and adrift, why is this time period marked by a proliferation of literature and art? How can death on such a huge scale also foster a moment of tremendous artistic exploration and creativity?

Teaching Suggestion: Explain that “lost” functions in two ways in the term “lost generation”: first, to explain the very real absence of men of that generation who “lost” their lives in the war; and second, to indicate how “lost” the survivors of the war felt when their core beliefs—formed by patriotism, religion, and modern civilization—disintegrated, failing to preserve the world from mass bloodshed. Introduce the six defining features of literary modernism:

 I. Autonomy. Art is no longer didactic; rather, it exists for its own sake, to feed the notion that art can transcend the world.

II. Radical break in culture. The rapidity of post-war cultural changes—technological advances, urbanization, immigration, women’s rights, the emergence of sociology as an academic discipline—creates a brand new world for everyone to navigate.

III. Rejection of convention. This brand new world necessitates brand new ways of existing; the old established order no longer works.

IV. Internationalism. Patterns of rising immigration and the general aura of alienation contribute to a weakening sense of national rootedness as people embrace globalization and humanity’s interconnectedness.

V. Twisting spatial form. In literature, time is no longer purely linear; a text is a space to inhabit, not just lines to follow, and echoes the chaos and disorientation of the post-war period.

VI. Artist as exile. In this new world, the artist cannot be tainted by the frivolity and materialism that many turn to in order to stave off feelings of fear and loss. The artist must be a spiritual and existential exile in order to see the world as it really is.

• This page from the Poetry Foundation introduces modernism in poetry, including Ezra Pound’s famous exhortation to “make it new,” which later became the unofficial slogan of the movement.
• This Google Doc compiles various excerpts from modernist literature for a broad overview of the exploration happening in the movement. It also offers helpful reading tips for those who may be encountering modernism for the first time.

2. Read this excerpt from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933), in which Brittain reckons with the aftermath of World War I on herself and on others of her generation. How did the war impact Brittain? Identify her tone and mood: what can be inferred from these about Brittain’s opinion of the war?

Teaching Suggestion: First share the Wikipedia page on Brittain, explaining her time spent as a nurse in the English Voluntary Aid Detachment in 1915 and the toll the war took on her (her fiancé, her brother, and two close friends were all killed in the war). Consider how the war may have impacted men and women both similarly and differently.

• This article from The Guardian offers more insight into Brittain’s life and explains the continued cultural resonance of Testament of Youth.
• This page from the Poetry Foundation analyzes Brittain as an artist and a writer and links to some of her poetry.

Short Activity

There is an unsubstantiated legend that Hemingway introduced the world to flash fiction (also called “micro fiction”) when he was challenged in a bar bet to write the shortest story he could. Rumor has it that he wrote a six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Though the historical accuracy of this tale is doubtful, the legend persists because of how well it captures the ability of Hemingway’s lean, bare prose to conjure a narrative far bigger than the words themselves.

Write your own six-word story. Like the model, it should imply a clear beginning, middle, and end, and evoke a story that is deeper and more complex than the six words themselves.

Share the stories out loud, and vote for the one that best accomplishes what the original story does.

Teaching Suggestion: Provide some context and examples before asking students to write their own stories. Emphasize the dubiousness of the legend, yet our continued cultural insistence on attributing the story to Hemingway. Why might we want to cling to the idea that Hemingway wrote this story for a bar bet? What does it say about cultural attitudes towards Hemingway and his writing?

• This New Yorker article is a humorous and playful satire on Hemingway’s six-word story in which the writer imagines a series of six-word “sequels” to the story. 
• This website compiles six-word story attempts from novice writers.
• This article from Slate investigates the legend of the six-word story and ultimately traces its origin to a 1917 short story by William R. Kane titled “Little Shoes, Never Worn.”