E.Hemingway (3)

had no direct experience of World War I and because he is Jewish. He holds on to the romantic prewar ideals of love and fair play, yet, against the backdrop of the devastating legacy of World War I, these values seem tragically absurd . As a Jew and a nonveteran, Cohn is a convenient target for the cruel and petty antagonism of Jake and his friends .
Read an in-depth analysis of Robert Cohn.
Bill Gorton -  Like Jake, a heavy - drinking war veteran, though not an expatriate. Bill uses humor to deal with the emotional and psychological fallout of World War I. He and Jake, as American veterans, share a strong bond, and their friendship is one of the few genuine emotional connections in the novel . However , Bill is not immune to the petty cruelty that characterizes Jake and Jake’s circle of friends.
Mike Campbell  -  A constantly drunk, bankrupt Scottish war veteran. Mike has a terrible temper, which most often manifests itself during his extremely frequent bouts of drunkenness. He has a great deal of trouble coping with Brett ’s sexual promiscuity, which provokes outbreaks of self-pity and anger in him, and seems insecure about her infidelity as well as his lack of  money .
Pedro Romero  -  A beautiful, nineteen- year -old bullfighter. Romero’s talents in the ring charm both aficionados and newcomers to the sport alike. He serves as a foil (a character whose attitudes or emotions contrast with, and thereby accentuate, those of another character) for Jake and his friends in that he carries himself with dignity and confidence at all times . Moreover , his passion for bullfighting gives his life meaning and purpose . In a world of amorality and corrupted masculinity, Romero remains a figure of honesty, purity, and strength .
Montoya -  The owner of a Pamplona inn and a bullfighting expert. Montoya sees bullfighting as something sacred , and he respects and admires Jake for his genuine enthusiasm about it. Montoya takes a paternal interest in the gifted young bullfighter Pedro Romero and seeks to protect him from the corrupting influences of tourists and  fame .
Frances Clyne -  Cohn’s girlfriend at the beginning of the novel. A manipulative status -seeker, Frances was highly domineering early in their relationship and persuaded Cohn to move to Paris . As her looks begin to fade , she becomes increasingly possessive and jealous.
Count Mippipopolous -  A wealthy Greek count and a veteran of seven wars and four revolutions. Count Mippipopolous becomes infatuated with Brett, but, unlike most of Brett’s lovers, he does not subject her to jealous, controlling behavior . Amid the careless, amoral pleasure -seeking crowd that constitutes Jake’s social circle, the count stands out as a stable, sane person . Like Pedro Romero, he serves as a foil for Jake and his friends.
Wilson - Harris  -  A British war veteran whom Jake and Bill befriend while fishing in Spain . The three men share a profound common bond, having all experienced the horrors of World War I, as well as the intimacy that soldiers develop. Harris, as Jake and Bill call him, is a kind, friendly person who greatly values the brief time he spends with Jake and Bill.
Georgette -  A beautiful but somewhat thick-witted prostitute whom Jake picks up and takes to dinner . Jake quickly grows bored of their superficial conversation and abandons her in a club to be with Brett.
Belmonte -  A bullfighter who fights on the same day as Pedro Romero. In his early days , Belmonte was a great and popular bullfighter. But when he came out of retirement to fight again , he found he could never live up to the legends that had grown around him. Hence , he is bitter and dejected. He seems to symbolize the entire Lost Generation in that he feels out of place and purposeless in his later adult life.
Harvey Stone  -  A drunken expatriate gambler who is perpetually out of money. Harvey is intelligent and well read, yet he cannot escape his demons of excessive drinking and gambling. Like many of Jake’s friends, he is prone to petty cruelty toward Cohn.
Jake Barnes
The key events in the formation of Jake’s character occur long before the novel’s action begins . As a soldier in World War I, Jake is wounded. Although he does not say so directly, there are numerous moments in the novel when he implies that, as a result of his injury, he has lost the ability to have sex. Jake’s narration is characterized by subtlety and implication . He prefers to hint at things rather than state them outright, especially when they concern the war or his injury. Early in the novel, for example one must read the text very closely to grasp the true nature of Jake’s wound ; it is only later, when Jake goes fishing with Bill, that he speaks more openly about his impotence.
