Hard to Sympathize with Everyone

Having finished tonight's reading, I realized I don't like Cohn. I feel bad saying this because from an objective standpoint, Cohn really is not a bad guy at all. However, since I sympathize so much with Jake, it's really REALLY hard to sympathize with Cohn too. Cohn seems to be carrying on some kind of relationship with Brett, but Jake is in love with Brett and can't have her. It is odd that Jake seems to dislike Cohn above all Brett's other "suitors," but it makes sense to me in a way. If you're in love with somebody who you can't have (or who you have decided you can't have), you tend to hope for them to be with people you like at the very least. I don't think Jake is simply prejudiced about Cohn either; Bill was getting pretty exasperated with Cohn as well, and so was I.

I think that in comparison to Mrs. Dalloway, The Sun Also Rises does a great job of making us work hard to sympathize with characters. Especially after reading Mrs. Dalloway, I really really want to understand and like every character I read about. The Sun Also Rises is really challenging that for me. Part of me does sympathize with Cohn, but not all of me does. Because of this, I think The Sun Also Rises depicts life much more realistically than Mrs. Dalloway does. While Mrs. Dalloway gave us the amazing opportunity to delve deep into every character's mind so that we could sympathize with each character, The Sun Also Rises challenges us to sympathize with each character as well, but makes it nearly impossible for some characters. This frustrates me, maybe because I enjoyed being able to see people differently by reading Virginia Woolf's writing. Reading Hemingway's writing forces me to look at people from a much more subjective point of view, and therefore is like real life because it's incredibly difficult (impossible even?) to really like everybody.