THE "ABNORMAL" LIFE OF THE BULLFIGHT

I consider the "abnormal" world that Hemingway imagines in The Sun Also Rises as, mainly, a contrast between the significance of the ritual of the bullfight, and the lack of traditional "panaceas" for the author's "Lost generation."

Hemingway begins the novel by showing the "normal" life of the postwar Europe, where "lost” people reject traditional religious and moral values, and have not found anything to substitute for them; where people have to have medals "fixed up" for them and where conventional heroes are referred to as "faggots". It is a "sick” generation where even Jake, the novel's protagonist, has been emasculated by the war and made incapable of manhood. In his world, "there was much wine, an ignored tension and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening" (p.146). Here, the author is preparing the reader for the contrasted "abnormal" world of the bullfight where there are real heroes with real medals and the participants in the fight recognize and accept their roles with dignity. Those in the ritual foresee the opponent's reactions and are even prepared for them, avoiding sudden movements that will weaken their performance. They are healthy and have control over the emotions and never do anything as mechanically as Jake is used to doing. Their world is tangible and real - not unobtainable and ethereal.

In Book II, Hemingway takes the reader out of the "sterile" environment of Paris to the beautiful and unspoiled countryside of Burguete where Jake fishes, releases tension and gets ready for the ritual of the bullfight. He finally reaches Pamplona, which is also making all the arrangements for the "fiesta". Here the author introduces the reader to his concept of "morality", so that he /she can understand how "moral" people felt before and after the bullfight. Thus, when Jake is in bed he thinks: "Mike was unpleasant after he passed a certain point. I liked to see him hurt Cohn. I wished he would not do it, though, because afterward it made me disgusted at myself. That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality" (p. 149).

Jake's confusion concerning "morality" and "immorality" reflects his culture's confusion and refusal to follow traditional values (often based on ethereal concepts which make people feel "disgusted" for actions in their actual lives). Thus, the 'moral' atmosphere just before the bullfight is based on Jake's feeling good and not questioning that feeling: "The next two days in Pamplona were quiet, and there were no more rows" ( p. 149 ). Later, he concludes that "we all felt good and we felt healthy and I felt quietly friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything in a day like that" (p. 151). Finally, after Romero's first fight, they had again that "feeling of elation that comes after a good bullfight" (p. 164).




If we consider Hemingway's idea of morality as 'doing things that make you feel good afterward,' and we do not speculate over the questionable morality of such a bloody ritual, we can say that the most "moral" character of all was Romero, someone from the "abnormal" world. On the other hand, Jake usually felt "immoral" afterward, such as when he liked to see Cohn hurt and he played the role of intermediary between Brett and Romero. Jake is, therefore, like an existentialist, for he is trying to learn how to live in the world with dignity, as a bullfighter. He admires the bullfighter not as God, but for being an authentic heroe.

Although the bullfight is a ritual and there is a "spiritual brotherhood" among the "aficionados", their heroes are 'tangible'. When Montoya first meets Jake, he smiles at him: "… as though was something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something that we understand" (p. 131). And, when Jake is introduced to some other ‘aficionados’, he notices "...rather it was a kind of spiritual examination" and "...there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a "Bueno hombre". But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain" (p. 132). Like Jake, those people need to believe in what was "tangible", within reach, heroes they can carry around the arena and not ethereal ideas. At the ring, everything reminds the reader of a religious ritual, but the boys carry around one of their making and for his making.

Besides the "spiritual brotherhood", the "aficionados" are the only ones who can understand the bullfight for its artistic and moral significance. Here, we identify Hemingway's concept of aesthetic as being his preference for the simple form of art, where the meaning of the unadorned actions are implicit. The 'aficionados' know that there are no "tricks and no mystifications" in a real bullfight. As Jake wants to change Brett into an aficionado, so Hemingway wants to initiate the reader into the world of his ritual. Jake teaches Brett, on the second day of the fight, how to admire this form of art, even showing her how to recognize the real bullfighter from the decadent ones who make killing the bull an anticlimax. He writes that he explained Brett "how Romero took the bull away from a fallen horse with his cape and turned him, smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. I made her see how Romero avoided every brusque movement and saved the bull for the last when he wanted to." (p.167). Jake calls Brett's attention to the absolute purity in Romero's movements: "Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews..." (p. 168). Jake considers that the fight "became more something there was going on with a definite end and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors" (p.167). He tries to teach Brett to consider the act of the horse as just a part of the whole ritual which does not interfere in its aesthetics. Jake also teaches Brett to admire the aesthetical movements of the bull and not only his beauty: "Look how he knows how to use his horns. He's got a left and a right just like a boxer" (p.139).



