Bar Tabs

      Jake's inclusion of bar tabs in the narrative is not a sign of thrift–– "late in the fiesta it would not matter what they paid, nor where they bought it." (157) It seems for Jake and his friends, money is of little concern. Cohn's allowance, for instance, seems to be enough to support him. Prices and tabs are mentioned offhandedly, the values of the prices themselves seem to be less important than the presence of regular transactions in the text. And it is not just Jake's tabs that are mentioned. Any time anyone in the group drinks or orders drinks, it finds its way into the story–– "Mike ordered a bottle of Fundador." (179) But money is not simply mentioned in the context of alcohol. Whenever Jake buys sandwiches, newspapers, or coffee, we hear about it. And when his friends lose bets or girls run out of money, it is also present in the story. This could be a kind of realism–– at this time it would seem all the young, affluent ex-patriots in Europe were unemployed (or if they are employed like Jake, they seem to spend very little time working) and spending their parents' money, but it may also be that Hemingway was particularly impressed by this culture, particularly the drinking he did and saw himself, and felt it would lend itself well to a novel. Hemingway wrote this when he was my age, more or less. I imagine he was fairly impressionable and not above showing off a little.
      However, the fact that Jake treats drinking as such a chore, that the bar tabs appear so regularly in the narrative, also shows how shaken up the war has left him. He drinks consistently to escape the unnamed trauma of the war and his injury. Jake cannot take Brett or the women he meets to bed, so an extra burden is placed upon alcohol. Jake gives us his bar tabs because it's important for us to know how drunk he gets every night–– he gets very hammered, very regularly. The routine of it all, the way in which alcohol shows up in nearly every scene suggests that the excitement of drinking in a foreign country and exploring its nightlife and dining out and meeting new people is somehow gone. Drinking is a form of discipline for Jake, the bar tabs are his way of measuring his constant inebriation, of navigating life after the war. The discipline of a routine is Jake's way of avoiding any sadness he feels, the fact that his routine involves alcohol is no accident either. And I think this kind of discipline makes sense, considering the man who wrote the novel. Here, I don't think it is helpful to make too many distinctions between Hemingway and the narrator and Jake. They are all essentially the same man in my understanding of the book, Hemingway is very direct in that way. Hemingway too, was very disciplined–– I think it shows up in his style and in his biography.