When one thinks of the term Avant Garde, they might envision an eccentric evening gown birthed from four yards of purple leather and littered with various pieces of warped silverware. Or perhaps they might think of an incredible piece of art, where a stocky man in a trench coat is surrounded by an orange ball, a typewriter, and a poster of the human anatomy. Would one ever dream to think of Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel, The Sun Also Rises as Avant Garde? While there may not be any orange balls or warped silverware, Hemingway crafted his novel in opposition to the norm. He embraced this Avant Garde movement, also referred to as Dadaism, through his fresh way of writing dialogue, his characters, and his style of writing.
One of Hemingway’s most notorious characteristics is the way he writes his dialogue between characters. While most authors of that time were still including ‘she exclaimed’ and ‘he screamed furiously” to display emotion and create fluidity, Hemingway was cutting out the middleman and just writing raw dialogue. “ ‘If our money comes and you’re sure you don’t mind.’ ‘ It will come, all right. I’ll see to that.’ ‘Tell me what tackle to send for.’ ‘Get two or three rods with reels, and lines, and some flies.’ ‘I won’t fish,’ Brett put in” (Hemingway, 88). The Avant Garde movement in literature was all about making it new and making things different. It was a movement that was created in response to post-World War I. “Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite” (Dadaism). Ernest Hemingway went against the grain with this type of distant and static writing. He simplified the way his characters spoke to one another and through this created a new type of fragmented dialogue that was innovative and extremely Avant Garde.
Another fresh approach used in The Sun Also Rises are the characters Hemingway created. Perhaps the most Avant Garde character is Lady Brett Ashley. She represented the new, modern woman who had short hair, made sexual advances, and called men ‘chap’. This was not something the world had seen before. They were used to the traditional woman, one that obeyed her husband and only took interest in the household and the upbringing of her children. Hemingway gave Brett opinions and an incredible amount of zest. Not only did he choose to make her vivaciously bold, but he chose to position her in a desirable light. If the reader did not favor Brett and her actions, perhaps they would think differently when they read about the countless amount of men that were intoxicated by her presence. Perhaps women would begin thinking that this is what one must do to receive such an incredible amount of attention and devotion. “Brett was damn good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey” (Hemingway 30).
Besides the way Hemingway wrote dialogue and created his characters, he also had an extremely distinct and new way of writing. He included many fissures and a great deal of fragmentation. There is a very discontinuous style to his writing, where he interchangeably alters the point of view and ignores the idea of conventional time. It is a very distant style of writing, which creates a great deal of space between the author and the reader. “With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down” (Dadaism). This Avant Garde movement was centered on self-expression and conveying emotions through pieces of art. Hemingway’s modern style of writing was perhaps a way to express his own confusion in the post-World War I era. He focused not on creating connections, which made his novel easy to digest, but wrote it in a way that he himself felt; scattered, distant, and passionate.
While The Sun Also Rises might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term Avant Garde, it was an American staple in the ‘make it new’ modernism movement. By way of Hemingway’s dialogue, characters, and style, he set a new foot into the literature world, changing history.
WORKS CITED.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1926. Print.
n.a., Dadaism Art. HuntFor, 2007. Web. 24 September 2009.
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