Is Brett good for Jake?

 One of the things I find most interesting about The Sun Also Rises is the question of whether Jake’s relationship with Brett a positive or negative thing is overall, and whether he should keep it in his life. Does the total sum of the positives Brett gives him, a very intimate and solid friendship, outweigh all the net negatives, his pain and suffering caused by his desperate hope for her romantic affection? And this does not even include the sexual attraction he feels towards her, which he feels is somewhat reciprocated, which he will never be able to fill because of his injury. He even claimed to the reader that he would be fine with his injury if he didn’t have to be around her; it’s not the lack of sexual relations altogether that really pains Jake, it’s not being able to have sexual relations with Brett. Jake seems nearly subservient to her throughout the novel and caters to her every need, always there for her when she needs it. And the question is, what does he get back in return here?

On the one hand, I thought most of the novel I was going to be very hard on Jake’s relationship with Brett in my final review. It seems that Jake is just much happier when he is not around her. When he’s alone with Bill in Spain, away from thoughts about Brett and Mike and Cohn and all that stuff that was really bothering him in Paris, he seems much more relaxed and happier. Whenever he is near Brett, she completely dominates his mind and completely consumes him. He can’t focus on anything else, he can’t have fun, and it seems like he’s constantly craving validation. Although he is so dependent on her that being ripped away from her entirely would possibly completely shatter him, it appears that in the long term this could be the better decision, as she is making him miserable. It’s not fair for him to ask Brett to change, and Brett isn’t going to by herself, so he’s the person who needs to change.

I think that there are some positive impact Brett has on Jake, which I think we see a lot of in the last chapter or two of this novel. Brett makes Jake feel secure, and I think in the long term after he gets past his romantic attraction to her, they can have a long lucrative friendship. Obviously, Jake is “rescuing” Brett, as she calls it, from some financial difficulties, but Brett’s usage of this word shows that she is truly emotionally dependent on him. The relationship is much more two-sided than it looks; there’s something that Jake has that Brett has never been able to find any other man. And when she’s fooling around with other men, I think she’s just trying to fulfill the sexual relationship that she can’t have with Jake. I think Jake has more strength in this relationship than it looked like initially, what do you guys think?

8.5.2