Does Brett Really Love Jake?

In The Sun Also Rises, the narration makes it very clear that Brett is in love with Jake. It’s easy to assume the narrator is reliable and take this statement at face value, but I think that if you really delve into the relationship between Jake and Brett, her true feelings for Jake become more ambiguous and disputable.
Brett states again and again that she loves Jake and wishes they could be together. Now I hate Brett with a passion, so I have a strong bias, but I believe that Brett’s actions show otherwise. We’ve already discussed how Brett is incredibly manipulative of Jake. Knowing that they can never be together, she flaunts her relations with other guys in front of him. She even goes so far as to ask Jake to set her up with Romero. While you could view this as Brett essentially asking Jake’s permission to go after Romero, I think Brett’s intentions are more malicious. While Jake is holding onto Brett because he's so in love with her that he can't let go, Brett keeps him around because of the attention he gives her. Knowing that Jake loves her so much and would do anything for her gives her the attention that she craves from all the guys she's involved with. Brett leads guys on, makes them fall in love with her, and then jumps to a new man, all because she has some severe issues that she's never dealt with because she drinks to avoid her problems. I believe that Brett asks Jake about Romero to prove to herself just how much she has Jake wrapped around her finger, and not to ask his permission. With this interpretation in mind, can we really say that Brett is in love with Jake? If all she seems to care about is the attention she gets from him and she doesn't attempt to shield him from her other relationships, it's very hard to believe that Brett is telling the truth about loving Jake back. Perhaps Jake wants to believe it so badly that he ignores all the signs that she's lying.
But we must also examine the novel’s use of the word “love”. Everyone uses it very loosely, from Cohn talking about being in love with Brett right after they met to Brett talking about being in love with Romero. The characters’ actions prove that their feelings are incredibly less intense than our idea of being in love with someone, so perhaps Brett really is in love with Jake in her sense of the word.

Because we don’t completely understand the feelings that “love” implies to this group, we can’t make a solid claim that Brett doesn’t love Jake. Still, it is important to discuss whether Jake’s claim about Brett being in love with him is accurate based on our sense of the word. We need to know how to interpret Brett’s actions, and our interpretations change if Jake is incorrect. However, since he is our narrator and we don’t understand their idea of the implications of “love”, we can debate all we want but we will never know for sure one way or the other.

Comments

  1. Dale RobbennoltOctober 1, 2017 at 8:15 AM

    I am also pretty critical of Brett for the most part, but I think that in her own way she does love Jake. There are a lot of things that Brett does that make us question her morality and her love for Jake but there is also a strong connection. Brett seems manipulative and like she is lying to Jake before she goes to San Sebastian with Cohn, but afterwards she doesn't try to hide it. She is completely honest with Jake and Jake, for the most part, accepts that this is part of who Brett is. Brett and Jake are unable to have a physical relationship but Jake is the person who is always there for Brett and who she comes to when she is in need of love and support.

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  2. Nina GalvezOctober 1, 2017 at 11:41 AM

    I like your examination of the concept of love in this book. I am also very critical of Brett. She said she loved Jake in the beginning of the book yet later she said she loved Romero. I find it almost comical how love in this book doesn’t mean being supportive, loyal, and caring. There were times when Brett cared for Romero and Jake however you can care for someone and simply “like” them rather than “love” them. However, we don’t see Brett possess some of the other “qualities of love” such as being loyal and supportive at all. She uses the term so loosely that I feel we have stopped believing her. Similar to The Boy Who Cried Wolf, we no longer trust Brett’s feeling of love.

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  3. VicenteOctober 2, 2017 at 9:04 PM

    I saw it as more: Brett's emotion towards Jacob is genuine enough, but she is immature in some ways, and thus does things like ask Jacob to set her up with Romero despite knowing Jacob loves her. I don't think she had any malicious intent in asking for that favor; I just think she wasn't mature enough to process the potential harmful emotional impact of the favor she was asking. Seeing only the way you feel, and not making a real attempt to "put yourself in somebody else's head", is behavior I associate with fourteen year olds

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  4. Jack H.October 6, 2017 at 6:59 AM

    I think Brett is broken, possibly due to her former abuse by her ex. Maybe her twisted version of love isn't a manipulation, but genuinely the only way she understands love.

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  5. 羅　理愛　（スミトロ　リア）October 9, 2017 at 7:02 AM

    While reading this novel it was easier to assume at the surface that the feelings that Jake has for Brett are reciprocated, since when we read their one-on-one conversations I found genuineness in Brett's words, but seeing your arguments that a) that our definition of "love" might very well be different from the definition that this group of characters and b) the high possibility that she might be manipulating Jake to bend at her word, I can definitely see how Brett might just be using him to get around instead of actually loving him back, like leading a puppy on a leash.

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  6. LindsayOctober 9, 2017 at 8:59 PM

    You definitely bring up a number of valid points. Perhaps the most important is the definition of love, something I never really considered. Maybe in Paris, at the time, their idea of love was different than what we think of today (as you pointed out). So although I'm super critical of Brett as well, I could see the possibility that she's trying to be genuine. But on the other hand, her short relationship with Romero felt different from the ones with other guys. And Brett did proclaim that she was in love with him. So maybe that's "true love" to Brett. I'm pretty conflicted over this whole thing. It's also possible Brett simply NEEDS to feel dominant, and she does it by wrapping various men around her finger. Great post! Definitely got me thinking.

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