For Whom the Bell Tolls

On Monday, the 28th, I finished Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. "Bell" is, on the surface, a book about three days in the life of a band of anti-fascist guerrillas during the Spanish Civil War. More than that though, the book is an exploration of what complex creatures human beings are. Even good people are capable of doing ghastly things, given certain circumstances. Moreover, the book examines the motivations of many characters and you get a real feeling for why they're fighting in the civil war, even though they were never trained soldiers.

The main character is Robert Jordan, an American university instructor who has come to Spain to fight against the fascists. Even if one wanted to forget Robert Jordan's name, it would be impossible, since Hemingway writes out Robert Jordan's name in full on nearly every page of the book. It's my biggest criticism of the book, but realize that this is minor. But I digress. Jordan's experience in the civil war is as a dynamiter. As such, he's sent by the communist (anti-fascist) General Staff behind the fascist lines to meet up with a guerrilla band led by a man named Pablo. Jordan's orders though, essentially send the band on a suicide mission to blow up a bridge at the start of a Republic offensive. From here, we learn how Jordan reconciles placing himself and these other people (who, for the most part, he likes very much) in mortal danger for a "greater cause." We also learn how many of the band found themselves in this situation and why they fight. Jordan does have a romantic interest, which at first I thought was trite, but then I realized that it was important for Jordan to have more at stake than just himself and his life. For the story to have greater weight, he had to be willing to sacrifice the life of someone he loved.

We also learn how bureaucracy, petty politics, and general incompetence put all of the guerrilla band in danger (in some cases more than danger). Fighting for ideology, fighting for your home, fighting for your government, fighting for murdered friends and family, fighting for the Spanish people...all seem to be legitimate reasons to be engaged in the civil war, but they all come with a terrible cost.

As an aside, I found it interesting that Hemingway devoted several pages to the story of how Robert Jordan's father killed himself with a pistol. Considering that Hemingway was later a gunshot suicide, I wonder if he thought about suicide for much of his life.

Hemingway's main characters seem extremely "real." Perhaps it's because his dialogue was so good. He interspersed Spanish into the English text and it really seemed to bring the characters to life. Also, his descriptions of the forested mountain territory of Spain really placed you, the reader, in the action. The occasional change of point-of-view from a Jordan to an omniscient narrator to another character and then back to Jordan was sometimes jarring, but in all it gave a more complete picture of the situation the characters found themselves, and thus benefited the story. In sum, it's abundantly clear to me why For Whom the Bell Tolls is considered an American classic.