book review for whom the bell tolls

Read TIME’s Original Review of <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i>

Read TIME’s Original Review of For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War.

W hen Ernest Hemingway’s now-classic novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was released, exactly 75 years ago on Wednesday, the author’s fans had some cause to tamp down their expectations. Hemingway’s stock-in-trade–finely-detailed stories of drinking and sporting in foreign lands–struck some as ill-suited to a period of great suffering.

“There was a feeling abroad that Hemingway was a little too obsessed with sex, a little too obsessed with blood for the sake of blood, killing for the sake of killing. Even his admirers wondered where he was going to find another experience big enough to make him write another A Farewell to Arms, ” TIME noted in its review of For Whom the Bell Tolls . “If ever he did, they thought, he would produce another great book. They misunderstood Hemingway’s apparent obsession with killing, forgot that the dominant experience of this age is violent death.”

But, TIME’s critic declared, any doubts about his abilities had been misplaced:

In 1936 Hemingway found the great experience—The Spanish Civil War. This week he published the great novel— For Whom the Bell Tolls . He took the title from a passage by Preacher Poet John Donne: “No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, . . . 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.” For Whom the Bell Tolls is 1) a great Hemingway love story; 2) a tense story of adventure in war; 3) a grave and sombre tragedy of Spanish peasants fighting for their lives. But above all it is about death. The plot is simple, about a bridge over a deep gorge behind Franco’s lines. Robert Jordan, a young American International Brigader, is ordered to blow up the bridge. He must get help from the guerrillas who live in Franco’s territory. The bridge must be destroyed at the precise moment when a big Loyalist offensive begins. If the bridge can be destroyed, the offensive may succeed. If the offensive succeeds, the struggle of the human race against fascism may be advanced a step. The courage of the Spanish peasants is linked to the fate of all mankind.

Read the full review, here in the TIME Vault: Death in Spain

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Write to Lily Rothman at [email protected]

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

by Ernest Hemingway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1940

This is good Hemingway. It has some of the tenderness of A Farewell to Arms and some of its amazing power to make one feel inside the picture of a nation at war, of the people experiencing war shorn of its glamor, of the emotions that the effects of war — rather than war itself — arouse. But in style and tempo and impact, there is greater resemblance to The Sun Also Rises . Implicit in the characters and the story is the whole tragic lesson of Spain's Civil War, proving ground for today's holocaust, and carrying in its small compass, the contradictions, the human frailties, the heroism and idealism and shortcomings. In retrospect the thread of the story itself is slight. Three days, during which time a young American, a professor who has taken his Sabbatical year from the University of Montana to play his part in the struggle for Loyalist Spain and democracy. He is sent to a guerilla camp of partisans within the Fascist lines to blow up a strategic bridge. His is a complex problem in humanity, a group of undisciplined, unorganized natives, emotionally geared to go their own way, while he has a job that demands unreasoning, unwavering obedience. He falls in love with a lovely refugee girl, escaping the terrors of a fascist imprisonment, and their romance is sharply etched against a gruesome background. It is a searing book; Hemingway has done more to dramatize the Spanish War than any amount of abstract declamation. Yet he has done it through revealing the pettinesses, the indignities, the jealousies, the cruelties on both sides, never glorifying simply presenting starkly the belief in the principles for which these people fought a hopeless war, to give the rest of the world an interval to prepare. There is something of the implacable logic of Verdun in the telling. It's not a book for the thin-skinned; it has more than its fill of obscenities and the style is clipped and almost too elliptical for clarity at times. But it is a book that repays one for bleak moments of unpleasantness.

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1940

ISBN: 0684803356

Page Count: 484

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1940

LITERARY FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Ernest Hemingway with Patrick Hemingway ; edited by Brendan Hemingway & Stephen Adams

by Ernest Hemingway ; edited by Seán Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway edited by Rena Sanderson ; Sandra Spanier ; Robert W. Trogdon

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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Great Books Guy

Reading the classics.

