Jordan

Jordan Baker is a character in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922). She is Daisy Buchanan’s friend, a woman with whom Nick Carraway becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s: skeptical, cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth because “she wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage.” Although ultimately a minor character, Nick’s attraction to Jordan serves as an important contrast to his relationship with Daisy; he describes Jordan as a girl “too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.” Described as sporty (golfer), masculine (small-breasted) and crafty (liar), yet beautiful and self-reliant, Jordan blurs the lines between what it means to be a man and a woman in the fast-paced changing times of the roaring twenties. Still, her “bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something.” Don’t we all wish we knew what.

Robert Jordan is the main character in Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel, For Whom the Bells Toll. The book tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American who hides out in caves during the Spanish Civil War and wages guerrilla war against the fascists. Robert Jordan is a great and admirable character, known, above-all, for his stoicism, grace under pressure, and toughness. He is Hemingway’s creation of the anti-fascist hero. Jordan embodies what's called "the Hemingway Code," the idea that "there probably isn't God or a world after this so you have to establish for yourself a code of behavior so you can be happy with what you left behind." Robert Jordan is manly, honorable and idealistic, even in the face of sure defeat. He's charged with blowing up a bridge. It's a bad order, and he knows it. Yet he carries out his mission, protecting the small band of fighters who've been helping him in the snow-covered mountains. He sacrifices himself, for their cause. In a 2002 public radio interview former presidential hopeful John McCain said, "Robert Jordan was everything I ever wanted to be."