I first made note of this quote from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises eight or ten years ago and I have noticed it cropping up on-line recently in different contexts.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
This is a good example of Hemingway’s economy of speech and vivid word play, whether in narrative or dialogue, saying so much with so little. You can drop “gradually and then suddenly” into a conversation and people will take note.
In opinion pieces, the quote is commonly cited as an example of the “slippery slope,” implying that small accommodations in standards and practices today will inevitably lead to a flood of negative effects in the future. Mike now lives in the realization that there was a time when he probably could’ve prevented this. In the “two ways” he went bankrupt, the “gradually” phase suggests it wasn’t inevitable.
Old age, however, is an example of this “gradually and then suddenly” pattern that is inevitable. I can tell you from experience that the occasional pain and the popping sound you hear in your knee from time to time in your 30’s and 40’s are the coming attractions trailer for a life characterized by complaints and accommodations to arthritis and loss of mobility. Those ailments come on gradually and then suddenly. Would you live your life differently if you knew what lay ahead? I’m not sure how. The complaints of old age are simply features of occupying a body that is wearing down. So, applied to old age, “gradually and then suddenly” is just a truism.
But, “gradually and then suddenly” is not the full exchange between Mike and Bill. What follows is where the real substance is.
“What brought it on?”
“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
It’s not that his bank failed or that his portfolio tanked. He invested in friends, which is not uncommon for young people who come into money. Only too late he realized they were false friends. Which led to having creditors. Are his friends to blame? Mike is not a victim. He was a willing sucker. Whatever joy it brought him to have these “friends” cost him his fortune, gradually and then suddenly. The problem is recognizing the “gradually” pattern before the “suddenly” drops you off a cliff. That would require stepping outside of our circumstances and looking objectively at what we’re investing our time, money, and talents into. Easier said than done.
What Then? 