Bar tabs everywhere

Bar tabs come up frequently in The Sun Also Rises, only natural when you consider how much alcohol Jake and his friends drink. It seems every time a drink is consumed, there is a small kerfuffle over who will pay for it. Interestingly, the group takes their drinking as seriously as they do paying for the drinks - which is to say, not seriously at all.  I think their attitude has its roots in the war; their shifting of financial responsibility and obligation from member to member, always passing the buck while uncertain where it stops, echoes the soldier's nebulous web of obligation and non-obligation. Following the bloodbath and destruction of the war, no one seems to know who is finally responsible for any action, and their continual engagement in the transient pleasure of alcohol with disinterest to the financial, physical, and moral consequences reflect that. Jake's bar tabs are the anachronistic reminder that once upon a time, actions that taken had to be answered to and carried weight. But during the war, the horrific injuries the group members suffer and the bloody images they see trace back to no one, and they return to peacetime thinking that they have now earned the right to live similarly. The bar tabs’ continual presence in the story tells the reader that Jake remembers a long time ago he, too, cared about such consequences.

Similarly, the group lives their life as one big fiesta, magically avoiding the imminent hangovers that their Bacchanalian adventure would realistically entail. Jake’s storytelling often hints at his fatigue and exhaustion, but chooses not to attribute this to the copious amounts of alcohol he consumes. Instead, he sees weariness (and alcohol) as a fundamental characteristic of post-war life. This lets Jake off the hook for his behavior, detaching drinking’s consequences from the act of drinking itself, and leads him and the group to believe they can outrun anything. Just as Mike always believes he will find money as he sits mired in bankruptcy, the group continues to drink, believing that they will escape their hangovers with another drink. But for the Lost Generation, the trick might just work.