Jake’s physical malady has profound psychological consequences . He seems quite insecure about his masculinity. The fact that Brett, the love of his life, refuses to enter into a relationship with him compounds this problem. Jake, with typical subtlety, suggests that she does not want to because it would mean giving up sexual intercourse. Jake’s hostility toward Robert Cohn is perhaps rooted in his own feelings of inadequacy. In many ways , Jake is a typical member of what poet Gertrude Stein called the “lost generation,” the generation of men and women whose experiences in World War I undermined their belief in justice, morality , manhood, and love. Without these ideals to rely on, the Lost Generation lived an aimless, immoral existence, devoid of true emotion and characterized by casual interpersonal cruelty. Part of Jake’s character represents the Lost Generation and its unfortunate position: he wanders through Paris, going from bar to bar and drinking heavily at each, his life filled with purposeless debauchery. He demonstrates the capacity to be extremely cruel, especially toward Cohn. His insecurities about his masculinity are typical of the anxieties that many members of the Lost Generation felt .
Yet, in some important ways, Jake differs from those around him. He seems aware of the fruitlessness of the Lost Generation’s way of life. He tells Cohn in Chapter II: “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” Moreover, he recognizes the frequent cruelty of the behavior in which he and his friends engage. Most important, perhaps, he acknowledges, if only indirectly, the pain that his war injury and his unrequited love for Brett cause him. However, though Jake does perceive the problems in his life, he seems either unwilling or unable to remedy them. Though he understands the dilemma of the Lost Generation, he remains trapped within it.
Lady Brett Ashley
Brett is a strong, largely independent woman . She exerts great power over the men around her, as her beauty and charisma seem to charm everyone she meets. Moreover, she refuses to commit to any one man, preferring ultimate independence. However, her independence does not make her happy . She frequently complains to Jake about how miserable she is—her life, she claims, is aimless and unsatisfying. Her wandering from relationship to relationship parallels Jake and his friends’ wandering from bar to bar. Although she will not commit to any one man, she seems uncomfortable being by herself. As Jake remarks , “She can’t go anywhere alone .”
Indeed, there are several misogynist strains in Hemingway ’s representation of Brett. For instance , she disrupts relationships between men with her very presence. It seems that, in Hemingway’s view, a liberated woman is necessarily a corrupting, dangerous force for men. Brett represents a threat to Pedro Romero and his career —she believes that her own strength and independence will eventually spoil Romero’s strength and independence. Because she does not conform to traditional feminine behavior, she is a danger to him.
As with Jake and his male friends, World War I seems to have played an essential part in the formation of Brett’s character. During the war, Brett’s true love died of dysentery. Her subsequent aimlessness, especially with regard to men, can be interpreted as a futile, subconscious search for this original love. Brett’s personal search is perhaps symbolic of the entire Lost Generation’s search for the shattered prewar values of love and romance.
Robert Cohn
Cohn has spent his entire life feeling like an outsider because he is Jewish. While at Princeton, he took up boxing to combat his feelings of shyness and inferiority. Although his confidence has grown with his literary success , his anxiety about being different or considered not good enough persists. These feelings of otherness and inadequacy may explain his irrational attachment to Brett—he is so terrified of rejection that, when it happens, he refuses to accept it.
The individuals with whom Cohn travels to Spain only compound his insecurities. Not only is he the only Jew among them, but he is also the only nonveteran. Jake and his friends seize on these differences and take out their own personal insecurities on Cohn. It is important to note that Cohn’s behavior toward Brett is ultimately not very different from that of most of the men in the novel. They all want to possess her in ways that she resists. But Cohn’s attempts to win Brett are so clumsy and foolish that they provide an easy target for mockery.
