That year, The Sun Also Rises, became one of his best works.
Approximately 10 years later, another highly acclaimed writer, by the name of John Steinbeck, had also adapted this new writing style as his own, especially in The Grapes of Wrath. The Joads, when they initially leave home, are a group of simplistic, animal-like people who barely understand or even realize their plight, but as the story progresses, they begin to grow and adapt to their new circumstances. They evolve from a small, insignificant group of creatures with no societal consciousness into a single member of a much larger family-society.
In both of these novels, it is apparent that many hardships are taking place, and that the writer may be writing with the notion that fate is treating him/her cruel. In The Sun Also Rises, love becomes the fate that turns ugly. There is no evidence of joyful, fulfilling love. The two main characters, Jake and Brett Ashley, cannot love either physically or emotionally. When they speak of the possibility of love, they are imagining it in another, better world. Both of them are wounded, Jake physically and Brett Ashley, emotionally. In the novel, Brett says,Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.? Jake replies,Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?? (Hemingway 75.) Robert Cohn, another character, becomes immediately attracted to Brett Ashley. To Cohn, theirfake romance? means everything. To Brett, it means nothing. His willingness to endure public humiliation for her reinforces the Lost Generation's belief that love had died in World War One itself, along with all other pre-war values. These values were very important to Hemingway, and one will notice that the novel repeatedly reflects on how love was perceived to him.
In The Grapes of Wrath, fate is terribly cruel to the Joad family. A massive drought, which brought about a non-producing farm, caused them to have to move from their homeland in Oklahoma in search of a new settling ground.
