One of the first most memorable passages that I remember would be the one that had the wineskin. The thought of Bill trying to drink the wine and dripping it over himself is pretty funny. It's kind of how I imagined the guy to the right felt, although minus the heart shaped glasses. The wineskin is also called a bota bag and it is made out of goat bladder (I imagine that would hold liquid really well) and then the insides are coated with tree sap to prevent liquid from leaking.
Then there's the bull fighting. One important distinction to make when talking about bullfighting is that Pamplona also has an event called bull running, also very famous. It's where they release a herd of bull into streets and people try to dodge and jump over the bulls to prove how brave they are. It's sounds dangerous but apparently only a few die and 200-300 people get injured. I would not want to be one of those guys underneath a bull. This is all part of a large 7 day festival called the Fiesta de San Fermin, like what we read in The Sun Also Rises.The actual bullfighting takes place inside in a stadium. The seats are priced differently; the expensive seats are the ones that are in the shade and generally contains better behaved people. Bullfighting is divided into three different stages or "movements." The first stage is to allow the audience to appreciate the strength of the bulls. This would probably be the most famous scene where the bullfighters dodge using red capes to distract them. The second stage they try to stick darts into the bulls back. In the third stage they tire the bull by attempting to subdue it with a wooden sword and then they actually kill the bull with a steel sword. The audience can then reward the bullfighter with an ear or a tail if they are satisfied. Ignoring the more violent areas, I felt I could appreciate bullfighting more. Before, I saw bullfighting as crude and violent (some areas I still think are too violent). Perhaps after Hemingway's description of the bullfighters dodging the bulls with finesse I can understand it better. Calling the different stages "movements" also sounds more elegant, like a dance instead of a fight.
I got a lot of my information here: San Fermin Bullfighting
They even show you how to get tickets if you're interested in watching a live show.
I love how you did some research to find out what bullfighting festivals are really like. The picture of the wineskin was helpful because throughout the book I was having a hard time picturing what exactly it looked like, and it was slightly annoying to be reading along and suddenly not being able to picture what was going on. The bull running event seems absolutely crazy! Trying to prove you're brave by almost getting killed by a charging animal? Seems kind of foolish. I guess I'm not meant to be a bullfighting aficionado.
ReplyDeleteKathyrn, your perspective on the foolishness of the running of the bulls is voiced memorably in the novel by the waiter who's apparently the only guy in town who's not all that into the bullfights--"You hear? Muerto. Dead. He's dead. With a horn through him. All for morning fun." And then Jake offers a kind of obituary for the man killed (Vicente Girones), and then for the bull, who's killed by Romero later in the day. Jake takes the bullfights very seriously, but I don't know that he'd call them "fun." Note that he never even considers running with the other maniacs through the plaza. He's going to watch from the balcony. Not his idea of fun, either.
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