In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
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For Whom the Bell Tolls begins and ends in a pine-scented forest, somewhere in Spain. The year is 1937 and the Spanish Civil War is in full swing. Robert Jordan, a demolitions expert attached to the International Brigades, lies "flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees." The sylvan setting, however, is at sharp odds with the reason Jordan is there: he has come to blow up a bridge on behalf of the antifascist guerrilla forces. He hopes he'll be able to rely on their local leader, Pablo, to help carry out the mission, but upon meeting him, Jordan has his doubts: "I don't like that sadness, he thought. That sadness is bad. That's the sadness they get before they quit or before they betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out." For Pablo, it seems, has had enough of the war. He has amassed for himself a small herd of horses and wants only to stay quietly in the hills and attract as little attention as possible. Jordan's arrival--and his mission--have seriously alarmed him.
"I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted. If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?" He turned to Robert Jordan. "What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?"In one short chapter Hemingway lays out the blueprint for what is to come: Jordan's sense of duty versus Pablo's dangerous self-interest and weariness with the war. Complicating matters even more are two members of the guerrilla leader's small band: his "woman" Pilar, and Maria, a young woman whom Pablo rescued from a Republican prison train. Unlike her man, Pilar is still fiercely devoted to the cause and as Pablo's loyalty wanes, she becomes the moral center of the group. Soon Jordan finds himself caught between the two, even as his own resolve is tested by his growing feelings for Maria.
For Whom the Bell Tolls combines two of the author's recurring obsessions: war and personal honor. The pivotal battle scene involving El Sordo's last stand is a showcase for Hemingway's narrative powers, but the quieter, ongoing conflict within Robert Jordan as he struggles to fulfill his mission perhaps at the cost of his own life is a testament to his creator's psychological acuity. By turns brutal and compassionate, it is arguably Hemingway's most mature work and one of the best war novels of the 20th century. --Alix Wilber
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"'The best book Hemingway has written' New York Times"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By ThomsEBynum
Format:Paperback
Rarely do I come across a book that affects me in a way that stays with me for months. FOR WHOM was just one such book, as was the stellar collection of short stories by McCrae titled THE CHILDREN'S CORNER. FOR WHOM starts out with the protagonist, Robert Jordan, lying on the forest floor. Jordan, an American, is in Spain fighting on the side of the Republicans in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Jordan is apparently a "code hero," a protagonist of Hemingway's who lives according to a code of behavior. He is a Spanish teacher from Montana who loves Spain, and is fighting, carrying out explosives missions, against the Fascists, who have a vast war machine.
At the beginning of the novel, Robert Jordan is teamed up with a band of guerrilla fighters in the mountains near a bridge he must blow as part of a Republican offensive. Anselmo, an old man who knows the land well, helps Jordan scout the bridge. Other members of the band include Pablo, a formerly great fighter, we are told, who has now "gone bad." He cares primarily for his horses. His "woman" Pilar is a leader of the band, and she narrates on the first full day that Jordan is with them how the Republicans rose up against the Fascists in her town. The story is brutal and demonstrates the atrocities committed by the Republicans in the war as they bludgeon the town's Fascists to save bullets. Others in the group include Agustin, Eladio, Andres, Fernando and Rafael, a Gypsy. And Maria. Maria is a young woman who was the victim of atrocities in her town. She was rescued by this band of Republicans and now lives with them in the mountains. She is the "love interest."
I love Hemingway's voice, and this novel continues to demonstrate his ability, with that spare, journalistic style, to narrate loneliness like no one else. The seemingly simplistic style evokes a real pathos, and is especially suited to writing of war and the human spiritual conflicts such situations impose upon its participants. The reader is explosed to the morality issues of war, how characters feel about killing, what is its necessity, when is it moral, when is it wrong, etc.
By Agrippa
Format:Paperback
In FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS Hemingway again reveals how war affects the lives of the average citizen. The ones who are called on to fight and die in the war. The people who have no power in declaring the war and above all who don't want the war at all. The ones who are for the most part forgotten when it is over. A lot has been made over his unconventional and individual style but it is really Hemingway's experience that make his books important. He gives us a window into a time and place none will ever again visit and it is in this that we can begin to appreciate what war actually did to a country and it's people and why freedom is a precious commodity. Incidently, to quibble over why a character in a book of this stature would cut her hair is not only to miss the point of the work, but to not even try to find it. If you think you can do it better than Hemingway then write a couple of novels and we'll see if they become standards of American literature. Steinbeck is probably the only other author who comes this close to the classics with either his GRAPES OF WRATH or WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT. If you want something lighter, might I suggeset you try CATCHER IN THE RYE or the ever-popular KATZENJAMMER by McCrae? All are good, but the Hemingway is really the best.
By Bobby-Ray
Format:Paperback
This novel brings one into close contact with the forces in dreadful conflict during civil war--Solidarity versus Brutality; Hemingway portrays both thoroughly. The story told by Pilar in this book seemed to haunt me for a few days, the images were so clear, and as one will find by reading it, it is a story which has a very grave lucidity, as if you wished Hemingway would drown the scene in a sea of lifeless and complex words. The descriptions of the love story and Jordan's internal motivations immediately soothe the unsettling images of war, and the novel as a whole works paradoxically to the point where both sets of images collide, and leave the reader both unsettled and fulfilled simultaneously. I'm not a general fan of Hemingway's novels, but this is probably his best.
Also recommended: THE CHILDREN'S CORNER by McCrae
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4.3 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
DRESS REHEARSHAL FOR WWII
EXCERPTED FROM "GOD'S COUNTRY" BY STEVEN TRAVERS
"For Whom the Bell Tolls" is based upon Hemingway's support for the anti-Communists fighting in the Spanish... Read more
Published on Jun 24 2004 by Steven Travers
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real-Time Classic
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS takes place in the space of three days, and Hemingway narrates nearly every moment in 471 pages. Read more
Published on Jun 8 2004 by Stacey M Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great work
This book is simply amazing. Hemmingway is one of the most widely read American authors of the 20th century, with good reason. Read more
Published on Jun 1 2004 by "owenw145"
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book About War, Love, and Devotion to Duty
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great book with large themes: war, love, devotion to duty, and the clash between modern, rational values and more traditional ones. Read more
Published on May 30 2004 by -_Tim_-
5.0 out of 5 stars
Among the Finest Literature We Have
Evocative, tragic, brutal, bitter. Using the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s as his backdrop, Hemmingway critiques warfare from the political abstractions and distant generals to... Read more
Published on May 4 2004 by g4cube
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astounding
When I read this book, I was astonished. How could a book be so amazing, so perfect? How could such a collection of words come from the mind of a man? Read more
Published on May 2 2004 by Martin
4.0 out of 5 stars
Emotional depiction about the calamities of war
The book is about an American dynamiter, Robert Jordan, who embeds himself with a republican guerilla group. His mission was to blow up a bridge controlled by a fascist soldiers. Read more
Published on Mar 29 2004 by L
4.0 out of 5 stars
good descriptions of the calamities of war
The book chronicles an American dynamiter's mission to blow up a bridge controlled by Spanish fascists. Read more
Published on Mar 28 2004 by L
5.0 out of 5 stars
No man is an Iland ...
I like this Hemingway book even better than A Farewell to Arms. It "stayed with me" long after I had forgotten most of the details. Read more
Published on Feb 27 2004 by Professor Joseph L. McCauley
5.0 out of 5 stars
A true masterpiece of human redemption
It is not by mere circumstance that a novel is considered a classic. It takes years and years of the work standing up to critique, criticism, public response, and the test of... Read more
Published on Feb 24 2004
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