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The big one For me this is the big Hemingway book. His greatest work and one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. And it is a big book, his longest. But For Whom the Bell Tolls does not read as long. Partly because the majority of it is dialogue and much of the rest of it is interior dialogue within the protagonist. But mainly because it contains the most vivid scenes, the strongest characters and most intense action you are likely to find in a serious novel. All written in Hemingway's leanest prose, without an unnecessary frill. And written, for the first time in a major Hemingway novel, in the third person, albeit strictly from the protagonist's point of view. Robert Jordan is a demolitions expert assigned during the Spanish Civil War to work with a Republican unit in the mountains. The Spaniards, living in caves and fighting as what we would call guerillas today, are ostensibly led by Pablo, a once noble fighter for democracy who has degenerated into little more than a bandit. The real power rests with Pilar, a strong old Spanish woman, one of the most memorable fictional creations in modern times. The other members of the group also become well known to us as they fight the enemy and interact among themselves. Jordan falls in love with Maria, a traumatized young victim of Franco's Falangist forces. But in the end Jordan must serve a higher end than love. Long after the dramatic ending of the novel, what may stay with you, apart from two or three indelible characters, are the gripping and chilling stories told by those characters about events from the class war taking place in Spain in the mid-1930s. Hemingway's usual cynical attitude toward puffed-up principles and toward war in particular is still evident in For Whom the Bell Tolls, but it is modified by his acceptance that the Spanish Civil War is unlike previous wars and that some things are worth fighting and dying for. This gives the novel a drive not found in his more detached previous works. — Eric
© Copyright 2002-2003 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
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Bell Tolls |
