The only place where you could see life and death (violent death now that the wars were over) was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it (733)
Earnest Hemingway in this passage is hinting at the fascination that people have with violence and death. It’s interesting to me because before World War I the world was extremely excited for war. Men would sign up for the army and navy in droves. Hemingway himself participated as an ambulance driver. After the Great War it seemed that the world exhausted itself of conflict. However, eventually the world began to become interested in violence as it once had been. Bullfights cater to this allure of brutality. When war isn’t occurring the bullfights attract attention throughout cultures and people.
Excited men signing on to fight in the Great War
From observation I would say that people may (possibly) be divided into two general groups; those who, to use one of the terms of the jargon of psychology, identify, themselves in the position of, animals, and those who identify themselves with human beings. (740)
This statement encapsulates a lot of what we discuss in class. Often times when we classify ourselves as certain things those labels come with connotations. I found it interesting that Hemingway observed that those who related more to animals found it easier to be cruel to humans while those who identified more as a human found it more difficult. Could it be that labelling creates a type of conflict in merely its existence? I would imagine that someone who identifies more as an animal see’s the helplessness that nonhuman animals find themselves in. On this same strand of thought, the human animal has the ability to defend itself making it more enduring when it comes to abuse. A hate for the weak manifests itself in a love for the weaker through a rationalization of respective ability. In contrast, those who identify more as human view another person as the epitome of creation, everything that the world has to offer is in another human rather than an animal. This leads to the mutual respect while animals are downtrodden as expendable.
There are many accounts in World War I that recount how the battlefield would be strewn with the bodies of dead and dying horses.
World Literature Blog 