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The Sun Also Rises | Performance Art: Jake Barnes and “Masculine” Signification in The Sun Also Rises

This excerpt, by Ira Elliot, explores Jake’s fractured male identity and the way in which he relates to homosexual men in the novel.

My project is to consider the ways in which Jake Barnes’s male identity is called into question by the genital wound he suffered during the First World War, and the ways in which his fractured sense of self functions in relation to homosexuality and the homosexual men he observes at a bal musette in the company of Brett Ashley. Jake’s attitude toward the homosexuals—the way he degrades them and casts them as his rivals—will, I believe, reveal the extent to which sexual categories and gender roles are cultural constructions. Close readings of several key passages in...

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