Can Autistics Identify with Jake Barnes? The Case of Autism and the Hemingway Narrator in the Sun Also Rises

John Marinan

International Journal of Psychological Studies, 2015, vol. 7, issue 4, 106

Abstract: Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises is an early example of paraliptic narration, or the rhetorical technique of revealing by omission. Jake Barnes, the narrator, fits this bill because he exhibits startling incommunicability with respect to tale-telling and “reading†of other characters. I argue that this technique, gives Jake Barnes autistic qualities. At the same time, cognitive literary theorists have indicated that autistic readers might have difficulty understanding narrators of this type due to what they call “mindblindness†. They argue that without T.O.M. (Theory of Mind Mechanism), readers cannot make appropriate judgments about the narration. I argue the counter-point; invoking Kenneth Burke, I argue that autistic readers can understand paraliptic narrators because they can identify with them.

Date: 2015
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