Jake and His Insecure Masculinity

 From the beginning of this novel, up until this point, it’s apparent that Jake Barnes has a blatant “shyness” or insecurity of his masculinity, based on various factors within the book. At the beginning of the novel, even before the story begins, we are introduced to Jake’s past, him serving in the war, and sustaining an injury that, implied within the novel, suggests he is unable to have intercourse. This is hard to determine right away from Jake, as his nature is to hint at ideas and scenarios rather than openly discuss them. Moreover, on his insecurity, Lady Brett Ashley’s refusal to enter a relationship with him, due to his injury, severely impacts his presumption about himself, since it means giving up sexual intercourse for her. Furthermore, Jake’s hostility towards Robert Cohn is more than likely founded within his own insufficient feelings. Overall, Jake seems to be heavily affected from his injury and the war, which affects his decisions, beliefs and hopes on topics such as love, morality, etc. , and this is presented multiple times within the novel, as Jake is a bar-wanderer, drinking nights away in Paris. Contrary to first thought, Jake actually recognizes his actions and understands ideas and measures on how to remedy them, as he mentioned to Cohn in Chapter 2, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” It seems likely that Jake is just unwilling or unable at the time to fix his issues faced in his life, and this could be due to the overall immense stress placed on him for each of the obstacles he faces.