For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in 1940, has a lot in common with A Farewell to Arms. This is another tragic love story set against the backdrop of war. Only this time, the war is much more immediate for the main character, Robert Jordan, than the war was for Frederick Henry until later in A Farewell to Arms. Once again we have an American fighting a battle that was not America's, at least not yet. Robert Jordan is fighting on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, trying to prevent the rise of fascism in Spain. He was a professor of Spanish in Montana but he believes in the cause of liberty and in justice for the poor so he has volunteered to work as a dynamiter with the Republican Army.

At the beginning of the book Jordan is completely devoted to the cause. He receives orders to blow up a certain bridge at the time of an attack on the fascist posts, and he knows that because of the timing it is going to be a dangerous and probably fatal mission. Although he knows he is probably going to die he accepts his orders and goes into the mountains behind the fascist lines to carry them out. His guide is an elderly man, Anselmo, who believes in the cause but states openly that he likes to hunt animals but hates killing men. Jordan is the opposite: he does not like to kill animals but he is resigned to killing men when it is needed in a war situation.

Right away when he meets up with the small band of guerrillas whom he needs to aid him in his mission, he realizes that their leader Pablo is going to be trouble. Their first meeting is not very pleasant. Pablo is against blowing up the bridge. He cares more about the small group of people he is with than about winning the war on the side of freedom. Jordan senses that Pablo is afraid of death and is very likely to do something to betray the mission.

When he meets the other guerrillas he meets the beautiful Maria and falls in love immediately. Maria's parents were executed by the fascists and she and other girls were raped and abused. Her head was shaved by the fascists and it is just starting to grow back in. Jordan finds her very attractive but he wants her to grow her hair longer so that she will look more feminine.

He spends a little under three days with her. At night they make love and also once during the day. It is a new experience for Jordan because he has been with women but he has never been deeply in love before. Maria wants to be the ideal woman for him and keeps telling him that Pilar, Pablo's wife, has been instructing her on how to please a husband. She is very concerned with her duties as a wife, and indeed they declare to each other that they are already married although they plan to marry once the bridge is blown up and the attack is over. This is similar to Catherine Barkley's attitude to Henry, that she must obey him in every way and be exactly what he wants her to be. Once again I think Hemingway had very old-fashioned ideas about women even though he did not care if they were virgins and he saw nothing wrong about a woman sleeping with a man she loved before or even without getting married. I think he would be shocked today at the way women are not brought up to think they have to cater to men and obey them all the time.

Pablo continues to give Jordan trouble. Sometimes he is friendly. At other times, such as when he is drunk, he becomes very insulting. Several people, the gypsy and even Pablo's wife Pilar, encourage Jordan to kill Pablo because they fear he has become a useless coward and will betray them. Pablo tries to attack Jordan's manhood by asking if in America men wear skirts (even though he knows it is Scotland where men wear kilts). Jordan does not let his temper get away from him and he lets Pablo live.

But on the third night while Jordan is sleeping with Maria, Pablo slits open the backpacks full of dynamite and steals Jordan's exploder and some of the dynamite. This, plus the snowstorm the day before that allows the fascists to track the horse of one of their slain officers, is a terrible setback and now Jordan knows it is not going to be possible to blow up the bridge from far away. It has to be done at close range using grenades and that means loss of life.

Pablo returns, says he threw away the exploder but that he has thought better of it and has brought more men and horses. So Jordan is somewhat willing to forgive him, at least, he doesn't kill Pablo for his treachery. He tells Maria to stay with the horses and he goes with the others to blow up the bridge and attack the two fascist posts.

The bridge is blown up as planned but Anselmo is killed in the explosion. Jordan is miraculously unhurt and there is actually a chance for escape. Pablo comes back from an attack on the fascist post and a small tank has followed him. The group of guerrillas and Jordan try to flee but Jordan's pack horse is shot and falls on him, breaking his leg. He knows he can't escape.

He speaks to Maria for the last time and tells her that he will be with her always. He's not sure if he really believes in an afterlife although at times during the book he speaks about communicating with his grandfather who fought in the Civil War. So he tells her he will be with her wherever she goes and that he is part of her. Then he stays and waits, trying not to pass out, because he plans to take a few more of the fascists with him before he dies. He thinks about all he has learned in the past few days about life and love, and wishes he could pass it along to someone else. He thinks about death and that it is nothing, but he realizes now that dying is a hard thing to do. He scolds himself that he is not doing it well but then he realizes that no one "does it well." And then the fascist troop arrives. We don't see the moment of Jordan's death. The book ends with him just about to shoot the fascist lieutenant and then shoot himself before he can be captured and tortured. So we don't know what might happen. He might succeed or he might pass out and miss his shot and wake up in a fascist prison to be tortured and then killed. All we know is that he has made his peace with death.

The title, For Whom the Bell Tolls, refers to a poem by John Donne that says, "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Church bells toll when someone dies and we can tell from the title alone that there will be death in this book, probably the main character's as well as other people. Hemingway shows that Jordan is a hero and a "real man" because even though he knows that he is probably going to die carrying out his mission he persists and does not try to run away from it. He considers himself of no individual importance and his own death does not matter if the cause is served. This is different from Henry who cares only about his small group of ambulance drivers. But Jordan does make an emotional connection with the group of guerrillas that take him in and he does feel regrets about having to give them orders and put them in danger as if they were soldiers he did not know or care about. Still, he does his duty.

Just as in A Farewell to Arms, Jordan's death is foreshadowed several times in the book. Pilar reads his palm and then will not tell him what she sees but later Maria tells him that the reading told Pilar that they would all be killed. His job is to meet it bravely. He does not believe in palm reading or other superstitions just as he does not believe in God (and in fact several people in the book say they do not have God any more because they are now Communists) but it still disturbs him that Pilar predicted his death.

Jordan also enjoys his food and his woman even in the face of impending death. Hemingway shows us that "real men" enjoy what is here and now because death is the end of it all. Jordan is very self-disciplined and carries out his orders without any superior officer needing to stand over him with a gun, and he is focused in his thinking. He relies on his clear, cold head. He shows also that he is very competent and is able to think of an alternate way to blow up the bridge after Pablo steals the exploder.

Hemingway's heroes are able to kill when it is needed but they are not heartless brutes. Pilar describes a terrible scene in a small town where the movement arose and Pablo was the leader of the fight against the fascists. After they were captured the fascists were made to run a sort of gauntlet. Pablo's original intention was to make all the villagers share in the responsibility for these killings but it got out of hand and the villagers became an angry mob that cruelly slaughtered the fascists, whether or not they had done anything wrong personally. This is not clean killing and Hemingway would not be proud of Pablo's actions as he is of Jordan's clean and quick shootings of the fascist sentry.

What I see in this book is that Hemingway is showing us what he feels a real man will do when faced with war, danger, love, and death. It is the way a man lives his life and dies his own particular death that makes him a hero or a coward, and not what others think of him.