Book Review: For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom The Bell Tolls was supposed to win Ernest Hemingway his first Pulitzer Prize in 1941. However, like Sinclair Lewis before him, the prize was denied by the controversial President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler. As the story goes, the 1941 Novel Jury recommended several books for the Pulitzer Prize including, but not primarily, For Whom The Bell Tolls . Upon receiving the Jury’s recommendations the Pulitzer Advisory Board favored the critic’s choice For Whom The Bell Tolls . However, before the Board could complete a vote on the matter they were blocked by one man: Nicholas Murray Butler. He objected to the ‘lascivious’ content in the novel (Sound familiar? Nicholas Murray Butler also blocked the Pulitzer Prize from being bestowed upon Sinclair Lewis in 1921 for his novel Main Street , and instead, the 1921 prize was awarded to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence ).

Why did no member of the Pulitzer Advisory Board stand up to Nicholas Murray Butler? How was he able to railroad the whole process? His story is worth mentioning as he was a fascinating American figure. Nicholas Murray Butler was viewed as something of an autocratic ruler at Columbia University, often wantonly dismissing staff and faculty, pushing for a distinctly pro-America atmosphere on campus, prohibiting entry for Jewish students –in a word, he ruled Columbia with an iron first, and yet he was also a respected American statesman. He was the former running mate of William Howard Taft in the Presidential election of 1912, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 along with Jane Addams, for his humanitarian efforts as President of the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace. He helped to negotiate peace in Europe using elite relationships he cultivated with leaders like Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nicholas Butler Murray was also a popular cultural figure. Each year The New York Times printed his annual Christmas Greeting to the nation. He is recognized today as the longest serving President of Columbia University (43 years), a tenure which first began in his role as Interim President in 1901 before he was officially elected President of Columbia, serving from 1902-1945. So when Nicholas Murray Butler stood in the doorway of the Pulitzer proceedings refusing to move or relent on the Hemingway question while shouting “I hope you will reconsider before you ask the university to be associated with an award for a work of this nature!” –no one dared to stand against him. The full details of the confrontation were later brought to light in 1962 by Arthur Krock, the celebrated New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Board member at the time. As a consequence of the fight, no novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1941.

That year, the Novel Jury welcomed a newcomer, best-selling novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher, to replace Robert M. Lovett from the previous year. Dorothy Canfield Fisher is perhaps best known for being ardent social activist, a tireless advocate of education. She helped bring the Montessori School system to the United States, but she also achieved other important cultural milestones. She was praised by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the most influential women in America. Alongside Fisher, two veteran Novel Jury members also reprised their roles on the Jury in 1941: Jefferson B. Fletcher (Literature Professor at Columbia University), and Joseph W. Krutch (Literature Professor at Columbia University and naturalist writer). For the Pulitzer Prize in 1941, this trio also considered several other novels aside from For Whom The Bell Tolls including The Trees by Joseph Conrad, The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Native Son by Richard Wright, and Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts. The Jury apparently favored two coequal novels for the prize: The Trees by Joseph Conrad and The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and chairman Krutch went so far as to critique Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls for its “romantic sensationalism” and for having “a style so mannered and eccentric as to be frequently absurd.” However, the newspapermen of the Pulitzer Advisory Board rejected this snub and unilaterally selected For Whom The Bell Tolls until a fiery Nicholas Murray Butler blocked its nomination.

Of course, despite being robbed the first time, Hemingway later won the coveted Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for The Old Man And The Sea (feel free to read my reflections on The Old Man and the Sea here ).

For Whom The Bell Tolls is as tense a novel as it is tender. It is the story of love and war -a soldier’s duty contrasted with a lover’s embrace. The book takes us covertly behind enemy lines during the destructive Spanish Civil War of the 1930s (a war which lasted from 1936-1939). The book spans approximately four days, and within that narrow timeframe a lifetime occurs: we gain a profound and complex glimpse into the nature of heroism and cowardice among ordinary people. Amidst the chaos of war and the looming specter of death, For Whom The Bell Tolls also pulls back the curtain on a budding romance between an American soldier and an innocent Spanish girl.

