the lost generation, a member of

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

In 1923, Hemingway saw his first bullfight in Spain. He was so taken with this ancient blood sport that he soon returned to witness one of the bullfights that highlighted the annual fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona. By the time the festival was over, bullfighting was one of the passions of his life, and his third visit to the Pamplona festival in 1925 became the inspiration for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

The novel has heavy undercurrents of suppressed emotions and buried values. Its weary and aimless expatriates serve as metaphors for society's lost optimism and innocence after the war. The topic of war is rarely discussed explicitly by any of the characters, but its effects are alluded to through tthe behaviour of the characters, whom are best described as "floundering in an emulsion of

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.