A Woolfy Moment in Hemmingway

            One of the most interesting moments of The Sun Also Rises to me is when Jake goes into the cathedral in Spain and is actually narrating his internal thoughts. This specific passage reminds me most of Woolf and lets the reader get a glimpse inside Jake’s head.  There are very few moments in the narration of the book in which Jake goes through his thought progressions.  Most of the book he is either describing things around him or going through dialogue with other characters. In this scene he chronicles his drifting thoughts while he is praying. 

“At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the facade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun. The sunlight was hot and hard, and I crossed over beside some buildings, and walked back along side-streets to the hotel.”

            This passage seems a little out of Hemmingway’s style and a little more like Woolf, with a multitude of commas and run-on sentences.  The second to last sentence is whopping 196 words.  That is INSANE for Hemmingway’s normal style of as short as possible, direct sentences conveying a single idea that is always more complicated that it seems. (“It felt good to be warm and in bed.” “The wine was good.” “I had a bad time.” etc) To me this also is one of the most relatable moments of the book.  It is very human to have thought digressions and here Jake is feeling ashamed that his thought digressions are drifting away from what he thinks should be in his prayers. 

I think that religion is an incredibly important part of Jake’s life that we only see glimpses of throughout the book.  He comes to the conclusion that he’s a “rotten Catholic,” but doesn’t feel that there is anything he can do to change that. He seems a little frustrated that he doesn’t feel very religious at that particular moment and hopes that maybe next time he would be able to concentrate better on his prayers. He is the only character in the book that ever gives any thought to religion besides Brett who says, “[God] never worked very well with me.”