"" .
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Conflict.
Jake s "funny wound- was one that toppled everything. From the moment he was deemed impotent, he was technically no longer a man. A whole universe was turned on its head, and Jake was forced to reevaluate his morals and humanity and fundamentalism, not from the viewpoint of a man, but from the strange viewpoint of a man now castrated. "Fake European standards- had to be replaced and a life of "being a steer- had to be demolished. Jake should not have had to work so to be happy. He should not have had to be Brett's emotional crutch or Cohn's smirking tennis friend of Mike's underdog. "To hell- with it all, Jake would say.
Thus Jake's conflict was one born out of evolution, out of the eternal struggle to improve. Jake was trying to become a man in the truest sense, a creature who walked with "grace under pressure,"" like Romero whose movements in the face of danger were always those of "absolute purity-. He had to resolve the injured, emasculated creature with the intact man he would soon become. .
Decisions/Choices.
To the outsider, Jake was idle. He woke up every morning to this "wonderful nightmare, - a banal slide show of overindulgence. Each day was one of perpetual motion "attending the job, going to lunch, having a drink, picking up friends, dancing in the clubs. It was an intense social experience that led nowhere. As Jake told Cohn, "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."" Such vapid motions lacked real strength of heart, and only managed to fill the hours quickly, like a good beer-induced haze that clears all too quickly with the sun.
But I think that for Jake, these moments qualified as more of a test of endurance than anything else. For example, when Montoya requested that Jake protect the young Romero from the potential corruption of foreigners and fame, Jake wholeheartedly agreed. He was enough of an "aficionado- (and enough of a man) to acknowledge the purity of the Spanish bullfighter.