“Intellectual Evasion” or “The Spirit of Tragedy”?: Re-thinking Race in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises

Abstract:In his 1946 essay “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” Ralph Ellison accuses Hemingway of “intellectual evasion” on the topic of race, claiming that Hemingway affirms the position of the white American by either misrepresenting African Americans in his fiction, or by excluding them entirely. This paper expands upon readings of The Sun Also Rises to illuminate moments of racial acknowledgment, particularly where they converge with themes of sexuality. In doing so, I aim to bring to light race as a noteworthy and nuanced theme in a text that otherwise feels merely reductive with respect to race.