For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by
Ernest Hemingway published in 1940.
It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the
International Brigades
attached to a communist
guerilla unit
during the
Spanish Civil War.
As an
expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a bridge
during an attack on the city of Segovia
. This
novel is widely regarded to be among Hemingway's greatest works,
along with
The Sun Also
Rises,
The Old Man
and the Sea, and
A
Farewell to Arms.
Plot summary
This novel is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences
of Robert Jordan, a character inspired by Hemingway's own
experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Robert Jordan is an American
who travels to Spain to oppose the fascist forces of
Francisco Franco.
A superior has ordered him to travel behind enemy lines and destroy
a bridge, using the aid of a group of guerrillas who have been
living in the mountains nearby. Robert Jordan encounters one of
those in their camp, María, a young Spanish native whose life has
been shattered by the outbreak of the war. His strong sense of duty
clashes with both Republican partisan leader Pablo's fear and
unwillingness to commit to a covert operation which would have
repercussions and his own
joie de vivre that is kindled by
his newfound love for María.
The novel graphically describes the brutality of civil war.
Characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Robert Jordan – American university instructor of Spanish
language and a specialist in demolitions and explosives.
- Anselmo – elderly guide to Robert Jordan.
- Pablo – guerrilla leader.
- Rafael – Gitano member of Pablo's
band.
- María – Robert Jordan's young lover.
- Pilar – Pablo's wife and temporary leader of Pablo's band.
- Agustín – bad-mouthed machine gunner of Pablo's band.
- El Sordo – hearing-impaired leader of a nearby band of guerrilleros.
- Fernando – middle-aged member of Pablo's band.
- Andrés – member of Pablo's band, brother of Eladio.
- Eladio – member of Pablo's band, brother of Andrés.
- Primitivo – young member of Pablo's band.
- Joaquin – enthusiastic teenaged communist, member of Sordo's band.
Main themes
Death is a primary theme of the novel. When Robert Jordan is
assigned to blow up the bridge, he knows that he will not survive
it. Pablo and El Sordo, leaders of the Republican guerrilla bands,
see that inevitability also. Almost all of the main characters in
the book contemplate their own deaths.

Hotel Ambos Mundos, Havana, Ernest
Hemingway's first residence in Cuba (1932-1939) where most of
For Whom the Bell Tolls was written
A related theme is the vivid sense of camaraderie in the face of
death and the surrendering of one's self for the common cause and
the good of the people. Robert Jordan, Anselmo and others are ready
to do "as all good men should" - that is, to make the ultimate
sacrifice. The oft-repeated embracing gesture reinforces this sense
of close companionship in the face of death. An incident involving
the death of the character Joaquín's family serves as an excellent
example of this theme. Having learned of this tragedy, Joaquín's
comrades embrace and comfort him, saying they now are his family.
Surrounding this love for one's comrades is the love for the
Spanish soil. A love of place, of the senses, and of life itself is
represented by the pine needle forest floor - both at the beginning
and, poignantly, at the end of the novel - when Robert Jordan
awaits his death feeling "his heart beating against the pine needle
floor of the forest."
A companion theme to that of death is that of
suicide. Many of the characters, including Robert
Jordan, would prefer death over capture, and are prepared to kill
themselves, be killed, or kill to avoid it. As the book ends,
Robert Jordan, wounded and unable to travel with his companions,
awaits a final ambush that will end his life. He prepares himself
against the cruel outcomes of suicide to avoid capture, or
inevitable torture for the extraction of information and death at
the hands of the enemy. Still, he hopes to avoid suicide partly
because his father, whom he views as a coward, committed suicide.
Robert Jordan understands suicide but doesn't approve of it, and
thinks that "you have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do a
thing like that." Robert Jordan's opinions on suicide may be used
to analyze Hemingway's suicide 21 years later. Hemingway's father
also committed suicide and it is a common theme in his works.
There also are the themes of political ideology and bigotry. After
noticing how he so easily employed the convenient catch-phrase
"enemy of the people", Jordan moves swiftly into the subjects and
opines, "To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are
right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like
continence. Continence is the foe of heresy." Later in the book,
Robert Jordan explains the threat of Fascism in his own country.
"Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how
the income tax and inheritance tax worked. 'But the big estates
remain. Also, there are taxes on the land,' he said.'But surely the
big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such
taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will
revolt against the government when they see that they are
threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here,' Primitivo
said.'It is possible.''Then you will have to fight in your country
as we fight here.''Yes, we will have to fight.''But are there not
many fascists in your country?''There are many who do not know they
are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.'"
Divination is another theme that arises in the book. Pilar,
"Pablo's woman", is a reader of palms and more. When Robert Jordan
questions her true abilities, she replies, "Because thou art a
miracle of deafness.... It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art
simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear
the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such
things do not exist."
