The Sun Sets

" 'Oh Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.' ... The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.  'Yes.' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?' "

This last line blew me away.  All through out the novel, Jake was hanging on to his subsurface hope that things would work out between him and Brett.  Albeit the line could be taken as just another brush, I think that there are stronger indications in the work that this is the final thrust to end things.

The bullfighting parallels the relationships in the group.  Mike, Cohn, Brett, and Romero are bulls.  One knows that ultimately things are not going to work out for them.  They charge through life, especially as the novel escalates during the fiesta.  And of course, occasionally some one gets gored or dies from the infighting.  Bill and Jake are somewhat different from the two.  Bill has too much sense and self-respect to really be categorized that way.  He somewhat plays the role of a picador, intensifying issues, but never finishing them.  There is one character who will bend but never break, that is Jake.  I was not sure how it would end for him, it seemed fairly anticlimactic after the fiesta when Jake seems to accept the problems he faces.  However, in the bullfight metaphor he would be the matador.  He does orchestrate much of what goes on in the novel plot wise, and often fights in the "terrain of the bulls".  What makes it so clear that he is the matador is how he finishes Brett in that last line.  That completely surprised me.  Things are done and mentally he knows that things are not going to work out between him and Brett.  Brett had her chance, but that opportunity has passed.  That is what the matador does, when things are over, he shuts the show down; he is the closer.

The bullfight concept does represent some spec of human experience.  One does have a choice of whether or not he or she will live up to their full potential.  Risk is inherent whether one is a bull or a matador, but it is not as much about the final result so much as how one goes about it.  Grace and dignity are emphasized over one's pure strength.  It is a thinking man's game after all.  The social dimension of the audience also can represent how one's life fits in with the procedures society expects to be met.  In this novel, most of the time the spectators want the fight to be passionate and for every opportunity to be taken.  They simply want excellence, which can be achieved.  This differs from some other novels in which society is hindering the protagonist from reaching his or her full potential.

What seems to matter most in this novel is one's own dignity and being able to live with oneself.  No one in the novel is perfect, but the more honest types tend to be more at peace with themselves.  Personal problems inevitably become group problems, which happens to people in all walks of life.  There also seems to be a certain flux at work between good times and bad, wealth and poverty, drunkenness and sobriety, and life and death.  The right balance needs to be met for one to live up to his or her full potential; ultimately something that one cannot do alone.