Behind Batman's mask... lies Cohn!!!

Cohn. Cohn is a stable rock, one who others can depend on.

Yet now this rock lies on shifting sand, for Cohn’s life has gone amuck with the arrival of Brett, the coy sexual minx. Brett is something new to Cohn; Cohn, who had always been told what to do, by his mother and ex.

To drink, or not to drink. That is the question.

In the praised novel The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway paints a picture in our mind’s eye. Here Hemingway paints a social commentary on the meaning of life, and what it meant for people living in a post-World War I world. I believe it is my civic duty to mention that at the time, the world had just experienced a war of this scale for the first time. We today know this as WWI, but the people then knew the war as The War to End All Wars. In hindsight, the correlation is between a new sense of war and the schism between pre- and post-war styles of thinking. As such, in this new post-war era, the people were generally disillusioned with life. Hemingway portrays that amazingly through his character’s reliance on alcohol to function. Alcohol (I assume as I have never partaken in the drinking, scouts honor) serves as chemical to release the social inhibitions that have plagued humankind; tis’ the burden of being socially dependent creatures. The trio cannot simply work and live in a monotonous rut, without social interactions. They would much rather partake in the endless parties that have come to define their lives. As such, Jake, Cohn, and Brett do not worry about the meaning of life, or the path to happiness, for they drink their pain away. As the wine flows like water, so do their true emotions. Hemingway portrays his characters as drifting through life, looking purpose and meaning, yet never finding any.