SOURCE: Strychacz, Thomas. “Dramatizations of Manhood in In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises.” In Hemingway's Theaters of Masculinity, pp. 53-86. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

In the following excerpt, from an essay that was origingally published in 1989, Strychacz discusses the ways in which Hemingway's characters enact masculine identity and explores the meanings and difficulties of masculinity in In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises.

In the bullring, men are made or unmanned. The “kid” in the first bullfight vignette of In Our Time submits to the code of the ring and, by killing five times, reaches his majority. Then, remarks the narrator, he “sat down in the sand and puked and they held a cape over him.”¹ Such modest concealment does not satisfy the delighted crowd, which “hollered and threw things down into the bullring,” recognizing that this kid has “finally made it” to...