Cohn adheres to an outdated, prewar value system of honor and romance. He fights only within the confines of the gym until his rage and frustration make him lash out at Romero and Jake. He plays hard at tennis, but if he loses he accepts defeat gracefully. Furthermore , he cannot believe that his affair with Brett has no emotional value. Hence, he acts as a foil for Jake and the other veterans in the novel; unlike them, he holds onto traditional values and beliefs , likely because he never experienced World War I firsthand.
Sadly, Cohn’s value system has no place in the postwar world, and Cohn cannot sustain it. His tearful request that Romero shake his hand after Cohn has beaten him up is an absurd attempt to restore the validity of an antiquated code of conduct. His flight from Pamplona is symbolic of the failure of traditional values in the postwar world.
Summary: Chapter I
[Cohn] learned [boxing] painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton.
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The novel begins with Jake Barnes, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, describing Robert Cohn. Cohn was born to a wealthy Jewish family in New York . At Princeton, Cohn faced rampant anti-Semitism. To minimize his feelings of inferiority and to combat his shyness, he threw himself into boxing, becoming the university ’s middleweight champion . He married very soon after his graduation, on the rebound from his unhappy college experience. He and his wife had three children . Cohn lost most of his fifty- thousand - dollar inheritance, and, after five years , his wife left him, just when he had made up his mind to walk out on her. After the divorce , Cohn moved to California. There, he began spending time with a literary crowd, and he soon began backing a magazine. While in California, Cohn became involved with Frances Clyne, a manipulative status-seeker. When Cohn’s magazine failed, Frances persuaded Cohn to take her to Paris to join the postwar crowd of expatriates.
During his time in Paris, Cohn has few friends, one of whom is Jake. Cohn takes up writing while in Paris, and finishes a novel. As Frances begins to age and starts to lose her beauty, her attitude toward Cohn changes from one of careless manipulation to fierce determination to make him marry her. Jake first becomes aware of Frances’s attitude while he dines one night with her and Cohn. Cohn suggests that he and Jake take a weekend trip. Jake suggests that they go to Strasbourg , in northeastern France , because he knows a girl there who can show them around. Cohn kicks him under the table several times before Jake gets the hint and notices Frances’s look of displeasure. After dinner, Cohn follows Jake to ask why he mentioned the girl and explains that Frances will not permit him to take any trip that involves seeing a girl.
Summary: Chapter II
Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull -fighters.
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That winter , Cohn travels to New York to find a publisher for his novel. There he gains new confidence. The publishers praise the novel, and several women are “ nice ” to him. He also wins several hundred dollars playing bridge . This success, combined with reading a romantic chronicle of an English gentlemen traveling abroad, infects Cohn with wanderlust. Upon returning to Paris, he comes to Jake’s office to persuade him to travel to South America with him, offering to pay for the entire trip. He worries that he is not living life to the fullest. Jake responds that only bullfighters live their lives “all the way up.”
Tired of Cohn pestering him in the office, Jake invites Cohn downstairs to have a drink . Jake knows that once they finish the drink it will be easier to get rid of Cohn. At the bar, Cohn continues to harangue Jake about traveling outside of Paris. He complains that he is tired of Paris and the Latin Quarter. Jake asserts that Cohn’s discontent has nothing to do with geography , saying, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” After the drink, Jake says he needs to return to the office to work . Cohn asks if he can sit outside in the waiting room . Jake allows him to, and, after he is finished at work, he and Cohn have a drink and watch the evening Parisian crowd.
You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
Summary: Chapter III
After Cohn leaves, Jake continues to sit in the café. He catches the eye of a pretty prostitute named Georgette. They have a drink together, and Jake decides it would be nice to have dinner with someone. They catch a horse cab to find a restaurant . While in the cab, Georgette makes a pass at Jake. Jake refuses her, saying he is sick. At dinner he explains that he received a wound in the war that makes such sexual dalliances impossible for him. Georgette exclaims against “that dirty war,” but Jake is in no mood to talk about it. He escapes from the conversation when a group of his friends—Cohn and Frances among them—hails him from a nearby table. They invite him and Georgette to go dancing.