For context, during the Spanish Civil War, battle lines were drawn between a coalition of conservatives, nationalists, and Catholics, led by the military dictator Francisco Franco; and on the other side, a loose-knit federation of republicans, liberals, communists, and anarchists. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported Franco, while Soviet Russia and Mexico supported the communists, but the United States, England, and France maintained a public stance of neutrality. After years of violence in every major Spanish city, the Spanish Civil War was eventually brought to an end in 1939 with the fascists taking over the country under Francisco Franco. During the war writers like George Orwell pleaded with the West to support the republicans against the fascists (see Homage To Catalonia ). The war was later dubbed a “dress rehearsal” for World War II by Claude Bowers, U.S. Ambassador to Spain.

In the novel, Hemingway introduces us to Robert Jordan, a Montana-native and Spanish language professor. Robert Jordan has unfortunately found himself in the midst of the Spanish Civil War while on leave in Spain during the outbreak of the war. He is a volunteer in the International Brigades (a international coalition of fighters organized by communists). During this time Robert Jordan has become an experienced soldier and dynamiter. He is tasked with destroying a key strategic bridge inn order to block supplies and munitions from reaching the fascists through the Sierra de Guadarrama. The order comes from Golz, a Soviet officer.

En route to complete his mission, Robert Jordan encounters an old man named Anselmo who takes Robert Jordan high up into the mountains outside Segovia in central Spain (north of Madrid) where a band of guerrilla warriors is hiding out in a cave from the fascists below. While there, Robert Jordan meets Pablo, a jaded rebel who once led the revolt against fascism but now spends his time ignobly drinking wine and sarcastically deriding the war. He also meets Pablo’s wife, Pilar, a strong-willed woman who serves as the de facto leader of the group in Pablo’s abdication (“Pilar” was a nickname for Hemingway’s third wife, Pauline, and also the name of his fishing boat); a gypsy named Rafael; and several other soldiers like Agustín, El Sordo, Fernando, Andrés, Eladio, Primitivo, and Joaquín. The group exists there by a “miracle” according to El Sordo. The fascists are unaware of their presence. The group quickly grows accustomed to Robert Jordan and they call him “Inglés” or simply “Roberto” (the whole novel is rife with Spanish idioms, including edited obscenities). However, the people in the cave are strange and unfamiliar. All throughout his days in the cave the reader asks: can Robert Jordan really trust these guerrilla fighters? How can we be certain they are not going to sabotage the mission?

The most important character Robert Jordan meets in the cave is María, a young Spanish girl whose town was ravaged by the fascists. She taken alive by the fascists -her hair was hacked off and she was raped, but she was then rescued and cared for by Pilar. Robert Jordan and María quickly strike up a romance, and Pilar essentially gives María to Robert Jordan as his lover with the promise of marriage. Robert Jordan calls María his little “rabbit” and they spend most evenings together in Robert Jordan’s sleeping bag just outside the cave.

While introducing us to the tenderness of Robert Jordan’s new love, the first half of the novel also delivers an extraordinarily tense series of moments. The impending mission to destroy the bridge plagues the reader’s mind. Will the weather be good? Will the fascists retaliate? Will they find the cave before the bridge can be blown? Will Golz call off the mission? Who will die? Who will live? Filled with hope and worry, Robert Jordan hides out with the rebels in the mountains while trying to keep a low profile, careful about what information he reveals. At the same time, skepticism grows regarding Pablo’s loyalties, and Robert Jordan places his faith in Pilar.

Suddenly, Robert Jordan is surprised one morning when an unsuspecting fascist patrolman stumbles onto his outdoor sleeping bag. Robert Jordan quickly leaps up and kills the patrolman. Then a skirmish breaks out across the mountain killing El Sordo’s entire band of fighters. Robert Jordan and the remaining fighters wait a day, and then assault the bridge (undeterred by a momentary lapse of judgment from Pablo when he steals some of Robert Jordan’s explosive equipment in the night, casting it into a ravine. Pablo eventually rejoins the fight in an effort to redeem himself). As the group approaches the bridge, they quietly kill the fascist sentries. Robert Jordan and the old man Anselmo then successfully wire, detonate, and destroy the bridge, but the explosion kills Anselmo along with several others in the process. The remaining guerrillas flee back up into the mountains having completed their mission.

“Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond” (312-313 on the last moments of Sordo’s life during his last stand against advancing fascists before he is killed in a plane raid).

For Whom The Bell Tolls tells the true account of war far greater than mere fact or history: it presents the experience of a soldier in all its complexity. Robert Jordan is a multi-faceted man: he is anxious, confident, distrusting, steadfast, competent, sorrowful, determined, and yet friendly. He is both a lover and a fighter who experiences the great depths of love amidst the heart-pounding threat of war.

“You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife, something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in the Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at Leon and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight” (235, on the experience of war).

The question of death, namely what is a good and noble death, also looms large over the novel. Robert Jordan’s father had committed suicide, an act which he considers cowardly. He occasionally reflects on his troubled father throughout the novel. Robert Jordan recalls the story of a compatriot who requested he be shot instead of falling into the hands of the fascists. Instead, Robert Jordan values a man who ends his life fighting without surrender. And Robert Jordan is also contrasted with other characters in the novel, particularly Pablo, who has become cowardly and all-too-comfortable in his hidden cave while drunk in a bowl of wine. Sadly, Pablo’s fear of death has overcome his desire for virtue or honor, and even his own wife does not respect him. In contrast, El Sordo dies bravely in battle. In the end, we are led to believe Robert Jordan dies a good death, as well. Perhaps the most striking moment that discusses a noble versus ignoble death occurs when Pilar recounts the brutal killings of fascists in her town square. Some people go to their death bravely and without fear, while others are weak and cower before the crowd of people.

“‘If you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing…'” (106, Pilar sharing a horrific story of anti-fascists, including Pablo, who assassinate sympathetic townsfolk with the fascist cause, one by one. Some die nobly and willingly, while others die in disgrace and dishonor. It is a jarring but instructive scene).

In the end, Robert Jordan ends his life as an honorable man. After blowing up the bridge, and while running back into the mountains, Robert Jordan’s leg is horribly broken in an explosion. He is dragged up to safety by the others but he simply cannot carry on. Knowing his fate, he calmly develops a plan. He says goodbye to his lover, María, and tells Pablo, Pilar, and the others to press on without him. Hemingway dramatically leaves us with this scene in the end: a mortally wounded Robert Jordan waiting beside a tree, feeling his heartbeat against the pine needles on the forest floor, while a fascist cavalry unit turns the corner and Robert Jordan prepares to open fire.

“I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life” (467).

Ernest Hemingway was a lifelong lover of Spain, particularly the encierro in Pamplona. He was a supporter of the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War (the anti-fascists) -he served as Chair of the Ambulance Committee for the Medical Bureau of the American Friends of Spanish Democracy. He also publicly supported the Spanish Republic in 1937 when he produced an hour-long pseudo-documentary movie The Spanish Earth together with Jörg Ivens and John Dos Passos ( read my review of the film here ). Hemingway wrote the script and narrated the film (Orson Welles was originally slated too narrate the film). A beautiful technicolor film version of For Whom The Bell Tolls was released in 1943 ( read my review of the film here ). Hemingway was also a war correspondent reporting on the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Association (NANA) between 1937-1938. He left Spain for the last time in 1938 and wrote a series of short stories about the Spanish Civil War before setting himself up at the Hotel Sevilla Biltmore in Havana where he began writing For Whom The Bell Tolls . His writing regimen began at 8:30am and continued until 2pm or 3pm, the same practice he had established when writing A Farewell to Arms .

