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 were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for
thee.
~ John Donne
In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unrelated and he hated every one he saw. ~ narrative regarding Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. The main character, Robert Jordan, is an American fighting for the Republic against the fascists. He is a man on a mission: to blow a bridge. To do so he must travel behind enemy lines and seek the assistance of guerrilla fighters. As the novel opens, he has already found Anselmo, who in turn introduces him to a small band of guerillas ostensibly led by Pablo, but in truth led by Pablo’s wife Pilar.
There is immediate friction between Pablo and the Ingles as Jordan is called. Pablo believes the dynamite can be put to better use than a bridge, while Jordan has orders from the organized Republican Army. Blowing the bridge will prevent the fascists from sending reinforcements to an upcoming battle.
Among the guerrilla band, there is Maria, an emotionally scarred young woman the fighters rescued from the fascists. Romance develops between Roberto and Maria. They seize each possible moment and pledge themselves to each other for whatever time they have.
There are complications with the bridge, with Pablo, with the dynamite, with true love, but there remains the chance that things will work out, including escape after the bridge is blown.
The opening line of the book, and the closing find Robert Jordan in ironically similar physical positions, yet with drastically different prospects.
Opening line:
He lay flat on the brown, pine needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tips of the pine trees.
Closing line (three days later):
He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.
This was a reread, but it’s been over 30 years since I last read it. I appreciated it more this time, understanding the inescapable interconnectedness of our lives that Hemingway portrayed and that he alluded to in the title. He initially intended to call it The Undiscovered Country, but eventually decided on a line from Donne. Good choice, I think.
Like many of Hemingway’s novels, the main character resembles Hemingway, without the novel being autobiographical. The most poignant similarity between Jordan and Hemingway, is that their fathers both shot themselves.
And that Jordan contemplates becoming a writer. While watching some planes overhead he muses…
They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom.
You ought to write, he told himself.
This is the fourth novel I’ve read by Hemingway. The others: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea. The Old Man and the Sea is my favorite, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a close second. The message is profound, and the characters are memorable, believable, lovable, pitiable. One complaint, that I’ve had before with Hemingway, the dialogue between lovers is absurd, preposterously cloying. (I would cite an example, but I don't want to nauseate you.)
Nevertheless…
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
For Whom the Bell Tolls is not a glorification of war. In the introduction, Sean Hemingway describes the reason for his father’s interest in war…
Hemingway appreciated the deep bonds forged in wartime among its fellow combatants, but he viewed war itself as a crime against humanity.
And now the movie: 1943 starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It’s nearly 3 hours and quite faithful to the novel. I’m not a fan of Cooper, But Ingrid Bergman as Maria? I like Bergman in most things, but were there no Hispanic actresses in the 40s, or at least someone who could attempt a Spanish accent? Full on Swedish accent all the way. Baffling. But again, a faithful adaptation worth watching if you like the book.
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