The club is hot and crowded . Lady Brett Ashley arrives with a crowd of callow young men wearing jerseys. Jake reacts with hostility to Brett’s male friends. Brett states that she can “safely” get drunk around these friends. Jake states that one of these men dances “big-hippily.” He says that he knows he should be “tolerant” but that he cannot help being “disgusted”—the implication is that these men are homosexuals. Cohn asks Jake to go for a drink, and Brett joins them. Cohn immediately becomes infatuated with her, and he tries unsuccessfully to persuade her to dance with him. Jake and Brett leave the club together. Before he goes, Jake leaves fifty francs with the club patronne, or owner, telling him to give it to Georgette if she asks for him. Once she and Jake get into a taxi, Brett declares that she is miserable.
Summary: Chapter IV
As they ride through the streets of Paris in the taxi, Jake kisses Brett, but she tells him to stop. They love one another, but Brett refuses to have a romantic relationship because Jake cannot have sex. Brett laments their fate, saying that she is now paying for all the “ hell ” she has made men endure . Jake disingenuously remarks that he finds his war wound funny and rarely thinks about it. As they head to a café to drink, Brett asks Jake to kiss her once more before they arrive . At the café, Jake and Brett again run into their friends. A man called Zizi introduces them to Count Mippipopolous, a Greek man who takes an immediate interest in Brett. Jake and Brett make an appointment to meet the next day, and Jake leaves to return home for the night.
Jake arrives at home, takes his mail from the concierge, and goes to his room. When he gets into bed, he begins to think about his wound. He received it while flying a mission on a “joke front ” in Italy. Other people make more of a fuss out of it than he does. He remembers a colonel who visited him in the hospital and said that Jake had “ given more than his life.” He supposes he would never have had any trouble if he had never met Brett. He begins to cry before drifting off to sleep . After four in the morning , Brett wakes him up by making a drunken scene trying to get past the concierge. The count is waiting outside in his car. Jake lets her up to his room, and Brett reports that the count offered her ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz, on the southern coast of France, with him, but she turned him down. She wants Jake to go out with them, but he declines. He tries to persuade her to stay , kissing her, but she refuses.
Summary: Chapter V
Cohn meets Jake at his office to have lunch . Cohn asks about Brett, and Jake says that she is a drunk and that she is going to marry Mike Campbell, a Scotsman who will be rich someday. Jake also says that Brett’s true love died of dysentery during the war. Jake explains that he met Brett while she worked as a V.A.D. (Volunteer Aid Detachment) in the hospital where he was taken for his injury. Cohn gets annoyed that Jake doesn’t describe Brett in positive terms ; Jake tells Cohn to go to hell. Cohn gets angry at this insult and threatens to leave lunch. Jake smoothes things over and persuades Cohn to stay. Afterward, Jake perceives that Cohn wishes to talk about Brett but avoids bringing up the subject again.
Summary: Chapter VI
That evening, Jake goes to meet Brett, but she stands him up. After looking for her in a few places , Jake wanders through the streets of Paris and runs into his friend Harvey Stone, a compulsive gambler. Harvey is broke and claims he has not eaten in days. Jake gives him money. They happen upon Cohn, who is waiting to meet Frances. Harvey insults Cohn, calling him a moron , before leaving to eat. When Frances arrives, she asks to speak to Jake privately. She tells him that Cohn has refused to marry her and that she fears that no man will marry her now. Jake tries to remain neutral. Frances says that she will not receive alimony from her husband because she got divorced in the quickest way; adding to her woes, no one will publish her writing. Trying to remain bright and cheery, she suggests that they rejoin Cohn. In front of Cohn, she tells Jake that Cohn has paid her two hundred pounds to go to England but that she had to wrangle it out of him. In a falsely cheerful manner , she bitterly describes the unpleasant visits to “friends” in England she will have to make, just so Cohn can get rid of her in an orderly manner. She claims that Cohn won’t marry her because he wants to tell people that he once had a mistress. Cohn sits through her barrage. Jake excuses himself and leaves them alone.
