Customer Reviews

For Whom the Bell Tolls

5 star:		(113)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

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

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 Civil War of the 1930s. He and many other Americans went over to fight in the war, which some say was a "dress rehearsal" for World War II. It did not materialize into the kind of idealized Spanish government that many had sacrificed for. The fascistic Francisco Franco ended up ruling an isolationist Spain until the 1970s. While the nation is now Democratic, the Franco regime was the final event that took Spain from greatness to mediocrity. Hemingway also wrote a stageplay about the Spanish Civil War called "The Fifth Column".

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"<B>...

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS takes place in the space of three days, and Hemingway narrates nearly every moment in 471 pages. When reading large sections in one sitting, I really felt the weight of the experience settle on me. The novel also begins to feel increasingly existentialist as the absurdity of the structures of war and death play out for the characters involved. During "marathon" reading sessions on three different days, I came to see this as a literary, "real time" adventure, as Hemingway details almost every moment in the characters' lives.

The novel 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.

The story becomes existential, very Kafkaesque, as well, when one character's interactions with command are relayed by Hemingway. I laughed allowed at the absudities, but was struck by the dire consequences of these ridiculous desicions and actions. These situations show the war machine's indifference to individual human life and the ridiculous scenarios that arise from various leaders' individual conceits and worries.

I think that the book's time frame of only three days makes a strong point about war and the people one serves with. For the reader, the band in the mountains are basically the only people Robert Jordan knows (though there are brief flashbacks). One can see how those who fight together can bond so deeply in a short period of time, as practically every moment is laden with portent and their fate as a group turns on such small things as an evening snowfall.

I unequivocally recommend this book.

This book is simply amazing. Hemmingway is one of the most widely read American authors of the 20th century, with good reason. I found this book to be much better than "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farwell to Arms," both of which are excellent. The final scenes are very, very powerful and the drama he creates from beginning to end is great. As with all great novels, you care about the characters and get involved with the story. I highly recommend this book is anyone who enjoys reading. The only problem with this edition, at least the copy that I have, is that it's full of typos, which is annoying. Regardless, it is well worth reading!

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. At a higher level, it is about connections between people: indeed, the book opens with the following quotation from John Donne:

. . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Hemingway takes us inside a guerilla band during the Spanish Civil War, mostly through the eyes of Robert Jordan, an American professor-cum-demolitions expert. Jordan is a Communist - at least he is strongly drawn to Communism - who has come to Spain to fight fascism. He has character and a sense of duty. Since, from our vantage point, at the beginning of the 21st century, it seems that not many people do, this gives the book a kind of "long ago and far away" feel. Readers in 1940, when the book was published, no doubt experienced it in a more immediate way.

This book includes many memorable secondary characters: among them Pilar, the wise leader of the band of partisans, Pablo, her drunken, amoral, but capable husband, and Maria, the love interest in the story.

Like every Hemingway novel that I've read, this one is well written. Hemingway uses the archaic English "thou" for the Spanish "tu" and translates literally from Spanish to English to better convey an impression of Spanish dialogue to English readers. These devices are initially distracting but are actually very successful at taking the reader inside the minds of the Spanish-speaking characters in this book.

This is a distinguished work and an exciting one. It deserves its acclaim.

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 the individual lives it destroys, and renders all in frighteningly powerful detail with every crosscurrent coming to bear on each character in ways that are viscerally wrenching, complex and yet clear. Every shade of character and dynamic is captured as several dozen people act out a small part in a large conflict in the two-and-a-half days of a mission to blow a bridge.

Robert Jordan, an American in the volunteer brigades, arrives deep in the mountain wilderness of Spain with orders to recruit and employ the services of irregular militia hiding out there in the vicinity of a small bridge that will be key to an impending offensive. His task requires that he win the hearts and minds of these locals in order to secure their loyalty so that he might have an effective small force for carrying out his mission. But this group of people are of conflicting feelings and understandings about their place in the conflict and what it means to each of them. Some are wary and some callous, some dedicated to the fight and others only dedicated to themselves.