In all those passages mentioned above, and when Jake writes about the day he was introduced to Romero, we can also recognize the sexual significance of the bullfight where the "matador" is all manhood, beauty, perfection, excitement and 'fulfillment': "He was standing, straight and handsome and altogether by himself, alone in the room with the hangers on as we shut the door" (p. 163). Here the bullfighter is the prototype of Hemingway's idea of sexuality and masculinity. The matador is not only young but also firm, erect, a rebel against authority, defiant against death, healthy and capable of dominating and 'subjugating' the other. The sexual significance of the bullfight is also visualized when Jake says that they have steers in the "corral" to receive the bulls and "keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like the old maids trying to quiet them down". The steers are there to "receive" the "excited" bulls but like "old maids" run around the corral. Like Jake, the steer cannot do anything, just make friends.

Jake admires Romero not only for his masculinity but also for his love for the bulls and for Brett. Jake envies this man who would control even himself in the rings:
"Never once did he look up. . . .Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too. But he did not do it for her at any loss to himself" (p. 216). Jake could not do that. Near the end of the story, he sends Brett a telegram and he thinks about his decision: "That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring him her back. And sign the wire with love” (p. 239).

However, at the very end, when Jake and Brett meet each other in Madrid after Jake had ‘washed’ himself in San Sebastian and they go for a ride through town, the reader can notice Jake's reaction to all that. When Brett tells him that they could have had a great time together, he agrees saying: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (p. 247). At this point, he finally realizes he does not have to be a steer or even the horse in his own ring. He understands he can be more active and not only a spectator in his own life: he can prevent from happening things that will represent a loss to his own self or will not strengthen his own being. He realizes that the "horrors" of his life should not prevent him from appreciating his own art of struggling for life and to recognize and feel things that make life tolerable and even worth living, such as going back to Spain and floating on the water of San Sebastian beach when he "saw only the sky, and felt the drop and lift of the swells" (p. 237). Now that he has found "how to live in the world" maybe he "learned from that what it was all about" (p. 148). Brett seems to have found her morality too, after the bullfight, since she decides to send Romero away, because their affair will do him no good and can destroy his career. She does not want to be "one of those bitches that ruin children" (p. 243). She confesses that "one feels rather good deciding not to be a bitch".
And she adds: "It's a sort of what we have instead of God" (p. 245). These two people could finally bring from the "abnormal" world of bullfight, values they had problems in finding in their own lives.