After traveling in Cuba and Montana, he searched for a title for the novel, first turning to the Bible and Shakespeare, before discovering John Donne’s poem “For Whom The Bell Tolls” in the Oxford Book of English Verse :

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

The allusion to John Donne’s poem, which was originally published in 1624 from his presumed deathbed, points us to themes of isolation, death, and the need to belong. The Spanish Civil War offers Robert Jordan the chance to find fraternity and purpose in fighting the threat of fascism. If there is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friends, then Robert Jordan finds his deepest love on the battlefield of central Spain. His life is an important piece of an intricate puzzle in a worldwide chain of being. The war in Spain is not an island, but rather a part of a broader global conflict set to explode with World War II. In For Whom The Bell Tolls , the idea of war comes to light as a harsh teacher, a bearer of unforgiving truth, a life-affirming cause of brotherhood and meaning in a meaningless world. Love and death have the power to unveil the hidden character of modern man, by testing his prudence, courage, temperance, and justice. War reveals to us the grandeur and also the limits of mankind.

About Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) led a fascinating and storied life. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a small town outside Chicago. He cut his teeth writing as a journalist for the Kansas City Star in 1917. There, he built his signature writing and editing style: concise, direct, and honest sentences that tell the truth above all else.

During the outbreak of World War I, Hemingway became a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross on the Italian front but was wounded and sent home. He married his first wife Hadley Richardson and moved to Paris where he joined a circle of post-war artists and critics: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, and others. In Paris, Hemingway began writing his first collections of poetry and short stories. In 1926, he published his first modernist classic, The Sun Also Rises , a reflection of his years as an expat in France and Spain.

In the late 1920s, Hemingway returned to the United States and published his World War I novel, A Farewell To Arms . He had an affair and divorced his first wife to marry Pauline “Fife” Pfeiffer. He then moved to Key West and Cuba. While traveling widely throughout the world, he wrote books about bullfighting ( Death In The Afternoon ) and an account of big game hunting in Africa ( The Green Hills of Africa ). Hemingway had another affair and he left his wife for another woman -he remarried a third time, this time to Martha Gellhorn (he dedicated For Whom The Bell Tolls to Martha Gellhorn).

In the 1930s, Hemingway became an international reporter on the Spanish Civil War, which eventually spawned For Whom The Bell Tolls , and with the growing turmoil in Europe, he hand-delivered the novel manuscript to his publisher Max Perkins at Scribner’s in New York in July 1940 (the book would later be praised by two adversaries and American statesmen: John McCain and Barack Obama). Hemingway then hunted U-Boats in the Caribbean and reported on the European front in World War II. He remarried for the fourth and final time to Mary Welsh who remained with him until his death. In 1952 he wrote The Old Man And The Sea . Shortly thereafter, he won the Pulitzer in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in 1954. At the end of his life, Hemingway’s mental health had deteriorated, particularly after he received electroshock treatment. He killed himself by a self-inflicted shotgun blast in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961 -the same way his father had also died (and the way Robert Jordan’s father died in For Whom The Bell Tolls ).

For my full notes on Ernest Hemingway’s life, click here .

To read my reflections upon reading The Paris Review’s famous interview with Hemingway (1958) click here .

Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom The Bell Tolls . New York, Scribner, 2003.

Click here to return to my survey of the Pulitzer Prize Winners.

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Battles rage in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the d

Two characters' lovemaking is explained up to a po

The words "whore" and "bitch" are used, as well as

One character is often drunk on wine, and a good d

Educational Value

Through internal monologues, flashbacks to conversations, and changing points of view, Hemingway reveals the complex political and religious ideas behind the Spanish Civil War. Readers of For Whom the Bell Tolls learn about the different factions opposing Franco's fascist armies, weaponry used during the war, and some Spanish geography. Hemingway also directly compares the guerrillas' courage to the feelings of bullfighters in the ring, so that aspect of Spanish culture is described in detail, too.

Positive Messages

In For Whom the Bell Tolls , Hemingway is not squeamish about revealing the hypocrisy, violence, and flawed principles of the Spanish Civil War. The novel gives an intense portrayal of the bravery and pointlessness that coexist on both sides of the conflict. This is not an uplifting novel by any stretch, but it's a very meaningful one.

