Jake is even threatened by the homosexual men who dance with Brett in Paris while not sexually interested in her, they have more "manhood" than Jake, physically speaking. Instead, he is dominated by her (see "Sexuality and bull-fighting," below), as is Cohn, who is also abused by the other women in his life. Jake embodies this new emasculation most likely physically impotent, he cannot have sex and, therefore, can never have the insatiable Brett. One of the key changes Hemingway observes in the Lost Generation is that of the new male psyche, battered by the war and newly domesticated. While Hemingway critiques the superficial, empty attitudes of the Lost Generation, the other quote in the epigraph from Ecclesiastes expresses the hope that future generations may rediscover themselves.
Irresponsibility also marks the Lost Generation Jake rarely intervenes in other's affairs, even when he could help (as with Cohn), and Brett carelessly hurts men and considers herself powerless to stop doing so. Even travel, a rich source of potential experience, mostly becomes an excuse to drink in exotic locales. Jake epitomizes the Lost Generation physically and emotionally wounded from the war, he is disillusioned, cares little about conventional sources of hope - family, friends, religion, work - and apathetically drinks his way through his expatriate life. The Sun Also Rises is an impressive document of the people who came to be known, in Gertrude Stein's words (which form half the novel's epigraph), as the "Lost Generation." The young generation she speaks of had their dreams and innocence smashed by World War I, emerged from the war bitter and aimless, and spent much of the prosperous 1920s drinking and partying away their frustrations.
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