Why Bill?

Bill is a pretty baffling character for me. He seems pretty similar to Jake. He was in the war and likes to drink. I think he likes to drink, because he is mentally distressed from the war. His function appears to be a stable person for Jake (and even the reader) to relax with. He seems to be the character that is easiest for a reader to relate to. He likes to fish, he likes to drink, and he is nice to pretty much everyone. But the major thing that I picked up on is that Bill never seems to fit in. He doesn't appear to be a main character, and he isn't involved in all of the love issues that keep the novel going. On page 158, he says to Cohn "we're the foreigners." I think that he is talking about himself when he says this. He is the outsider of the novel, not in the sense of an outlaw, but in the sense of not fitting in.
Hemingway, because the novel is all about characters and their relations, needed to place a relatively normal character that was sort of left out. This allowed for that kind of person to relate to him. Hemingway created yet another character that allowed for the novel to possess a timelessness.