"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway

Above: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - Ernest Hemingway - 692 pages.

While "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is a love story, a war adventure story, and a story about Spanish peasants fighting for their lives. it is a story about death. It is a story about stymied idealism. You cannot appreciate the fullness of the American literary canon without reading this book. Sadly, I read the book too late in life.

I completed reading this book today.

The context for this novel is The Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of monarchists, conservatives and traditionalists led by a military junta with General Francisco Franco as leader. The war had many facets and was variously viewed as a class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism. The Republicans received external support from the Soviet Union and the Nationalists were supported by the Nazis and the Italian fascists. The Nationalists prevailed in the three-year war. Francisco Franco was leader of Spain until 1975.

If nothing else, this book is a great historical primer on the Spanish Civil War, a war, the designs of which, have been foggy in my memory most of my life, until now.

The title of the book comes from a passage by English preacher/poet 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 a 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.

The plot is simple. It is about a bridge over a gorge deep behind Nationalist lines (Franco's side). Robert Jordan, a young American International Brigadier, is ordered to blow up the bridge. He must get help from the Republican guerillas who live in Franco's territory. The bridge must be blown at the exact moment a Republican offensive begins. If the bridge can be blown, then the offensive may succeed. If the offensive succeeds, then the struggle of the human race against fascism may be advanced... or so was Hemingway's take.

Hidden in a cave stronghold in the forest, Robert Jordan (always "Robert Jordan" in the novel, never, "Robert" or "Jordan") works to gain the cooperation of the partisan Spanish peasants to make the mission succeed. By and large Robert Jordan is trusted by the guerillas. He speaks fluent Spanish and knows Spanish ways. But Robert Jordan and all of the peasants are aware that blowing the bridge will likely put all of their lives at risk.

The two central guerilla characters are the cunning Pablo and his big, ugly, foul-mouthed, prescient, gypsy wife Pilar. Pilar reads doom in Robert Jordan's palm. She smelled doom on the last dynamiter who the guerillas worked with, and he was later killed. Pablo's reaction to impending disaster is to flee in the middle of the night after having destroyed the detonator. Pablo then realizes that, in his isolation, "no man is an island," and he returns to assist the group in the bridge demolition effort. The idealistic Robert Jordan, who would have otherwise been a college student in his native Montana, takes the risks because he believes he is playing a key role to save the world from fascism. Pilar is part of the revolution and understands that she has no other choice to proceed.

There were terrible atrocities committed by both sides in the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway describes in painful detail in a flashback of Pablo's band's killing leaders of a bourgeois Spanish town. "And I saw the priest with his skirts tucked up scrambling over a bench and those [Pablo's men] after him were chopping at him with the sickles and reaping hooks..."

A Russian general, Golz, assigned the bridge blowing task to Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan says that Golz is the best general he has served under, but the Republican military bureaucracy impedes all of Golz’s operations. Golz's idealism about the Republican cause is tempered by a cynicism born of the here and now. Golz has doubts about the integrity of the Republican effort. Golz believes that thinking is useless because it breaks down resolve and impedes action.

Robert Jordan develops a love interest amongst the guerilla group. Maria. Hemingway is known for his less-than-nuanced portrayals of women, who are frequently reduced to conventionalization in his stories and novels, and Maria is no different: she is utterly subservient, innocent, and devoted to Jordan, an object of lust and a symbol of pure love and tenderness. This in contrast to the tough cunning of Pilar who clearly is no stereotype.

To succeed at his mission, Robert Jordan must find people he trusts, the challenge of any leader. He finds such a person in Anselmo, an old man, thought to be beyond being able to contribute by many of the partisan group. On one occasion, Anselmo, huddled behind a tree in a snowstorm, was a forward observer of a Nationalist guardhouse, where the four soldiers inside were toasty and warm. Anselmo was close to freezing to death. Anselmo thought of returning to the warmth of the partisan cave. But he had been ordered to stay until relieved. Robert Jordan and a partisan finally came to relieve him. Jordan realized Anselmo's loyalty to the cause when he mused to himself that most soldiers would not have stayed out their assignment in the cold. Anselmo is a trusted aid to Robert Jordan in other incidences as the novel devolves.

While waiting out his sentry assignment in the cold, Anselmo wondered to himself what the difference was between him and the four enemy soldiers in the toasty cabin. They were alike. Outside of the war they farmed their land, raised their families and existed day to day. Under normal circumstances, they would all be friends. Yet, tomorrow, as part of the bridge demolition effort, he would have to kill the four soldiers. Clearly, in the context of the struggle for democracy, it was the right thing to do. He had to do his duty for his side. But wouldn't there be penance he had to do after the war? There had to be! Perhaps he could work for the new government, like a priest did when the Church was once trusted. This would absolve him of his sins for killing the four Nationalist soldiers.

In the fog of war, the bridge is blown, but the planned Nationalist offensive is stymied by a Republican spy outing the Nationalist stratagem. The guerillas scatter, and Robert Jordan is left, under a tree on a hilltop, with a broken leg, to make his final stand, alone, as the Nationalist cavalry closes in on him. Robert Jordan, denied his role in ridding the world of fascism, becomes a forgotten wartime statistic.

While "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is a love story, a war adventure story, and a story about Spanish peasants fighting for their lives. it is a story about death. It is a story about stymied idealism. You cannot appreciate the fullness of the American literary canon without reading this book. Sadly, I read the book too late in life.