Positive Role Models

Regardless of whether the reader, or the author, considers Robert Jordan's mission pointless, Hemingway's anti-hero is a brave, capable, intelligent man who is acting on his belief in the anti-fascist cause. Jordan also has very well-formed internal strategies for mustering his courage when he needs it, and for controlling his temper. Oftentimes, he sees the danger of letting anger consume him, and he finds ways to subdue his own emotions. Also, he is very loving and gentle to Maria, despite the fact it could be argued that their "love" has a pretty thin foundation.

Violence & Scariness

Battles rage in For Whom the Bell Tolls , and the destruction is described at length. Men, including main characters, are shot and killed. People also talk about having the courage to shoot each other to avoid capture and torture. One female character is emotionally and physically damaged after having been gang raped.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two characters' lovemaking is explained up to a point. The feeling of a woman's body is described, and it is evident that they have sex, but the act itself is conveyed in lyrical/poetical terms ("the earth moved") rather than graphically. One character has been raped in the past, and her physical and emotional scars affect her relationship in the novel.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

The words "whore" and "bitch" are used, as well as some Spanish curse words. However, the author uses an affected device to address more taboo curse words, replacing them with words like "unprintable" and "obscenity."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

One character is often drunk on wine, and a good deal of wine is consumed by all. A few men drink whiskey, and one drinks from a flask of absinthe. Alcohol is unapologetically used to help the guerillas cope with their stress and discomfort.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that For Whom the Bell Tolls takes an unvarnished view of the Spanish Civil War. It's emotionally and politically complex, and creates a profoundly honest picture of war and the individual personalities involved; parents and teachers will want to bolster readers' understanding of fascism and communism in Spain in the late 1930s. Though the lead character, Robert Jordan, finds some pleasure and humanity under extreme duress, he lives in a brutal world full of violence, death, and deprivation. Many consider For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway's greatest literary achievement, but it is not for the faint of heart. Also, one note on the text: Hemingway uses an unusual literary conceit in this novel: All of the conversation that takes place between Jordan and his Spanish comrades is written as a literal translation from Spanish, to inform the reader that these people would actually be speaking to each other in Spanish, so the language can sound slightly strange.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Classic read about the brutality of war

What's the story.

In 1937, American professor Robert Jordan is working with Spanish guerrillas in the mountains of Spain, attempting to sabotage fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Assigned to blow up a bridge, Jordan struggles to obtain the manpower and supplies he needs to achieve his objective at the appointed time. Dissent among the guerrillas, and his affection for a beautiful young girl, distract from Jordan's mission, but he is committed to performing his duty, even though he has lost some faith in its purpose.

Is It Any Good?

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS is a rich, complex novel about the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway offers several points of view into the tragic events -- from Jordan's personal memories of his family, which explain the man he is and wants to be, to the inner workings of the Communist Party members in Madrid, to soldiers on the battlefield -- creating an enormously effective and multifaceted picture of what the war did to individuals. This is a profound novel, on a grand scale -- just as upsetting and confusing and sad as it should be.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Hemingway is trying to tell readers about the Spanish Civil War, and about war in general. Is war glorified in the novel?

What kind of man is Robert Jordan? Do you admire him? Is he doing the right thing?

What do you make of Jordan's relationship with Maria? What is Jordan doing when he fantasizes about what their life will be like after the war?

Many consider For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway's greatest novel, and one of the greatest novels ever written about war, and it is often required reading in school. Why do you think this is the case?

Book Details

Author : Ernest Hemingway
Genre : Literary Fiction
Topics : History
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Scribner
Publication date : October 21, 1940
Publisher's recommended age(s) : 14 - 18
Number of pages : 480
Last updated : July 12, 2017

