Drinking in Ernest Hemingway's Novel The Sun Also Rises

Formal Drunks

Drinking is a large part of the Gay Twenties and that is evident in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes uses drinking from leather wine-bottles while in and preceding Pamplona to be accepted in his manliness, feel a sense of comradery, and to cloud his memory so as to forget the things and people around him. Drinking is the largest escape that Jake uses and he employs it very often. 

All throughout the novel the characters are drinking excessively. Some do it for the social values of it while others drink in order to become sloshed and get the side affects from it. Jake drinks a lot for both of those reasons and more. Only he, of all the characters felt that he had to give an elaborate show of being a true man. Because his war wound made him impotent he feels that he must prove himself to people of the world and to his intimate friends, and he uses drinking to help prove himself.
Before reaching Pamplona Jake and Bill went on a fishing trip where they learned how to drink correctly from the leather wine-bottles. Drinking from leather-wine bottle is what distinguishes a man down there and Jake is quick to learn how to do it properly. Drinking from the bottles is also a very social experience, “...he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of the bus”(110), is one instance where the men passed around a bottle for all share in the ritual. During the rest of the trip Jake makes sure that they do other manly things with other real men as well, like drinking, playing bridge, and fishing with an Englishman named Harris.