Relationship Between Man and Nature in The Sun Also Rises Daniel James Wood

Bright daylight, a river, cool breezes, green and rolling countryside, oxen, cattle, pigeons, valleys, hills stretching off back toward the sea, children playing in the hot sun - when Jake and his company first perceive 'Nature' in The Sun Also Rises (in chapter ten) it is amazing in its unrestrained, unrelenting beauty, yet it fails to amaze those men who actually perceive it; men who, instead, adopt a blase attitude of nonchalance towards the extraordinary settings into which they venture. In Jake's own words: "While we were waiting [for Robert Cohn] I saw a cockroach on the parquet floor that must have been at least three inches long. I pointed him out to Bill and then put my shoe on him. We agreed he must have just come in from the garden. It was really an awfully clean hotel." Such is the relationship between nature and the misguided youth of the 'Lost Generation': nature is to be seen, to be appreciated, to be enjoyed, but also to be altered or destroyed or even belittled for the amusement of a generation who find their very identity in having been involved in one of history's greatest acts of destruction.

"We're going trout-fishing," says Bill. "We're going...