Chapter 6

Brett  misses her evening date with Jake. He has a few conciliatory drinks and then takes a cab through a part of Paris he despises. He wonders why he hates this particular section of the city so much, then wonders why Cohn seems to despise the whole city so much.

Jake heads to Café Select, where he encounters a very odd friend, Harvey Stone. Harvey, like everyone else, is a writer, and he wheedles some money out of Jake. The two men have a drink and chat about Mencken.

Cohn shows up. Harvey provokes him and then leaves. Cohn states his dislike for Harvey.
Cohn tells Jake he’s fighting to write.
Jake, attempting to reveal more of the true Robert Cohn , remarks that, before falling for Brett, Cohn had been a fairly charming  well trained by the women he’d been with. Before met Brett, he had a kind of simple, cheerful, nice mentality, and was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none type. His passion for Brett, however, changes everything.

Frances shows up at the Café. She’s snotty to Cohn but pleasant to Jake. She asks to speak privately with Jake. She’s all worked up, thinking that Cohn’s going to leave her since he won’t agree to marry her. SO EMBARRASSING!

Frances repeatedly attacks Cohn. She suspects that he’s trying to dump her to enjoy his literary success alone or with a newer model. Jake doesn’t understand why everyone can be such a stupid to Cohn and why he doesn’t defend himself. Disgruntled, Jake heads back to his flat.

Chapter 5

Jake has coffee and a brioche and goes to work. Despite his melancholy evening, he feels much better this morning. He works all morning, then chats pleasantly with his colleague, Krum, until Robert Cohn shows up to whisk him off to lunch.

He and Cohn talk each other about South America over a lunch of beer.
Cohn asks Jake about Brett. He reveals that she is in the midst of a divorce with a British aristocrat and is already engaged to a man with great financial prospects named Mike Campbell. Cohn remarks again that he thinks Brett’s super hot. Jake responds cynically.

We discover that Jake met Brett when she worked as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse) in a hospital during WWI.
Cohn doubts Brett will marry Mike if she doesn’t love him. Not terribly surprisingly, Jake doesn’t agree. Cohn already has an unrealistically romantic and idealized view of Brett, despite the fact that he really doesn’t know her at all.
Cohn gets agitated and Jake tells him to go to hell. They reconcile and Cohn admits rather embarrassingly that Jake is his best friend.

Chapter 4

In the cab, Jake and Brett kiss passionately, but Brett pulls away. She says she loves Jake but they agree they can’t be together. Love’s too hard and they have a history with one another. Brett alludes to Jake’s mysterious war wound, which is presumably the cause of their separation; he doesn’t want to talk about it.

They agree to go to Café Select for more drinks. Brett asks Jake to kiss her again.

At the café, a Greek duke/artist with the improbable name of Zizi introduces Brett, whose formal title is Lady Ashley.

Georgette was thrown out of the restaurant rather spectacularly after Jake and Brett left.

Jake, tired and frustrated, decides to head home. He says his goodbyes to everyone, and agrees to meet Brett the following evening.

Jake can’t sleep. He’s all worked up about WWI, the injury he sustained in the War and about Brett. We have already guessed that his injury is sexual in nature – he never says the word, but I think that he’s impotent.

Thinking of his troubles (mostly caused by Brett ) Jake begins to cry.

Jake wakes to the noise of a fight outside between Brett and his building’s concierge. Jake lets Brett upstairs. She’s totally wasted. He invite her  another drink. It’s after 4 a.m. They are talking.After a few minutes Brett leaves and Jake.

Chapter 3

Jake lingers alone over a drink at the Café Napolitain after Cohn finally bails. He makes eye contact with a girl walking down the street and she joins him. They both order a drink and flirt half-heartedly. Though nothing’s said, it’s clear that this young lady is, to put it delicately, a woman of questionable repute.

Jake and the girl, Georgette, take a horse-drawn cab to dinner. Georgette, assuming that Jake means to… engage her services, attempts to kiss him. He rejects her, saying that he’s sick.
Once they’re at the restaurant, Foyot’s, Jake is annoyed by his companion and begins to regret his decision to take Georgette to dinner.

She asks why he’s sick; he responds that he was hurt in the war.
Fortunately, this conversation draws to a necessary halt – some of Jake’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Braddocks, Frances, and Cohn, are at the restaurant. Georgette is introduced as Jake’s fiancée, and puts on a comically provocative and somewhat rude.

The crowd agrees to go out dancing. They end up at a hot, unappealing-sounding dance club.
At the club, a beautiful woman named Brett arrives with a group of homosexual men. Jake, who is obviously familiar with Brett, feels sick and irritated by her companions, and he describes them with disgust. Add "homophobic" to whatever mental image of Jake you’ve got going.

Jake is drunk, belligerent, and possibly about to vomit. He leaves rudely, and ends up at the bar with Cohn.
Brett comes over for a chat with "the chaps." Cohn is spellbound. Jake describes her beauty for us, 
He and Brett leave together to find a cab.
Alone in the taxi, Brett confesses that she’s miserable.

Chapter 2

The same winter as the shut-up-kick-under-the-table incident, Cohn travels to America and has a book published. After winning a few hands of bridge, having a few women speak to him and the whole book thing, Cohn is a changed man. Basically, he’s full of himself and not as into Frances. Women, beware! Who knows what a few successful hands of bridge could do to your love interest…

Jake partially blames Cohn’s change of character on a novel he recently read, W.H. Hudson’s The Purple Land. Apparently it inspired Cohn to yearn for a romantic new life.

Cohn interrupts Jake at work and begs him to come on a trip to South America. Jake says he’s not interested – after all, Paris is great.

Cohn disagrees – he hates Paris. Notice that almost every other character in the novel at some point has at least one conversation identical to this one with another expatriate living in Paris. More witty banter between Cohn and Jake ensues. Cohn looks pitiful.

Although it’s the middle of the workday, Cohn and Jake go for a drink. Jake thinks he’ll be able to ditch Cohn after having a drink, but he can’t.

Jake, Cohn in tow, returns to his office at the newspaper. Cohn falls asleep, and Jake awakens him in the middle of a troubled dream. Cohn admits that he hasn’t been able to sleep lately. We wonder why…

Chapter 1

The narrator, Jake Barnes, opens with a description of a friend of his, Robert Cohn, whose crowning triumph was being named Princeton’s middleweight boxing champion in his college days.
Jake isn’t terribly impressed, either. Though he’s fond of Cohn, he actually sees the other man as kind of a forgettable wimp. So forgettable, in fact, that Jake is stunned that Cohn’s former boxing coach even remembers him.

Cohn is Jewish, a fact that Jake finds central to his character development. He is innately self-conscious, married young, had an unhappy marriage, and was left by his wife (who he was feebly attempting to leave anyway).

After his divorce, Cohn moved to California, where he briefly edited a magazine. But, he was too poor to fund the publication and it died – the magazine that is. Cohn’s literary ambitions live on.
Cohn now lives in Paris with a forceful divorcée named Frances. Jake is his tennis friend, as compared to Braddocks, who is Cohn’s literary friend.

Cohn is a published novelist, but his writing isn’t highly regarded by Jake or anyone else. Frances, Cohn’s mistress, is a total control freak. In the midst of coffee with Cohn and Frances, Jake’s mere suggestion of traveling with Cohn to visit an American woman earns him a swift "shut-up!" kick from Cohn. Clearly, any mention of other women is strictly off-limits in Frances’s vicinity.Jake is bemused by Cohn’s weakness, especially with women.