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October 21, 1940 Books of The Times By RALPH THOMPSON FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS By Ernest Hemingway. ll that need be said here about the new Hemingway novel can be said in relatively few words. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a tremendous piece of work. It is the most moving document to date on the Spanish Civil War, and the first major novel of the Second World War. As a story, it is superb, packed with the matter of picaresque romance: blood, lust, adventure, vulgarity, comedy, tragedy. For Robert Jordan, the young American from Montana, the lust and adventure are quickly drowned in blood. The comedy, as in other Hemingway fiction, is practically indistinguishable from the vulgarity, which in this case is a rich and indigenous peasant brand. The tragedy is present and only too plain; the bell that began tolling in Madrid four years ago is audible everywhere today. Robert Jordan is a partizan attached to the Loyalist forces. He is neither a professing Communist nor a professional soldier, but a college instructor who happened to be in Spain on sabbatical leave. During the three or four days covered by the story, he hides out in Franco-controlled territory, into which he has been sent by headquarters to dynamite a strategic mountain bridge. He doesn't hide out alone; as prearranged, he has made contact with a certain guerrilla band operating from a cave high in the Sierra de Guadarrama. He meets two women there, one middle-aged and as tough and blasphemous as any man, the other young and frightened, her hair still short because the Falangists shaved it off after they shot her parents and rampaged through her native town. He meets the saturnine Pablo, who sits in the cave half drunk and mumbles, "Thou wilt blow no bridge here." He meets old Anselmo, who helps him blow it in the end, and Primitivo, Fernando, Augustin and several more. Once he meets El Sordo, who lives with his band on another ridge some miles way. "Listen to me," El Sordo explains, "we exist here by a miracle. By a miracle of laziness and stupidity of the Fascists which they will remedy in time. Of course we are very careful and we make no disturbance in these hills." But Robert Jordan has come to make a disturbance. He must make it if the Loyalist drive out of Madrid toward Segovia is to have a chance to succeed. Mr. Hemingway has always been the writer, but he has never been the master that he is in "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The dialogue, handled as though in translation from the Spanish, is incomparable. The characters are modeled in high relief. A few of the scenes are perfect, notably the last sequence and an earlier one when Jordan awakes to the sound of a horse thumping along through the snow. Others are intense and terrifying, still others gentle and almost pastoral, if here and there a trifle sweet. It is fourteen years since "The Sun Also Rises" and eleven since "A Farewell to Arms." More than three hundred years ago John Donne said, "No man is an Iland , intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent , a part of the maine . * * * And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee ." Mr. Hemingway has taken this text and, out of his experiences, convictions and great gifts, built on it his finest novel. Return to the Books Home Page

Book Review: For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

One of Hemingway’s most famous works, For Whom The Bell Tolls is a masterpiece from start to finish. It can get a little dry at times and is definitely no light read, but if you’re a fan of the old classics, this is definitely one to read.

If any have read the meditation by John Donne entitled For Whom The Bell Tolls (the one with famous phrase ‘no man is an island’), then they will know with relative certainty the outcome of this novel. Having said this, it does not cheapen in any way the reading experience. In fact, I would argue it heightens it, making the reader guess as to what happens next with a feeling of certainty.

The novel itself is surprisingly long given that it takes place in only three days, following the journey of a dynamiter tasked with blowing up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War. It is classic Hemingway, often spending more time on the description of the events than the events themselves, and if you aren’t accustomed to his particularly dry writing style it can get a little heavy at times.

It reads more like a documentary about a particular event than an action-packed war novel. Much of this builds from Hemingway’s experience himself as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, where he saw firsthand what was happening and heard stories from the men themselves. And because of this it is an excellent, pseudo-factual account of life as a soldier.

In this particular novel by him, I am reminded at times of the novel Moby Dick , where Ishmael spends 95% of the book building up to the climax and then the climax is so brief you wonder what all the build-up was about.

Though with this particular novel the build-up is actually not so long, there is a lot going on throughout the duration of the novel and the climax is actually worth it in the end. But it is by no means an action-packed, pedal to the metal, shoot ’em up.

No, this novel is more cerebral. It takes time to dive into the psyche of each character, learn why they each do what they do and the struggles they each have. It’s a chess match, and a brilliant one at that, rather than a boxing match.

