loves Jake asks her Couldn't we live together Brett Couldn't we just live together But Brett rejects him because she knows she would go to other men and this would only hurt him Jake represents the men of the lost generation whose strength and pride were damaged by the war Loss of Traditional Masculine Ideals Before the war masculinity was often connected with bravery honor in battle and physical strength But these ideas of masculinity became meaningless after the horror of World War I Heavy machine guns chemical weapons and trench warfare left a permanent scar on the sense of masculinity Men like Jake and his friends do not talk about bravery or patriotism Instead they live restless lives They drink travel and try to forget the past Jake himself admits Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy This shows how men now escape their pain with alcohol rather than living by old heroic values Robert Cohn and the Old Romantic Masculinity Robert Cohn is different because he did not fight in the war He still believes in old ideas about love honor and romance He follows Brett around and cannot accept rejection The others laugh at him and see him as weak Cohn s old-fashioned masculinity looks useless to the war generation This shows how the war changed the very definition of being a man Bullfighting as a Symbol of Masculinity One of the strongest symbols of masculinity in the novel is bullfighting The bullfighter Pedro Romero represents traditional courage skill and pride He shows a kind of pure masculinity that the others admire but cannot live up to Jake says Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters This shows how Jake and others look up to bullfighters as examples of living life fully with courage Brett is drawn to Romero because he seems strong Romero is untouched by the war and he becomes the symbol of masculinity Masculinity and Restlessness The men in the novel often show their masculinity through drinking traveling and chasing women They seem tough on the outside But inside they are insecure Their restlessness is a way to hide their weakness Jake himself knows the truth So he tells Cohn You can t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another This means no matter what they do they cannot escape the broken masculinity the war left behind To sum up in this novel Hemingway shows how World War I destroyed the old ideals of masculinity Men like Jake Barnes live with wounds that cannot heal both physical and emotional Honor bravery and romance are replaced with restlessness drinking and disappointment The only true symbol of masculinity is Romero the bullfighter but he belongs to a world that Jake and his friends can never return to