"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."
This line uttered by Jake is fascinating to me, and not only because he compares himself to a cooked egg. First of all, this is one of the few scenes where we see Jake admitting that he has any emotions - he spends the majority of the novel trying to be nonchalant and as stereotypically masculine as possible. We mentioned in class that a perk of Hemingway's bland style is that emotional breakthroughs are much more significant. We experience one of those breakthroughs here, where Jake is finally admitting that his personality and attitude is a façade that he hides behind. However, the thing I really want to talk about is the term 'hard-boiled' and why I think it's such an accurate description of Jake.
So, I'm assuming we're all familiar with hard-boiled eggs. Hard shells, soft insides, cooked in pots of boiling water. By calling himself hard-boiled, Jake is clearly referring to himself as tough on the outside but soft on the inside. With a hard shell to crack through, most people don't get to see the softer side of Jake that he tries so hard to conceal. However, I wonder if we can expand the metaphor even further: hard-boiled eggs become the way they are because of their environment, which is particularly brutal. Can we attribute Jake's hard-boiled-ness (let's just pretend that's a word) to his environment?
I tend to think like a sociologist, so I am quite willing to blame the rampant toxic masculinity in 1920s society for Jake's inability to express himself. We could even go a step further and say that the "alpha-male" mentality, that men need to be dominant and constantly fighting each other for the "top spot", also plays into Jake's insecurities. His strange dynamic with Cohn aligns with this, as Jake constantly feels like he has to put Cohn down to lift himself up.
Maybe I'm reading way too much into this hard-boiled thing. But I think it's a metaphor with a simple surface and a lot more hidden underneath. Kind of like a hard-boiled egg.
This is a really good point! The "hard-boiled" metaphor also makes me think of the term "walking on eggshells", since they are so delicate and shatter easily. Maybe Hemingway's saying that Jake looks tough but is secretly fragile.
ReplyDeleteYeah I totally see how Jake is like a hard boiled egg in terms of his emotions as he puts up a barrier between himself and others. I mean, just look at the difference between his thoughts and his actions in certain scenes. But although it's hard to get to the inside of a hard boiled egg, I wonder if Brett managed to get to the core of Jake's emotions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Katie's comment about how some very specific people can break through that (admittedly thin) shell, well mostly Brett. I also think that to expand on your idea that a heated environment makes eggs boiled in the first place, I think that the war certainly seemed to play a part in that and is just another example of the war "making a man out of you".
ReplyDeleteI agree! I also think that Jake's experience in the army also contributed an environment which hardened him significantly. He also mentions this when he talks about Cohn, recalling that Cohn should join the army to "toughen up" or "man up". In addition, I wonder if Jake was pressured into joining the army, or he did it all himself. If he was pressured, it would be a bit hypocritical of him to say Cohn wasn't man enough.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think too deeply about the hard-boiled analogy when I first read it, but this makes a lot of sense. I think his time in the army as well as his injury definitely had a part in making him as hard-boiled as he is now. I also wonder if Brett has really managed to get to the core of his emotions. Sure she gets to know things about him that nobody else does, but is he every really emotionally vulnerable or open with her? Maybe he was and I just didn't catch it.
ReplyDeleteIt's so true. He has this hard outer shell to protect his extremely weak and insecure inside. He acts all macho out in public, but with Brett he is like a puppy dog with a broken leg. The hard-boiled egg analogy certainly exemplifies this. Hopefully over the course of the novel we can see him develop a more solid interior.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think it's quite an interesting metaphor and doubly interesting is the fact that he himself labels himself as it. I think it's significant that Hemingway not only deliberately puts in the emotional side of Jake that comes out sometimes, but that Jake actually acknowledges it and has some self awareness of how he acts and that it is a facade. Makes me wonder how self aware he is - has he considered that he makes fun of Cohn out of insecurity? Would it change his actions if he had?
ReplyDelete(Did you notice that he and Bill lunch on hard-boiled eggs when they're fishing in Spain, right before Jake "opens up" a bit and becomes a little less hard-boiled in his manner? Just putting that out there . . .)
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