MARIA CRISTINA WERNECK
English 389 July 29, 1992

LETTER TO MY FATHER

Sunday, June 18th, 1994

Dear Diego,

Today is Father's Day and I am thinking a lot about you. I review feelings stored in my heart and memories kept only for myself - memories that go back as far as the year of 1955 when I was the happiest four - almost five- year old girl in the world! I couldn't think but of our coming summer vacation to the state capital. You did not share my enthusiasm for spending three months in Belo Horizonte. You hated big cities, didn't you? You would on1y join us for Christmas and go back to the farm.
I myself did not remember much about this huge city where I was born and where Mother grew up. I didn't even remember the many cousins Mother had told me I liked to play with, in Grandmother's house. Young as I was, I could only keep in my memory those who were close to me. I just related that big city to lights, cars, beautiful houses, and shop windows. And Christmas! And my birthday! We always spent Christmas and my birthday in Belo Horizonte, right? That year I had most probably asked Santa Claus for a doll, a ball, a piano, and a bicycle. Those were my favorite toys. What would I get that time? How anxiously I waited for that trip! With the help of my little fingers, I counted the endless days before our summer vacation.
Although I was very excited about the busy days ahead, please, don't think I didn't love our life on the farm. I loved swimming in the pond or in the rivers with my brother, my sister, and my cousins! And how exciting was jumping on the piles of com and rice in the bam! I couldn't think of a better life than riding horses, climbing trees, running after chickens, looking for nests with eggs in the sugar cane fields and among the banana trees.
But then, to my mother's despair, you would always come up with something more challenging and different for us to do. My strongest memories of you were on your motorcyc1e and your truck. I don't understand how, but you managed to ride my brother, my two sisters and me on your motorcycle, all through the unpaved road the led to grandfather's farm. And the times you let us drive your truck! One at a time, with you by our side. My mother's complaints against such dangerous adventures were always interrupted by your soft kiss, followed by, "There's nothing to worry about, dear. I don't want my children to have any kind of fear".
I had no fear. I remember you always had a hard time taking me out of that fascinating machine. I don't remember, however, what I ended up having for Christmas that year. I don't
even remember where we spent Christmas and my birthday. By the end of November, we were called back to our farm because you were very sick, they said. While we, kids, sang in the car, my mother cried all the time. I could not understand the real reason for her tears, even when she finally told me you were dead, not sick. I did not remember having heard that word before and I did not know what that meant. When my mother told me you had gone to heaven, I got even more confused. Why was Mother crying if heaven was supposed to be a place where we have Christmas every day? But I guess, telling me about your death made her feel better. She stopped crying and I went back to my songs.
Your funeral was a great event in our little town. I had never seen so many people in my whole life. I remember my excitement at the idea that my rich uncle from Rio de Janeiro had arrived in his private plane with his young wife who was a movie star! But I wanted to be where all the excitement was and I couldn't. I had to be at my aunt's house and play with my cousins. Where was Mother? Why couldn't I be with her? I understood nothing of what was going on, just that you had gone to heaven and not taken us "Why didn't he take us to heaven with him?" I kept asking myself. They did not let me see your corpse because of your smashed neck, they told me many years later. All I knew is that you had gone to heaven and lots of people had come to town because of that.
It did not take me very long to forget you. Young as I was, I could only keep in my memory those who were close to me! But when I was a teenager, I began to need you very badly. All my friends' fathers were alive. I hated it when people felt sorry for me because I was an orphan! I wanted a father to laugh with me and to tell me what I cou1dn't do. I needed someone to set my 1imits, so that I wou1dn't have to set them myse1f. I needed someone to share my mother's responsibility for our education, so I cou1d stop being extremely responsib1e myse1f. I cried alone all tears I didn't have at your death.
I felt guilty and rniserab1e for all the excitement I experienced at your funeral. I quite often dreamed I was happi1y ho1ding hands with you in a park. But every time I turned to you to ask you something, I screamed at the cruel reality of your ske1eton. Although you seemed to be smiling, I feared the image of your skull and your bones on my hands. You were dead, I needed you, and you cou1d not be with me the way I wanted.
I cou1dn't see a tractor without shivering and thinking that you had died under that same tractor you had many times taken us on rides in the fields. Since you were alone that night, nobody knows how that tractor turned upside down and smashed your neck. And why didn't you jump farm the tractor? Everybody thinks you were sure death wou1d not come to you at the age of thirty-seven. Mother a1ways said you 1ived 1ife without questioning the next minute, as if you were eternal. But you weren't!
When I was a young adult, 1ife was tricky enough to make me work in the purchase department of a big company, buying tractors of all kinds. To overcome that fear I had for tractors, I became an expert on them. My boss was puzz1ed by my interest in those machines. He kept telling me I didn't need to know everything about every piece of equipment I bought. It's like buying a black box ", he would say: “You don't need to know what is inside it or how it works. You just need to know how to get the best deal", he wou1d add. But I knew better. I wou1d even go to the company's patio and sit on most tractors I bought. I was again that courageous chi1d you had a1ways expected me to be.
My fear was gone, but not the anger of having lost you to that stupid machine.
I wish my mother and you had taught us to call you 'Dad' instead of your name, 'Diego'! I guess you thought we wou1d have the years ahead to learn that you were 'Dad', not my brother. Or maybe you just did not want to spoil a little boy’s happiness for being called that way by the younger sisters. Why and when did all that start if we were all so dose in age? Mother doesn't remember anymore. We soon started calling my bother by his name. But not before you died.

I love you, DAD!

