Alex Thorn

English 583

Ms. Kelly

Fertility and the Old Times

On the road to Pamplona, Jake looks out the window.

In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well off and clean… and the houses and in the villages had red tiled roofs, and then the road turned off and commenced to climb and we were going way up close along a hillside, with a valley below and hill stretched off back toward the sea. You couldn’t see the sea. It was too far away. You could see only hills and more hills, and you knew where the sea was. (97-98)

Jake Barnes is always searching for something. The endless horizons and the promise of the sea show his love for the country and belief in the fertility and certainty in nature, as well as his confidence that whatever he is looking for, he can find in the friendly vastness of nature. That search, however, is muted because Jake cannot articulate what it is, exactly, he is searching for. In fact, Jake is looking for potency, not just in his inability to consummate a sexual relationship, but in the fertility of the world around him (even though he, himself, is not fertile). In a world where the only true values and questions are “who’s buying the next drink” and “look at that girl,” Jake (and Bill) needs to see that his values are not dead – values that represent the times before the war. En route to Pamplona, it is the sights of the countryside that, for Jake, are restorative and make him feel truly alive. The curative quality of the landscape lies in Jake’s sense that it is timeless and that it has survived the war, unlike so much of the world. Seeing the countryside helps Jake dispose of the haunting sense of his impotency and inability to be fully alive.

While in the hospital after the war, a man told Jake that he had given “more than his life,” implying that Jake may as well have died. This mentality truly plagues Jake – it leaves him searching for ways to make up for his inability. In fact, Jake is fed up with the façades and meaningless lives that the people around him are living. He desperately tries to get away from the “white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, [and] talking.” (28)

Jake wants to avoid living the life that the Count lives - the food, the women, the alcohol, the hedonistic life of sensual appetite – by searching for ways to ease his pain and make more of his life. Jake looks to the country to ease his troubles and take him back to pre-war times when things were obviously simpler for him. He longs to be part of something – the same way he longs to be loved – which is why he feels “pleasant” when “all the people were going to work.” (43) As Jake, Bill and Robert travel in the motor-car, Jake sees image after image of fertility and the simple old lifestyle: oxen and cattle “hauling carts,” rolling greens, valleys, streams and “ripe fields of grain.” As they drive, Robert falls asleep, leaving only the two veterans awake. In fact, Bill shares Jake’s need to regain the simple “values” of the pre-war world. It is obvious that the war has scarred them both. Although Bill is not injured in the same way that Jake is, they both long to get back to “the country” and look forward to the fishing trip. The car passes an old castle with lots of little houses and a grain field encircling it – a relic, perhaps, of the old feudal order. It is that sense of order and fertility that Jake yearns for. It becomes apparent that Bill feels the same way, for, when Jake turns around, Bill nods at him, acknowledging the same unspoken sense of peace.

Fittingly, the very next thing that Jake sees after Bill’s acknowledgement is an almost religious sight, with Pamplona, the destination, far off in the distance.

Then we crossed a wide plain, and there was a big river off on the right shining in the sun from between the line of trees, and away off you could see the plateau of Pamplona rising out of the plain, and the walls of the city, and the great brown cathedral , and the broken skyline of the other churches. In back of the plateau were the mountains, and every way you looked there were other mountains, and ahead the road stretched out white across the plain going toward Pamplona. (99)

The way Jake sees the road ahead turns Pamplona into a religious destination and connects his feeling of spirituality (or lack thereof) with the physicality of nature. Everything for him is “big,” “wide,” and “great,” – all very intimidating and vast adjectives, almost as grand as Catholicism itself. In front of Jake is the nature he is traveling through, then the “stretched out white” road leading up to the raised Pamplona that is guarded on all sides by mountains and surrounded by churches. For Jake, the closest thing to believing in moral order is being able to visit the country and see the “rolling mountain ranges,” which for him is a religious experience. Once in Pamplona, Jake, who is himself Catholic, goes to a cathedral and tries to pray. During his prayer, he digresses and ends up lamenting about his lifestyle as a “rotten catholic.” While trying to pray for his friends, the bullfighters, and his own well-being, he prays also for the Count. In praying for him, Jake is reminded of the Count’s hedonistic lifestyle full of alcohol, women, and money. The thought of money quickly turns into Jake’s lack of money and, finally, the conclusion that he, himself, is a “rotten Catholic” for not being able to pray. Not only does Jake feel like a “rotten Catholic,” but he doesn’t even feel Catholic. Jake and Bill are bothered by the Catholics on the train because of their intense belief in God and “moral order.” Further, the three travelers are denied the right to eat because they are not part of the Catholic group, even though Jake is Catholic.

In Pamplona, however, the curative qualities of nature are put in direct opposition to Jake’s sexual impotence. Jake is incredibly jealous of Robert, who spent the previous weekend vacationing with Brett, for she loved Cohn so easily but won’t let herself love Jake. As a truly good friend, Bill tries to cheer up Jake by saying that they’re, “going trout-fishing… in the Irati River, and [they’re] going to get tight now at lunch on the wine of the country, and then take a swell bus ride.” (108) Without asking him, Bill knows that what will console Jake is to head back out to the country. And, like the trip to Pamplona, the trip to the river becomes a religious quest. They climb for a long time up hills, near “cattle grazing in the woods,” and in front of “fields of yellow gorse.” They “were on top of the height of land that was the highest part…” (122) The emphasis on their height and ascension towards the sky shows that through their quest they are actually coming closer to Heaven. The description of the light coming “in light patches” (122) through the trees is reminiscent of Jake’s description of the inside of the cathedral. Finally, just like Pamplona, the river is far off in the distance and guarded by mountains. The nature, again, consoles Jake, because, in the word’s of Bill, “this is country.” (122)