Imagery
Hemingway frequently used images to produce the dense atmosphere of
violence and death his books are renowned for; the main image of
For Whom the Bell Tolls is the machine image. As he had
done in "A Farewell to Arms", Hemingway employs the fear of modern
armament to destroy romantic conceptions of the ancient art of war:
combat, sportsmanlike competition and the aspect of hunting.
Heroism becomes butchery: the most powerful picture employed here
is the shooting of María's parents against the wall of a
slaughterhouse. Glory exists in the official dispatches only; here,
the "disillusionment" theme of
A Farewell to Arms is
adapted.
The fascist planes are especially dreaded, and when they approach,
all hope is lost. The efforts of the partisans seem to vanish,
their commitment and their abilities become meaningless. ",
especially the trench mortars that already wounded Lt. Henry ("he
knew that they would die as soon as a mortar came up". No longer
would the best soldier win, but the one with the biggest gun. The
soldiers using those weapons are simple brutes, they lack "all
conception of dignity" as Fernando remarked. Anselmo insisted, "We
must teach them. We must take away their planes, their automatic
weapons, their tanks, their artillery and teach them
dignity".
Apart from these physical threats, much of the violence is executed
on a
metaphysical level.
Literary significance and critical reaction
Language
Since its publication, the prose style and dialogue in Hemingway's
novel has been the source of controversy and some negative critical
reaction. For example,
Edmund Wilson,
in a tepid review, noted the encumbrance of "a strange atmosphere
of literary medievalism" in the relationship between Robert Jordan
and Maria. This stems in part from a distinctive feature of the
novel, namely Hemingway's extensive use of
archaisms, implied
transliterations and
false cognates to convey the foreign (Spanish)
tongue spoken by his characters. Thus, Hemingway uses the archaic
"
thou" (particularly in its
oblique and
possessive form) to parallel the Spanish
pronominal "tu" (familiar) and "Usted" (formal) forms.
Additionally, much of the dialogue in the novel is an implied
direct translation from Spanish, producing an often strained
English equivalent. For example, Hemingway uses the construction
"what passes that" , which is an implied transliteration of the
Spanish construction
que pasa. This transliteration
extends to the use of false cognates, such as "rare" (from raro)
instead of "strange". In another odd stylistic variance, Hemingway
referenced foul language (used with some frequency by different
characters in the novel) with "unprintable" and "obscenity" in the
dialogue, although foul language is used freely in Spanish even
when its equivalent is censored in English (i.e.
joder, me cago). The
Spanish expression of exasperation
me cago en la leche
repeatedly recurs throughout the novel, translated literally as "I
obscenity in the milk."
Narrative style
The book is written in the
third person limited
omniscient narrative mode. The action and dialogue are
punctuated by extensive thought sequences told from the
viewpoint of Robert Jordan. The
novel also contains thought sequences of other characters,
including Pilar and Anselmo. The thought sequences are more
extensive than in Hemingway's earlier fiction, notably
A
Farewell to Arms, and are an important narrative device to
explore the principal themes of the novel.
The plot is split into parallel actions at various points in the
novel, including: the attack on El Sordo's band while Robert Jordan
and company wait by their machine gun position, and, later in the
novel, the preparations for the attack on the bridge and the course
of Andrés, a guerillero who must take a message across the lines to
a Republican general. While not an unusual narrative technique, it
is a departure for Hemingway who, in his earlier works, preferred
to maintain sharp focus on his protagonist. Some have argued that
Hemingway was relenting to the demands of the Hollywood directors
who wanted books more easily turned into scripts
Although most of the book is told from the point of view of people
on the Republican side in the war, which clearly reflects
Hemingway's own position, a notable exception is made in a single
page giving the point of view of two soldiers of Franco's troops,
who are shown as ordinary and quite sympathetic people, without an
overt Fascist ideology - and whom Jordan is obliged to kill as part
of the operation.
In 1941 the
Pulitzer Prize committee
for letters unanimously recommended
For Whom the Bell
Tolls be awarded the prize for that year. The Pulitzer Board
agreed; however,
Nicholas Murray
Butler, president of
Columbia
University at that time, overrode both and instead no award was
given for letters that year.
Allusions/references to actual events
The novel takes place in June 1937 the second year of the
Spanish Civil War).
References made to
Valladolid
, Segovia
, El Escorial
and Madrid
suggest the
novel takes place within the build-up to the Republican attempt to relieve the siege of
Madrid.
