The Effects of the Bullfight as a Game on Male and Female Characters in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

One of the important novels by Ernest Hemingway is The Sun Also Rises. In the novel, the characters watch the bullfight several times. This paper aims to show how the characters are affected by this game. The way the men in the novel are impacted is different from the women. The male characters are rhizomatic and deterritorialized and have no meanings and traditions to stick to. A rhizomatic situation is attributed to a post-Modernist period. However, the bullfight binds them together and creates an arborescent situation for them. The arborescent situation signifies the classical era in which there were roots, essentialism, and order. Therefore, for male characters, the bullfight acts as going back in history. While this game is uncanny for the female character and by watching the bullfight and by acting masculine, she actually moves forward in history. She repudiates arborescent condition and remains rhizomatic since as a woman, she is not supposed to like the bullfight.

Keywords:

Gender Norms , New Woman , Ernest Hemingway , Bullfight , Rhizomatic , Arborescence , The Sun Also Rises