What's Jake's problem with Robert Cohn?

     When I first read the opening chapter of The Sun Also Rises, I was quite a bit confused. The first chapter of the novel is seemingly detached from the rest of the novel. When reading the first chapter in isolation, one would assume that the rest of the novel would revolve around Robert Cohn. Despite this oddity, I love the way the novel starts out: rather than give us a traditional introduction to each character and their background, Jake Barnes's biting tirade against Robert Cohn reveals a great deal about his status as a narrator and the setting of the novel.

From the very start of the novel, Jake makes note of the fact that Robert Cohn was Jewish, and subsequently uses that fact to belittle and insult him. Barnes insists that Cohn picked up boxing to deal with his feelings of “inferiority and shyness” as a Jew. He goes on to diminish Cohn’s achievements as a boxer, criticize his ambitions as a writer, and extensively mock his previous relationships. As the perfect foil to Jake, Robert Cohn’s descriptions highlight Jake’s weaknesses and insecurities. This could explain the fixation that Jake (and other characters) have on Cohn being Jewish. While Robert is able to channel his insecurities over his background into a successful boxing career, Jake has no such positive outlet. Similarly, Jake is deeply disturbed and angered by various minorities throughout The Sun Also Rises. From the very first chapters of the novel, we see Jake disgusted at the gay men that Lady Brett Ashley is surrounded by. Later on, Jake is deeply upset at the black drummer that Brett seems to be friends with. Jake parallels his own struggles with his injury which rendered him impotent (which damages his relationship with Brett) to the minority status of these men, which subsequently angers him: while these minorities are experiencing relative acceptance in the progressive setting of Paris, he is completely unable to overcome his injury: he feels estranged from society due to the fact that he can’t have sex and has to internalize this disability instead of seeking support from others.

Why does Jake mock Cohn’s boxing career so much? Jake is an avid follower of bullfighting, a grandiose display of masculinity, and is infatuated by Pedro Romero due to his prowess. Despite this, he feels nothing but contempt towards Robert’s boxing career even though Cohn is a champion in his own right. The two sports revolve around combat and have something admirable in their brutality. Jake reaches the cynical conclusion that Cohn’s boxing career is motivated by a deep insecurity over his identity, yet makes none of these assumptions about Pedro Romero: he just sees him as a stud. The key difference between Jake’s admiration for bullfighting and his seeming contempt for boxing can be explained by his jealousy of Robert. 

The novel makes repeated references to the fact that Robert wasn’t part of the war: fundamentally, I think Robert Cohn serves as a cruel reminder to what Jake could have been if he hadn’t been in the war. His hopes of romance and heroism are likely similar to what Jake experienced before the war, before his injury distorted his amorous ambitions into the meaningless hedonism which dominates his life in Paris. This could also be why Robert is the only sober character in the novel: while it might make him appear somewhat weird to the reader at first, he is the only character that doesn’t rely on alcohol as an escape from his wartime trauma. Similarly, Robert’s lack of humor is due to the fact that he doesn’t need to use irony as a coping mechanism in the way that other characters do. 

While Robert still has his shortcomings as a character (he seems a little bit annoying) the cruel depiction that he gets in the first chapter seems to be mostly informed by Jake’s own cynicism, jealousy, and self-doubt.