"There is nothing to writing.
All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter
and bleed."
~Ernest Hemingway 

Hello, readers!

(You'll have to forgive my picture, I was in too big of a hurry to post I didn't have time to make it look too pretty!)

To start off, I refer you again to the quote above. Though there is a good chance you have read this before, I have chosen it as my heading because I feel it encompasses the theme of this book incredibly well.

Drowning in historical significance, I was more than willing to dive right in to this novel, and am happy to have it on my list of favorites! I have always found that Hemingway, much like Fitzgerald, weaves such raw, yet simple, details of a suffering society into the pages of their novels. Which is why I picked this particular quote. Hemingway has always provided cathartic release to readers through his honesty and simple language. Despite the fact that much of his symbolism and meaning would have been seen as a little too honest, at the time. 

In this story, our characters (without it being explicitly said) are living an aimless life. 

Drinking and traveling from place to place, it is not difficult to feel the numbness of the unhappy hearts wandering the bars of post WWI. 

Most of our characters are veterans (or ex-nurses) of the war and the entire layout of the plot is structured around their inability to find themselves after suffering through what they have. 

It is 1926, and the very idea of what it meant to be a man had been lost. 

The reality of war is that survival did not depend solely on bravery or ‘manliness’. In the chaos,  both the courageous and weak soldiers fell. 

Which is why the (main) men in this novel struggle to cope with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and seek to fill this gap inside them through other means. 

Though they know it would be wrong to outwardly speak ill of the war, they are all disillusioned at this point, and left to cope with the angst rendered to an entire generation who all experienced too much too young.

But what appeals and engages me most, is how the characters move through the scenes as though nothing can touch them. This is where the “lost generation” complex comes in with the lack of hope, and living as though nothing they do has or could have an impact, captures another side of a historical decade. 

Moving from the deafening parties of Paris, to the gripping bullfighting rings of Spain, they search for their new purpose and satisfaction in a world -- so open to them-- that yet now will never be seen as anything but empty and cynical.

Here, nothing is forced on you, yet everything Hemingway included has meaning. Their excessive drinking, unrequited love, bankruptcy, spiritual criticism, you name it. Reading between the lines has never been more enthralling.