Maria Cristina Vasconcelos

ON SECOND THOUGHT

For the first time in many years, I enter my son’s room without feeling as if I were an intruder. He is not there, but neither are all the warnings signs on the door which read “Do not enter”, “Keep out”, and “Do not trespass." The walls are naked except for that terrible poster which was left behind for being unable to survive another moving! The sides are torn and wrinkled, and the repeatedly folded parts are now about to tear into four different pieces.
I sit on my son’s bed really determined to give this poster some thought. There must be something in it that made my son take it with him on so many trips. I kind of feel glad I still have it here with me. I just wonder the real reason he didn’t take it with him when he went to live with father, and having decided he wanted to go back to his country to start his own band. Sometimes I feel my son wanted to leave it here, not only because it was falling apart, but also as a reminder and a reminiscence of the many interesting talks that were raised over the simple view of it. I don’t regret having been too lazy to grab a ladder to help me get rid of the ugly thing on the wall. That gives another chance of trying to understand my child’s mind by taking another look at this old dark image of death, holding a sickle, surrounded by skulls and dying people. I think of that tall fourteen year old boy, long dark hair always kept in a tail, two small rings in the left ear. The black T-shirt always advertised his noisy worshiped bands, and that faded blue jeans were sometimes deliberately torn to look old on his long legs. The old black tennis shoes were worn on every occasion. I think about this rebellious teenager frowning to look mean, every time I insist on taking a picture of him, or when he tries to hide his caring feelings for someone or something.
I remember one of my son’s reactions you my usual comments that I found this poster aggressive, “But Mom, that’s the point. Can’t you see it? I like it because it’s aggressive.” No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand why someone would to face death every time he entered the bedroom.
“Son, why does it have to be like that? Why not a motorcycle, a car, a basketball player? I don’t know anything a healthy young boy would like to have on the wall…”
“You definitely understand nothing about death metal, right, Mom! We don’t like healthy things. We don’t like sports, and we have no sympathy for those ‘tough’ guys in the Harley Davison gangs. Besides that, we don’t share your peculiar notion of health. Would you be happier if I had Michael Jackson or O.J. Simpson hanging on the wall? And how about Airton Sena? Do you find it healthy driving fast race car in dangerous race roads until you become a famous world champion and die? Tell me, Mom, do you find it healthier than my noisy guitar and my death themes? “
I tried to ignore his last argument in that I myself have a hard time dealing with broken images of idols. I insisted on going back to that poster hanging on the wall.
“Tell me, Rafael, why do skulls, skeletons, devils, and death attract you so much?”
“They mean the end, the chaos”, he answered.
“And what about love? Isn’t love something stronger than death?”
“Bullshit! There is not such a thing. Do you know what I think? Love is just an illusion. Death’s real, irreversible.”
“No, I don’t understand. And I don’t agree with you.” Before I add anything else, he interrupted me as if he knew exactly what I would say next. That was not the first time we had this kind of talk. And he got a great kick out of his undeniable control over the thread of the conversation.
“OK, OK. Forget what I said. I know you don’t like when I say the love is just an illusion. You say I’m too young to be talking about feelings I am still to experience. But love has no appeal to me. Have you ever listened to any death metal, even trash metal music which talked about love and happiness? Don’t you understand that, like everybody else I need to follow models? And I write lyrics that I dream my favorite bands would feel like singing one day. Love isn’t one of our favorite topics.”
Here we go again. He always confused me, so I would never know what he felt about things. Was love an illusion or was it just out-of-context in heavy metal themes? I sometimes thought Rafael would choose the strategy of confusing me, to make me give up talking about the strength of love over death.
“Do you know what your problem is, Mom? You refuse to realize that there is no such thing as happiness.” He had developed a kind of preference for the topic of happiness and I wondered why. He did not know how to deal with that either.
“But I’m a happy woman.” This time I had a feeling he would really give some thought to what I had said so it would not be the end of it. He would not repeat that same silly frequent answer that my happiness bothered him and that went against his dark view of the world. Not this time. This time he seemed really in the mood to go on with this conversation. This time he said:
“That’s what you believe, Mom. You may be happy today, but not tomorrow. Tomorrow soothing will most definitely happen to spoil your day.”
“That may be true, Rafael. But let me tell you something. When I was a child, I really believed in fairy tales and Santa Claus. When I was your age, I believed in the ‘prince charming’ and eternal happiness. Today, I believe in moments. You are right when you say that I may not feel happy tomorrow. That’s exactly why I try to live as I intensively as I can today. I also try to find happiness on little things that remind me I am still alive.”
“You may be dead tomorrow, Mom. Do you what I mean? Life is not worth consideration. Death always takes over. Besides that, if you love, you depend on other people for your happiness.”
This time I felt uncomfortable. He seemed really involved in our conversation. I feared I wouldn’t be able to give a reasonable answer to his next questions.
“Could you ever be happy if I wasn’t, Mom? Whey would happen if I died? Now, do you know what I mean? Could you think of living intensely if your children were suffering? You talk about love. Do you know what love does to me? I have to worry about you all the time. That’s it. If I did not love you, I wouldn’t feel responsible for your happiness;”
That was one of those rare occasions he told me of his love for me. But I knew it was difficult for him to love me and to be the rebel he wanted to be. He ended our talking by saying:
“Next time I make you cry, remember what I have just told you.” And he left the room.
Well, on second thought, I think I’ll keep that poster on the wall. I can’t get rid of it now. Not until I decide what I would have answered Rafael, had he given me the chance.


Vasconcelos, Maria Cristina, Greater New Orleans Writing Project – Writing Anthology
Summer 1994