Summary: Chapter VII
Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Jake returns home, and Brett and Count Mippipopolous show up. Jake asks why she missed their appointment but does not believe her when she says she forgot it out of drunkenness. Brett offers to send the count away. Jake tells her not to, but she sends him for champagne. Jake asks why they cannot live together, and she tells him that she would only make him unhappy by cheating on him. She announces that she is leaving Paris for San Sebastian , in Spain, because it will be better for both of them.
The count returns with the champagne, and he begins to describe his philosophy of life. He has been in seven wars and four revolutions. Because he has lived so much, he says, he is able to enjoy everything fully. He thinks the secret to living is to get to know the right values. He is always in love because his values include love. The three of them have a pleasant dinner before going out to a club. The count asks why Brett and Jake do not get married, and they offer curt , false answers. Brett begins to feel miserable and wants to leave. Jake accompanies Brett to her hotel ; she does not want him to come up to her room, however. They kiss several times before she pushes him away.
Summary: Chapter VIII
Jake does not see Brett or Cohn for a while. He receives a brief card from Brett, who is vacationing in San Sebastian. He also receives a note from Cohn reporting that he has left Paris for the countryside . Frances has left for England. Jake’s friend Bill Gorton, an American veteran, arrives from the States. He and Jake plan on going to Spain in order to fish and to attend the fiesta at Pamplona. Bill visits Jake before leaving to visit Budapest and Vienna . When he returns, he tells Jake that he was too drunk to remember very much of his four days in Vienna. While Jake and Bill look for a restaurant, they see Brett get out of a cab. Jake, up to this point, is unaware that she has returned from San Sebastian.
Jake, Bill, and Brett go for drinks together. Brett eventually leaves to meet Mike Campbell, and Jake and Bill eat dinner and drink some more in a restaurant packed with American tourists. Later, they meet Brett and Mike at a café. Mike is drunk and continually mentions how beautiful Brett is. He wants to return to their hotel early. Jake and Bill decide to attend a boxing match , leaving them alone.
Summary: Chapter IX
The next morning, Jake receives a wire from Cohn asking to meet Bill and Jake when they go fishing in Spain. Jake makes the necessary arrangements. That evening Jake finds Brett and Mike at a bar. They ask if they may join him in Spain as well. Jake politely responds that they may. When Mike leaves to get a haircut, Brett asks if Cohn will be going to Spain as well. When Jake tells her that he will, she wonders if it will be too “ rough ” on Cohn. Jake does not understand until she reveals that she was with Cohn in San Sebastian. Jake and Brett exchange tense words before eventually deciding that Brett should write Cohn, telling him she will be in Spain. To their surprise, when Cohn receives her note, he still wants to go. Jake plans to meet Mike and Brett in Pamplona. Bill and Jake board a train from Paris to Bayonne, where they plan to meet Cohn. The train is overrun with people (whom Jake identifies as Catholics), and the two men must wait to eat their lunch. When they arrive in Bayonne, Cohn is waiting at the station .
Summary: Chapter X
Bill, Jake, and Cohn hire a car to Pamplona. Cohn is nervous because he does not know if Bill and Jake know about his fling with Brett in San Sebastian. He does not believe Brett and Mike will arrive later that night. His “air of superior knowledge” irritates Bill and Jake. In anger, Bill foolishly wagers a hundred pesetas that they will arrive on time. Bill tells Jake that he can’t stand it when Cohn gets “superior and Jewish.” When Jake picks up his bullfighting tickets, he stops at the cathedral to pray, but he finds his mind wandering.
