For Whom the Bell Tolls

For the Metallica song, see "For Whom The Bell Tolls (song)." For the 1943 film, see For Whom the Bell Tolls (film).

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway.

Plot introduction

It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist 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.

Explanation of the novel's title

The title is taken from "Meditation XVII" of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a 1624 metaphysical poem by John Donne: "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 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 bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler Behind enemy lines, with the guerrilla band of Pablo, he meets María, whose life has been shattered by the outbreak of the war. It is here that the story develops, as Pablo's unwillingness to commit to the operation clashes with Jordan's strong sense of duty, and even Jordan's sense of duty clashes with his newfound love for life caused by the presence of María. A substantial portion of the novel is told through the thoughts of Robert Jordan, with flashbacks to meetings with Russians in Madrid and some reflections on his father and grandfather. Another character, Pilar, relates events that demonstrate the incredible brutality of civil war, in one case by the actions of a revolutionary mob and in another by those of governmental authorities.

Characters in "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

• Robert Jordan – specialist in demolitions and explosives
• Pablo – guerrilla leader
• María – lover of Robert Jordan
• Pilar – Pablo's Gitano wife
• Anselmo – Elderly member of Pablo's band
• Rafael – Gitano member of Pablo's band
• El Sordo – Hearing-impaired leader of a near-by Band of guerrillero's
• Fernando – Middle-aged member of Pablo's Band
• Andres – Member of Pablo's band, brother of Eladio
• Eladio – Member of Pablo's band, brother of Andres
• Primitivo – Young member of Pablo's band
• Joaquin – Enthusiastic teenaged communist, member of Sordo's band

Main themes

The main theme 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, and it is their reaction to the prospect of death, and what meaning they attach to death, especially in relation to the cause of the Republic, that defines them.

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, 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, wounded (but not mortally), and unable to travel with his companions awaits a final sniping opportunity. 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 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" (For Whom, p. 338). Robert's view of suicide 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."(p. 164). 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 proprieters 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." (pp. 207, 208) 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, the gypsy woman, is a reader of palms and more. When Robert Jordon 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." (p. 251)

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 partizans seem to vanish, their commitment and their abilities become meaningless. "They move like mechanized doom"(For Whom (5.), p. 93), and the aircraft's bombs wreak havoc with El Sordo and his band — the ideological slogans Joaquín employs "as though they were talismans" (For Whom (5.), p. 328) has 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"(For Whom (5.), p. 31)) 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"(For Whom (5.), p. 330)). 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"(For Whom (5.), p. 349) 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"(For Whom (5.), p. 349).

Apart from these physical threats, much of the violence is executed on a metaphysical level. The arguments between Robert and Pablo, especially the one where Robert tried to provoke Pablo far enough to have a reason to shoot him, is a great metaphysical battle that reminds one of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where the two main characters cause each other to crack up just by provoking. Pilar also is a very good example for metaphysical violence. She is one of the most brutal characters in the whole novel, and hurts almost everybody, but never actually uses physical force.

Literary significance & criticism

The story is told by a third-person selective-omniscient narrator, direct conversations between the characters, and by extensive back-and-forth mental conversations within the mind of Robert Jordan. This work contains far more inner monologue and remembrances of the various characters than A Farewell to Arms. This, on the one hand, is a necessity, since the book deals with just four days, and on the other hand supports the author's intention to illustrate the diversity and complexity of Spain. By using medieval English (in the form of "thee" and "thou"), he retains the levels of formality used by the characters when speaking in Spanish (the familiar "tu" and "vosotros" pronouns versus the formal "Usted" and "Ustedes").

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. This is no unusual technique of storytelling, but with Hemingway, who sharply focused on his protagonist in A Farewell to Arms, it is a departure. Some have said that it was a signal of him giving in to the demands of Hollywood directors who wanted books that can be easily used as scripts, while others consider it a signal of him disassociating himself from the protagonist, maybe because of superstition (it brings bad luck to write about one's own end), but more likely because of his inner struggle that will be explained later (Pablo). At the time the novel was published, it seemed as though he separated the narrator from the protagonist to become what he had always wanted to be: A big, omniscient and ubiquitous daddy who tells all the stories and who has got everything under control. The reader often gets the impression that the characters are the narrator's children, especially when he evaluates them ("Anselmo was a very good man"(For Whom (5.), p. 212), "This was the greatest gift that he [Robert] had, the talent that fitted him for war"(For Whom (5.), p. 421),etc.).

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 symapthetic people, without an overt Fascist ideology - a passage which ends with Jordan shooting and killing them. Obviously, though Hemingway regarded the Republicans' cause as eminently justified, it was important to him to show that they were fighting against human beings and not faceless robots (which is how the Enemy is presented in many war novels).

Allusions/references to other works

María's appearance and behavior are almost identical to Catherine Barkley's, heroine of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. When Robert first embraces María, she erupts in tears; later she states she does not care much about herself but wishes to do everything for him, and that she is his wife. Like Catherine, she is very preoccupied with death. However, she lacks Catherine's complexity, and rarely does or says anything. There is very little behind Maria's Catherine-like façade, except for the story she tells about her parents. Late in the novel, Robert even remarks "I know thee very little from talking" (365).

María's boyish appearance and short hair is something she shares with another Hemingway female, Lady Brett Ashley of The Sun Also Rises.

Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

The novel also clearly presents an ideological theme, of left versus right, Republican vs. Fascist, with declarations (in Robert's thoughts) that the Republicans can win, if only the world will support them. The novel also makes very clear the intervention by the USSR (here called simply Russians) in support of the Republican cause and makes mention of Italy's support of the Fascists.

Influence of Hemingway's experiences

Some experiences from the time of World War One have been worked into For Whom the Bell Tolls. According to Anthony Burgess, the farewell at the station on page 434 is the equivalent of Hemingway's departure to the Italian front. An interesting aspect is that Jordan went to school instead, maybe the war represents for Hemingway, as well as for his character Robert Jordan, a part of his education. The last thoughts of Jordan could refer to Ernest's wounding in Fossalta where it seemed to him "more natural to die than to go on living"(Burgess (9.), p. 22). The gray-haired soldier who already appeared (From Boy to Man) might have been the prototype of Anselmo, while Golz's look is that of real life Polish General "Walter", commander of the XIVth Interna

• "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).

• It was also adopted as a musical by Takarazuka Revue in the mid 1970's.