7. Routine

I am starting to notice quite a pattern to Jake and his friends. Each day is almost a repeat of the day before. They typically go to work, out to lunch..plus a drink, back to work for a few more hours, then dinner, then out to the clubs, and sleep falls somewhere in the routine. The only day that really seems different is Sunday, where the men might possibly play a game of tennis. I am curious to how Jake and his friends seem to afford such extravagant lifestyles. It seems as if drinking, gambling, and the occasional prostitute would eventually add up (not that I know the conversion of money in Europe to the American dollar). The time period to this novel makes it several years before the depression (which not only effected the United States). We do know that Jake only has to support himself, having no wife or children. Besides Jake and Cohn, the reader is uninformed about the other family lives' of the men. Overall, I feel this lifestyle of drinking partakes in a large part of this novel, as if these men are drinking to their sorrows. Before the novel even begins, it states something about the lost generation, well maybe Jake and his friends do not feel so lost when they are inebriated.