Jake goes with Cohn to the station to meet Mike and Brett, simply to irritate Cohn. However, Mike and Brett are not on the train, so Jake and Cohn return to the hotel. Jake receives a telegram from Brett and Mike telling him that they have stopped in San Sebastian because Brett is sick. He does not hand the telegram over because he wants to annoy Cohn further , but he does tell Bill and Cohn that Brett and Mike are still in San Sebastian. Bill and Jake plan to take a bus to a small town called Burguete to go fishing, but Cohn decides to stay behind and wait for Brett and Mike. He admits to Jake that he wrote to Brett suggesting a meeting in San Sebastian. When Jake is alone with Bill, Bill reports that Cohn confided in him about his “ date ” with Brett. Bill says that he thinks Cohn is nice but “so awful.”
Summary: Chapter XI
Bill and Jake board a crowded bus to ride to the small, rural town of Burguete. The bus is filled with Basque peasants (who inhabit a region shared by France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains). The Basques drink wine from wineskins. They offer their skins to Bill and Jake, who in turn share their bottles of wine. The Spanish countryside is beautiful, and it is cool on top of the bus where Bill and Jake sit. The Basques teach them the proper way to drink from a wine-bag. When the bus stops, Bill and Jake buy some drinks. Some Basque passengers buy them more drinks. Once the bus starts again, an English-speaking Basque engages the two men in friendly conversation. When they arrive in Burguete, the fat innkeeper charges them a high price for their room because it is “the big season .” It turns out that Bill and Jake are the only people in the hotel. When they learn that the wine is included, they drink several bottles. Jake goes to bed, musing, “It felt good to be warm and in bed.”
Summary: Chapter XII
Jake wakes up early, dresses, and goes outside. He digs for worms down beside the stream and collects two tobacco tins full . When Jake goes back inside, Bill begins to joke about irony and pity. He encourages Jake to say only things that are ironic or pitiful. Bill says that Jake doesn’t know about how popular irony and pity are because he is an expatriate. He teases that expatriates are drunks who are obsessed with sex and who write nothing worth publishing. Bill says that some people think women support Jake while others think that he is impotent. Jake replies that he is not impotent, that he had an accident . They trade jokes about another man who suffered an accident with similar consequences on horseback, although the story in America is that it was a bicycle accident. Bill declares that he is fonder of Jake than anyone on earth. He states that he could not make this claim in New York because he would sound like a “faggot.” He makes an extended joke about how the Civil War was all about homosexuality. “Sex explains it all,” he says.
Bill and Jake pack a lunch and bottles of wine, and head to the river . They walk through beautiful meadows, fields, and woods , and, after a long hike, arrive at the river. They place the wine in a spring up the road in order to chill it. Jake fishes with worms, but Bill tries fly-fishing. They both catch many fish, but Bill’s fish are bigger. Over their lunch, they joke about the friends they met in the war. Bill then asks Jake if he was ever in love with Brett, and Jake says that he was “for a hell of a long time.” They take a nap under the trees and then head back to the inn. They spend five days in Burguete, fishing, eating , drinking, and playing cards. They get no word from Cohn, Brett, or Mike.
Summary: Chapter XIII
Jake receives a letter from Mike telling him that Brett fainted on the train and that they stayed in San Sebastian for three days and won’t arrive in Pamplona until Wednesday . Cohn sends a telegram announcing that he will arrive on Thursday. Bill and Jake reply to Cohn’s telegram, stating that they are returning to Pamplona that night (Wednesday). Before leaving Burguete, Bill and Jake bid a fond farewell to Wilson-Harris, a British war veteran whom they call Harris. The three men had bonded quickly, and Harris is unhappy to part with them. Although Jake invites Harris to come to Spain, Harris refuses the offer. The three men share drinks in a pub. Harris gives them both his address, along with a dozen flies , saying, “I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had.”
