Essay | ROBERT COHN: Tragic Hero

ROBERT COHN: Tragic Hero

Robert Cohn, the noble, tragic hero, whom we get to know through the "jaundiced" eyes of the unreliable narrator (Jake Barnes), is ridiculed for being a hopeless romantic. The world is a place of life and hope and he does not see it as a wasteland. Cohn is clearly an outsider, shunned at Princeton, never accepted in the Bohemian Left Bank of Paris where, apparently, he's among friends. Everybody makes fun of him behind his back. His so-called friends think he is a fool, and a handy outlet to relieve them of their own frustrations. The lost generation gropes for straws and the nearest one is Cohn, an ideal, handy scapegoat for their own failings. All the other characters are so disillusioned with the era (lost generation), only he seems to stand out as a realist who gropes for a glimmer of hope. He seems...
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