We have real people-Anselmo's natural and true goodness, Pilar and El Sordo's dedication, Pablo's treachery, Maria's repeated loss of innocence. We have the politics and forces behind it all-selfish and hollow, or abstracted until it's no longer human. And we have warfare-sudden death, alone in the mountains, alone with your last thoughts, with the smell of burning flesh, with your last blood running silently into the dirt.

Hemmingway spares us the simplistic narrative style of describing each character's feelings. Instead, he offers the scenes themselves with such insightful observation and flawlessly rendered detail that every one of the many conflicting shifts of allegiance happening in Pablo's scheming mind is writ in his every gesture and expression and telling silence. Neither the characters nor the narrator ever need discuss these in so many words. The tensions among the characters as they huddle in their cave hideout are a fascinating web of unexpected assessments of each other, shifts of power and influence, tactical and strategic wins and loses. Though never spoken of, the delicacy and danger of Jordan's human task is clear. As a contrast there is Maria, at first seeming too childish until we realize Jordan's love for her is love for lost innocence, and that she in turn-only seventeen-has every right to her emotional fragility and her desperation.

And then there is the war itself, and here again Hemmingway's powers of observation and prose composition startle. Every action bears on every other, and the individuals are placed firmly in context from the cave to the local mountains to the whole of Spain to the abstractions of global political movements. Without a syllable of pedantry the author draws the relationship between each detail of individual action and the whole of the conflict. And vice versa, with ideals or their absence making each person's motives a little different, and often making helpless puppets of them all.

There is very little in literature to compare with For Whom the Bell Tolls. It sees humanity at its very best and very worst simultaneously, and sees it directly in vivid, glimmering images and beautifully textured emotional nuance, without wordy narrative telling the reader what to think and when. The fact that Hemmingway yet controls our understanding with absolute ease and clarity is only half of the writer's art. His critique of warfare and its human toll, expressed in Jordan's arc of hope and tragedy and resignation, is as brutal as the fear and blood on the ground, and ultimately contemplates the interconnectedness of life and the sacrifices made to sustain it. "No man is an islande, intire unto itselfe... Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Among the finest literature we have.

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? This is the first Hemingway I have read and it will be the last so as not to risk tainting my impression of his genius with what must be relatively inferior works. Though I'm sure his other novels are great, I simply can't imagine them being on par with this absolute masterpiece.

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. But the context of the story wasn't really focused on the Spanish Civil War but rather the toils and calamities of war in general. War took an emotional toll on the partisans and the book does a good job explaining the background of the characters. There is also some humanity even in the midst of the war. To take the edge of the harsh plot of the story, Jordan meets Maria, another victim of the war. Her father and mother were killed in cold blood when fascist had captured their town while she fell captive under the fascists.
One can suspect that the book was published for a wide audience at its first printing because of the censoring and substitution of the word "obscenity". This book probably had an impact for the raw emotion for its audience but yet the book was written before WWII and the Vietnam War--wars that brought in Americans center stage to the battlefront in the 20th century. In fact blitzkrieg battle tactics made famous by Hilter's German army were perfected on the grounds of the Spanish Civil War. But the onset of these subsequent war pushed aside the Spanish Civil War aside from the American memory of historical events. I would think that by this reasoning, that a book like this would stand the test of time if it had some uniqueness, something unique about the war that couldn't be compared to any other war like fighting on the basis of an ideological idea (fascism, republicanism, socialism, etc.) instead of by ethnic ties or religious beliefs. Otherwise, the story just sounds like another wishy washy critique about war itself and how destructive it is which has been written by many other writers of the twentieth century. Nevertheless I applaud the raw writing talent of Hemingway and admire his storytelling but I wouldn't think that a typical reader today would feel that this book was really cutting edge.