When Jake and Bill arrive in Pamplona, the innkeeper, Montoya, informs Jake that his friends have arrived . Montoya regards Jake as a real lover and aficionado of bullfighting, in part because Jake stays in Montoya’s hotel every year during the fiesta. Jake and Bill find Brett, Mike, and Cohn in a café. Mike regales them with a war story, relating how he gave away another man’s medals, since he had none of his own. Everyone watches the unloading of the bulls. When the shining, muscular beasts charge out of the cages, steers (castrated male bovines) work at calming them so that they do not kill one another. The steers are often gored in the process . Jake tells Brett not to look, but she watches anyway, fascinated. Afterward, they go to a café and get drunk. Mike makes a few cutting remarks about Cohn following Brett around like a steer , referring to the fact that Cohn went to San Sebastian after Bill and Jake left Pamplona. Mike berates Cohn for not knowing when he isn’t wanted . Bill leads Cohn away, and things calm down. Mike remarks that Brett has had affairs before, but not with Jews or with men who kept hanging around. The group shares a supper in which copious amounts of wine mask the shared feeling of apprehension.
Summary: Chapter XIV
Jake returns to his room that night very drunk. He hears Brett and Mike laughing as they go to bed. Lying in bed, Jake reflects that women make “swell friends” because a man has to be in love with a woman to be friends with her. He feels as if he has been getting something for nothing in his friendship with Brett but that eventually he will have to suffer for the friendship. He decides that people have to pay for everything that is good in life. “Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth,” he concludes. However, he also thinks that in five years this philosophy will seem as silly and useless as all the other philosophies he has constructed. He struggles too with the question of morality. Though he wishes Mike would not insult Cohn, he admits to himself that he enjoys watching Mike do it. The next few days are quiet , as preparations are made for the fiesta
Summary
That Sunday, July 6, at noon, exploding rockets announce the beginning of the fiesta. The square fills with celebrants shouting and drinking wine, men and children dancing, and musicians playing drums and fifes. Everything becomes unreal during the seven days of nonstop drinking, dancing, and music. As Jake notes , it seems to everyone as though “nothing could have any consequences.” By the end of the fiesta, even money loses its value for those spending it. The crowd pulls Jake and his friends into a dancing circle around Brett. Afterward, they rush into a crowded wine shop . Everyone inside is dancing and singing . Brett, wearing a wreath of garlic around her neck, learns to drink from a wineskin. Everyone shares food and wine. Jake ducks out to buy two wineskins. When he returns, he finds that Cohn is missing . None of Jake’s friends cares where Cohn is, but Jake goes looking for him. He finds Cohn passed out in the back of the shop. Brett, Jake, Cohn, Bill, and Mike all eat a large dinner. Everyone but Jake stays up all night carousing.
An exploding rocket, announcing the release of the bulls, wakes Jake at six o’ clock the next morning. From the balcony , Jake watches the crowd run heatedly with the bulls toward the bullring. During the first bullfight, Mike, Cohn, and Brett sit high up in the amphitheater, but Bill and Jake take seats closer to the action. They warn Brett to look away when the horses are gored. Cohn claims that he worries only about being bored. Bill again complains to Jake about Cohn’s “Jewish superiority.” Montoya introduces Jake to a promising new bullfighter, Pedro Romero. Romero is nineteen years old and the “ best -looking boy” Jake has ever seen.
At the bullfight, Romero dazzles everyone who watches him. “This was a real one,” says Jake. Afterward, Brett marvels at Romero’s skill . She has watched everything, while Cohn has had difficulty dealing with the spectacle. Mike taunts him mercilessly for his weakness. Brett and Mike sit with Jake during the next bullfight. Romero works close to the bull, wearing him down slowly before he moves in for the kill. His suave and graceful performance delights everyone, including aficionados like Jake and Montoya. He utterly overshadows the other bullfighters, and his bullfighting gives the spectators “real emotion.” Mike jokes afterward that Brett is falling in love with Romero, and he asks Jake to tell her that bullfighters beat their mothers. The following day Romero does not fight, and there is no bullfight scheduled the day after that. The action of the fiesta continues unabated, however.