Robert Cohn, the previous middleweight boxing champion at Princeton, struggles to fit in with the other expatriates in Paris. All his life he has felt like he has been rejected by others because of his Jewish culture, and even after graduating from college and moving to France, he still feels resentment at being discriminated against (10). Often he tries too hard to be respected by Jake's group of friends and comes off as trying to seem superior, furthering others' dislike of him. Unlike Jake Barnes, Mike Campbell, and Brett, Cohn never participated in World War I, and he holds on to an outdated system of ideals that seems inappropriate after the horrors witnessed during the war.

Though he is the first character to appear in The Sun Also Rises, Robert Cohn is not the novel's hero; instead, he serves to contrast with Jake. Jake finds Cohn to be insecure...