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| Category: Religion |
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| About the Book | |
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Hemingway’s The Sun also Rises is a profound response to the post-Narrative condition. The novel is important to Hemingway scholars because it presents the ontology, ethics, and aesthetics of Hemingway’s worldview. It is important to postmodern theorists as a story that examines the post-Narrative condition that emerged after World War I and describes the postwar generation’s response to the war’s negation of the traditional meanings and values embedded in religious and secular grand narratives. The condition of postwar nihilism threatened to undermine the emotional, psychological, and ethical integrity of individuals and thus required new strategies for living meaningfully. Suddenly, the foundation of universal values and meanings was thrown into doubt. What had been considered real and true before the war became fictions, fabrications, and deceptions. The old rules and beliefs systems were no longer trusted. A new approach to living meaningfully was needed. And this is what The Sun Also Rises offers: new strategies for living harmoniously and meaningfully in a post-Narrative world. The Sun Also Rises and the Post-Narrative Condition suggests a new orientation to the world that might be called religious. The Great War proved the old anthropomorphic religions incapable of sustaining peace. To the contrary, history has shown that time and again they encourage conflict. The question that then arises is whether there can be a religion without a god. A religion requires that which is adored, revered, and cherished. The Sun Also Rises suggests that the mundane world itself is such an object and that nature is the mysterium tremendum, the mysterious primordial origin of all things. A new religion must encourage peace rather than conflict and reveal the mundane world as humanity’s true primordial progenitor and as such the only object deserving of religious adoration. And, as Jake illustrates in The Sun Also Rises, in this new religion each person achieves absolute value and self-realization through acts of appreciative understanding. Also included in the book are essays on the threat of technology, the conflict between religion and science, nihilistic themes in three Hemingway short stories, the rediscovery of the earth in The Sun Also Rises and the poems of Matsuo Basho, the importance of rhetorical responsibility, and a rhetorical analysis of six revelatory texts: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, The Sun Also Rises, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and On the Nature of Things.
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| About the Author | |
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Frank Kyle received his doctorate in English from the University of Northern Colorado and holds graduate degrees in philosophy and psychology. His philosophical fiction and poetry include Christine’s Philosophical Journey - San Diego, Christine’s Philosophical Journey – Paris, Su Casa Es Mi Casa, Freddy’s Freaky American Life, and Tatiana. |