Author: jstanke20

For this blog post, I decided to do a comparison between my choice novel, The Sun Also Rises and a novel I’ve read, The Great Gatsby. The first thing I noticed between these two novels was that both refer to the Lost Generation, which is the generation that grew up during or right after World War 1 ended. The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby are both set in the 1920s, one set in Paris and the other in New York City. Another connection between is how characters in both novels are searching for more and seem a little bit lost. Gatsby is chasing after the American Dream and wants more. In the other novel, Jake is searching for happiness and uses partying as a distraction for the void he’s trying to fill. Brett is another character in this book who’s using men and partying to distract herself. I think these two characters use partying as a distraction because of the time period, with the World War just ending. Another connection between these two is the relationships and both novels are lacking real love. For example, in The Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy are married but they don’t actually truly love each other. Tom has many affairs and despite this, they stay together. Tom was rich so Daisy decided to marry him instead of waiting for Gatsby, even though Gatsby was the one who she actually loved. In The Sun Also Rises, Jake and Brett’s love after the war is strange and doesn’t seem real. 

In McCarthy’s first few soliloquies, many things are revealed about Ed Tom Bell. From these, my perception of Bell is that he’s very involved in his job, which deals with law and crime. A major theme throughout the soliloquies is law enforcement and capital punishment. In the first one, he reflects on how he sent a kid to the gas chamber for killing a young girl. In the second one, he’s reflecting on his law enforcement work in the past compared to work now and the third one talks about new technology in law enforcement, along with the impact new technology has had. I think he talks about law enforcement in all of them because it shows us insight into past events in his job and some of the things he’s been through. One part of the second one I thought was interesting was when he showed insight into his thoughts of a different race. Bell talks about how he had to stop the truck because it had Coahuila plates. This reveals that Bell is racist towards Mexicans. Also, in the third one, there was a part where he talks in a racist way about Hoskins.

I think that McCarthy decided to include the soliloquies because it shows the point of view of Bell and how he feels about events that happened in the past and everything that’s happened to him.