Bill

Bill I find to be quite a strange character and one that is important to Jake. What I find strange is bills obsession with taxidermy but I don’t quite know why and I don’t quite know what that says about him.  The diction he uses is quite positive a bit excessive he describes things as “wonderful” a lot contrasts to the uncertain qualifier laden diction of Jake. I noticed that when bill was in the scene Jake’s thoughts filled with judgment it was mostly dialogue based Jake doesn’t describe or react to bill in his head like he does with other characters. Whilst bill is definitely dominant in the conversation it seems like Jake is actually listening which doesn’t happen when Cohn is talking. I found it interesting when he said that he isn’t daunted by anything. Which clearly most of the characters are daunted by everything in life they just mask their insecurity. I think bill acknowledges this too when he says Vienna seemed better than it was because he was drunk. He is aware that things can be masked with nightlife. In this it seems Jake and bill are the same page, they both understand that they deny their own unhappiness and have nothing to do. But still bill calls things wonderful and seems to be a bit ahead of Jake in appreciating the world in a sense. There are many ways we could look at bills obsession with taxidermy. Taxidermy has masculine connotations, essentially taking an animal you’ve killed and turning it into a decoration, showing domination over it in a sense. Stuffed animals also show preservation, taking an animal from a living environment and after its dead posing it in the same position it was when it was alive. I think both are relevant to the sun also rises and the lost generation.  Masculinity is something that’s been destroyed at this point by the war, shown through jakes injury and the desire for men to compensate for the lack of masculinity and recreate it through masculine things like stuffed animals. The stuffed animals as zombie like creatures that were living and moving and are now in frozen faux living poses, relate to the lives of the lost generation. They go through the motions and they might look as though they are living just as they were before the war but they’re simply going through the motions and not developing real human connections. I think bills obsession hints to the audience to acknowledge these things. There’s usually a character in every book that we’re supposed to really tune in and listen to, (for example Mrs. Maude in to kill a mocking bird) and were often cued to do so by the narrators extensive or positive description of them. But jakes internal judgments actually cease when talking to Bill, so when he is barely described we are actually cued to pay attention.