The earlier battle of
Guadalajara and the general chaos and
disorder (and, more generally, the doomed cause of Republican
Spain) serve as a backdrop to the novel: Robert Jordan notes, for
instance, that he follows the Communists because of their superior
discipline, an allusion to the split and infighting between
anarchist and communist factions on the Republican side.
The famous
and pivotal scene described in Chapter 10, in which Pilar describes
the execution of various Fascists figures in her village is drawn
from events that took place in Ronda
in
1936. Although Hemingway later claimed (in a 1954 letter to
Bernard Berenson) to have completely fabricated the scene, he in
fact drew upon the events at Ronda, embellishing the event by
imagining an execution line leading up to the cliff face. In Ronda,
some 500 people, allegedly fascist sympathisers, were thrown into
the surrounding gorge by a mob from a house that faced onto the
cliffside.
A number of actual figures that played a role in the Spanish Civil
War are also referenced in the book, including:
- Andres Nin, one of the founders of
the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), the party mocked by Karkov in Chapter 18.
- Prieto, one of the leaders of the
Republicans, is also mentioned in Chapter 18.
- General José Miaja, in charge of
the defense of Madrid in October 1936, and General Vicente Rojo, together with Prieto, are
mentioned in Chapter 35
- Dolores Ibárruri, better
known as La Pasionaria, is extensively described in Chapter
32.
- Robert Hale Merriman,
leader of the American Volunteers in the International Brigades, and his wife
Marion, were well known to Hemingway and served possibly as a model
for Hemingway's own hero.
- André Marty, a leading French
Communist and political officer in the International Brigades,
makes a brief but significant appearance in Chapter 42. Hemingway
depicts Marty as a vicious intriguer whose paranoia interferes with
Republican objectives in the war.
Adaptations
- A film adaptation
of Hemingway's novel, directed by Sam Wood,
was released in 1943 starring Gary
Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It was
nominated for nine Academy Awards,
including best picture, best actor and best actress; however, only
the Greek actress Katina Paxinou won
an Oscar for her portrayal of
Pilar.
- A television adaptation, directed by John Frankenheimer, was broadcast in two
parts on Playhouse 90 in 1956, starring
Jason Robards and Maria Schell as Robert Jordan and Maria, with
Nehemiah Persoff as Pablo, Maureen Stapleton as Pilar, and Eli Wallach as the gypsy Rafael.
- Another
adaptation was made by the BBC in 1965 as a
four-part serial
(miniseries in American English).
- Also,
Takarazuka
Revue
adapted the novel as a musical drama, produced by
Star Troupe and starring Ran Ootori as
Robert Jordan and Kurara Haruka as
Maria in 1978.
References in popular culture
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine
own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee."
John Donne "Devotions
upon Emergent Occasions", no. 17 (Meditation) 1624
(published)
- "For Whom
the Bell Tolls" is a song by Metallica
on their 1984 album Ride the Lightning. It is about war
and the human spirit, and is a reference to a chapter where El
Sordo, another guerilla leader, takes a position on a hill,
surrounded on all sides, and he and his five comrades are killed by
an airstrike. This is in the line "Men of five still alive through
the raging glow, gone insane from the pain that they surely know."
It was later covered by the four-piece cello band Apocalyptica.
- The novel is referenced in the song "Losing It" by the Canadian
rock group Rush on their 1982 album
Signals: "he stares out the
kitchen door, where the sun will rise no more..." and "for you the
blind who once could see, the bell tolls for thee...."
- US Senator from Arizona and Republican Presidential Nominee
John McCain named the book as his
all-time favorite in an interview with Katie Couric on October 29, 2008. Additionally,
the title for one of his own books, "Worth the Fighting For,"
(Random House, 2003), is a reference to protagonist Robert Jordan's
thoughts to himself toward the closing of the novel.
- President Barack Obama named the
book as "one of the three books that have inspired him"
References
- For Whom (p. 164)
- For Whom (pp. 207, 208)
- For Whom (p. 251)
- For Whom (p. 330)
- For Whom (p. 349)
- Edmund Wilson, " Return of Ernest Hemingway" (Review of For
Whom the Bell Tolls) New Republic, CIII (Oct. 28, 1940)
- E.g., For Whom (p. 83)
- M.R. Gladstein, "Bilingual Wordplay: Variations on a Theme by
Hemingway and Steinbeck," The Hemingway Review, 26:1, Fall 2006,
81-95
- McDowell, Edwin. "Publishing: Pulitzer Controversies." The New
York Times 11 May 1984: C26.
- In Chapter 13, Robert Jordan thinks "The time for getting back
will not be until the fall of 37. I left in the summer of 36..."
and makes allusion to the unusual June snowfall in the
mountains.
- Ramon Buckley, "Revolution in Ronda: The facts in Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls", the Hemingway Review, Fall 1997
- LA Times
External links