Protect me, Mr. Sarcasm

Sarcasm, irony, and joking are used throughout The Sun Also Rises to protect the emotionally unstable characters of Brett and Bill from painful emotions they both have. Their issues are different but they both create disinterested, foolish images of themselves when they are in public. They also both are forced to drop their facades when a situation they are placed in ends up getting out of hand.

First Bill. Bill is a war veteran who uses irony and jokes to deal with the emotional and psychological side effects of the war. By joking around and not taking things seriously, Bill lessens the possibility of being hurt. He puts on an air of not caring to avoid disappointment, loneliness, other emotional pains he could theoretically face. He is forced to abandon this pretense when Mike starts actually going in on Robert. Bill finds humor in the fight until he realizes it is actually serious. This shows that Bill isn't actually a mean spirited character (though he does love to get under peoples' skin) but rather prefers to keep social issues shallow and inconsequential. Bill also drop his act voluntarily and momentarily in certain scenes he has with Jake

Brett also employs a phony happy- socialite front. In public Brett appears popular, attractive, and contentedly unconcerned. The reader find out shortly after meeting Brett that she is "miserable" and her gayness is only an act. She uses this act to stop people from pitying her and to prevent her troubled feelings about her impossible love for Jake and her problems with her last marriage. Like Bill, Brett also renounces her happy mask deliberately when she is alone with Jake. Eventually, she is forced to renounce her act again when she knows she must part with Romero and call Jake.

This set up of characters is one that pulls the reader increasingly closer to the characters. At least for me, seeing how fake the characters could be made it hard for me to really like them. Then, all of a sudden, when I was finally getting used to these posing characters, they decided to be noble and return to reality when times got tough. This evoked my respect for the characters, just a few pages earlier, I was not enjoying. Hemingway does a really good job of creating emotionally unsettled characters that emotionally unsettle you.