For Whom the Bell Tolls
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| For Whom the Bell Tolls | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Ernest Hemingway |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | War novel |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Publication date | 1940 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 471 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-684-83048-3 (Scribner's reprint) |
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an anti-fascist guerilla unit in the mountains during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is given an assignment to blow up a bridge to accompany a simultaneous attack on the city of Segovia. The title and epigraph are drawn from "Meditation XVII" of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, an essay by metaphysical poet John Donne.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is told primarily through the thoughts of Robert Jordan. Based on Hemingway's own experience, Robert Jordan is an American who travelled to Spain to assist the struggle against the forces of the Nationalist Generalísimo Francisco Franco.
Behind enemy lines with a guerrilla band led by a disillusioned Republican called Pablo, Robert Jordan meets María, a young Spanish native whose life has been shattered by the outbreak of the war. The strong sense of duty of Robert Jordan clashes with both Pablo's unwillingness to commit to a covert operation and his own newfound love of life caused by the presence of María.
The novel describes events which demonstrate the incredible brutality of civil war.
[edit] Characters in "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
- Robert Jordan – American professor 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 – love of Robert Jordan.
- Pilar – Pablo's wife and temporary leader of Pablo's band.
- Agustín – member of Pablo's band.
- El Sordo – hearing-impaired leader of a near-by 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.
[edit] Main themes
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One of the primary topics of the novel is death. When Robert Jordan is given the mission to blow up the bridge, he knows that he will not survive it. Pablo, upon hearing of the mission, also knows immediately that it will lead to their deaths. Sordo sees that inevitability also. Almost all of the main characters in the book contemplate their own deaths.
A related theme is intense comradeship in the prospect of death, the giving up of the own self for the sake of the cause, for the sake of the People. Robert Jordan, Anselmo and the others are ready to do it "as all good men should", the often repeated gesture of embracing or patting on one another's shoulder reinforces the impression of close companionship. One of the best examples is Joaquín. After having been told about the execution of his family, the others are embracing him and comfort him by saying they were his family now. Surrounding this love for the comrades, there is the love for the Spanish soil, and surrounding this a love of place and the senses, of life itself, represented by the pine needle forest floor both at the beginning and the end of the novel. Most poignantly, at the book's end, Robert Jordan awaits his death feeling "his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest."
Another important theme is suicide. The characters, including Robert Jordan, would each prefer death over capture and are prepared to kill themselves, have someone else kill them, or to fulfill the request of a companion. As the book ends, Robert Jordan, wounded and unable to travel with his companions, awaits a final ambush of his pursuers. He is mentally prepared to commit suicide to avoid capture and the inevitable torture for the extraction of information and final death at the hands of the enemy. Still, he hopes to avoid suicide partly because his father, whom he views as a coward, himself 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".[1] The view of suicide of Robert Jordan as a selfish act is ironic, given that Hemingway took his own life twenty-one years later.
There are also the themes of political ideology and bigotry. After noticing how he himself so easily employed the convenient catch-phrase "enemy of the people", Robert 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."[2] 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.'"[3] This last line could be tied to fellow writers' Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound's fascist stances during the Spanish Civil War.
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."[4]
[edit] 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. The fear of modern armament destroys, as it already did in "A Farewell to Arms", the 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. "They move like mechanized doom",[5] and the aircraft's bombs wreak havoc with El Sordo and his band — the ideological slogans Joaquín employs "as though they were talismans"[6] have no effect; he resorts to praying, but not even that can save him. Every time the planes appear they indicate certain and pointless death. The same holds true for the automatic weapons ("Never in my life have I seen such a thing, with the troops running from the train and the máquina speaking into them and the men falling"[7] and the artillery, especially the trench mortars that already wounded Lt. Henry ("he knew that they would die as soon as a mortar came up".[8] 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"[9] 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".[10]
Apart from these physical threats, much of the violence is executed on a metaphysical level.
[edit] Literary significance & Critical Reaction
[edit] 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. [11] 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" [12], 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) and "molest" (from molestar), instead of "strange" and "bother".[13] 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." Appraising these stylistic elements of the prose, however, demands explicit consideration as to why Hemingway consciously chose to write in this manner for this novel, as he unquestionably did.
[edit] 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 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.
In the last part of the novel, the plot is split into two parallel actions: the preparations for the attack 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[citation needed]
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.
In 1941 the novel was nominated by the Pulitzer committee in letters for that year's prize. The Pulitzer board in turn rejected the award on a matter of a taste. No award was given that year.[14]
[edit] Allusions/references to actual events
The novel takes place in June, 1937 the second year of the Spanish Civil War (see also: Spanish Civil War, 1937). [15] 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.[16] 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.[citation needed]
- André Marty, a Frenchman and political officer in the International Brigades. Marty was known as a vicious paranoid and unflagging ideologue. Hemingway portrays him as such.
[edit] 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 9 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.
[edit] References in popular culture
- "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."
- "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is also the title of a haunting classical operatic composition by pianist Steve Baker and vocalist Carmen Daye. Among other collections, it can be most recently found on the original soundtrack to the Richard Kelly film Donnie Darko (Sanctuary Records 2004). See also Donnie Darko (soundtrack).
- "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is also the title of a song by Saxon on the 1988 album "Destiny". The song discusses a bomb, sides being taken, war and its effects.
- The novel is also 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...."
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Hemingway, Ernest (1940). For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 338.
- ^ For Whom (p. 164)
- ^ For Whom (pp. 207, 208)
- ^ For Whom (p. 251)
- ^ For Whom (p. 93)
- ^ For Whom (p. 328)
- ^ For Whom (p. 31)
- ^ For Whom (p. 330)
- ^ For Whom (p. 349)
- ^ 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
- ^ The Pulitzer Prizes - History of the Pulitzer Prizes
- ^ 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
