"The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway; discusses aimlessness caused in lives of characters by WWI

In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the narrator, Jake Barnes, describes Robert Cohn, a rich Jew who graduated from Princeton with low self-esteem, an unsuccessful marriage, and a vanished inheritance. Cohn moves to Paris to write a novel and is accompanied by a manipulative woman named Frances. After selling his novel in America, Cohn returns to his former home with an attitude of arrogance and a hunger for excitement, and frequently pesters Jake. The …

…are already suffering. While Hemingway never actually states that Jake and his friends' lives are aimless, the concept is alluded to through his illustration of their psychological conditions, which contrast with their surface activities, which fail to bring happiness or fulfillment. At best, their partying distracts them from their emotional condition or thoughts about the war. The only thing accomplished by their drinking and dancing is a temporary and fruitless distraction from an aimless life.