Cohn and Jake are bulls.
In my last blog, I considered a comparison between Brett’s seduction of men and Romero’s bull-fighting. As I inspected further, it seems that the bulls Romero fights in the final bull-fighting scene may also resemble male characters from the novel; the first bull seems to resemble Cohn and the second Jake. Here’s why: If we read further into this bull-fighting scene, it appears that not only do Romero’s elegant techniques resemble Brett’s techniques when dealing with Cohn but one of the bulls Romero is fighting actually bears an uncanny resemblance to Cohn, strengthening the parallel between Romero and Brett. Since the beginning of the novel, Jake has perpetually emphasized the fact that Cohn isn’t quite in tune with social norms and has comically bad emotional perception. For instance, in chapter 15, Jake fails to understand that, in Spain, him and his friends are foreigners; when Cohn tells Jake in chapter 5 that he’s “the best friend [he has],” Jake thinks “God help you,” as if to...