With Hemingway you never quite know what you’re getting into, and you must always be prepared. From the very first sentence For Whom The Bell Tolls dives deep, staying there and not letting up until the last sentence has finished. With its off-the-wall descriptors, emotionally raw (and honest) character development, and use of words like “lugubriously” (three pages into chapter 16), this novel is definitely one for the permanent collection. Read it once, read it again a year later. It’s absolutely dripping with meaning and symbolism, much of which won’t be picked up on the first read. Like seemingly everything Hemingway, this book takes time and matures slowly.

But it’s definitely worth the investment. *

Lugubrious ( adj ):

Looking or sounding sad or dismal.

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For Whom the Bell Tolls Book Review

Let’s talk about the man, the myth, the bullfighter – Ernest Hemingway. He was known for his concise and masculine style of writing. He also received plenty of accolades for work. His best known titles are The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) , The Old Man and the Sea (1952), and the subject of today’s review For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). For Whom the Bell Tolls was so successful at the time of its release that it sold over half a million copies and was considered for the Pulitzer Prize ( it didn’t get it because an ex-officio chairman of the board vetoed the jurors’ unanimous choice ). What do I think of it? It’s simply okay. There are parts that work, and others that don’t work as well.

For Whom the Bell Tolls shows the story of Robert Jordan, a young American from the International Brigades who’s fighting in an antifascist guerrilla unit in the Spanish Civil War. It tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. This is basically the fictionalized version of what Hemingway himself experienced while covering the war as a foreign correspondent for the Northern American Newspaper Alliance. Long story short, it’s about a guy who’s assigned to blow up a bridge with an antifascist guerrilla group and all the events that occur in the 3-4 days that he’s with them.

So readers would probably want to know if I have read any of Hemingway’s stories in the past. Yes, I have. In my English class in my senior year of high school, I read one of his Nick Adams stories “Indian Camp.” With that story, we learned how to detect subtext. And man, there was plenty of that knowing how Hemingway coined the phrase “iceberg theory” (or how Lindsey Ellis calls it “K.I.S.S.” [keep it simple stupid]).

Is there plenty of subtext in For Whom the Bell Tolls ? There’s surprisingly not a whole lot. A good chunk of that could be found roughly in the first 100 pages. Afterwards, circumstances and motives become very clear. This makes sense as Hemingway perfected the “iceberg theory” while working in journalism, so writing a full-length novel allows him to discuss more topics explicitly.

Let me start off with the positive aspects of the novel. Hemingway is surprisingly good at writing women. At first, Robert’s love interest Maria feels like any other woman in a book written by a white guy in the mid-twentieth century, where beauty is more valued than personality. However, Maria went through sexual assault at the hands of fascists thugs. When she revealed her backstory to Robert, it made me feel a bunch of things like anger and sadness. Despite protests from him to stop, she was determined to tell her story as a way to heal herself. During a portion of the novel, Robert constantly thinks that if she had longer hair, she would be beautiful. However, when he hears of her tragic backstory, he immediately stops thinking that because he knows that her short hair is not her fault. Additionally, Pilar is a wonderful multi-dimensional woman. She can be manipulative and a bully at times, yet she’s the true leader of and mother to the group. I always looked forward to what she had to say. She’s easily more fleshed out than Maria. It makes me wonder if Hemingway inserted his third wife Martha Gellhorn into Pilar because the book is dedicated to her, and he liked to insert real people into his characters. Also, Pilar was a nickname Hemingway gave to his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer and to his boat that he had in Cuba.

Another aspect that worked was the misunderstandings within one side. During the third act, Robert orders Andres to give a note to Commander Golz calling off the bridge demolition. However, Andres runs into some obstacles like encountering antifacist officials who think he’s the enemy. It takes him hours to accomplish this. By the time Andres presents the note to Golz, Robert decides to go ahead and blow up the bridge. Moreover, early in the novel, the group gets to know one another by finding out the reasons why there’s fighting on the antifacist side. When Robert reveals that he’s an antifacist, one of the other members asks if he’s a communist (since they were backing the Republicans or those who wanted a democracy during the war). He says no, for he’s simply an antifacist. I can understand the misinterpretation since the fighters might not always share the same views as their supporters.

Now, let’s look at the aspects that don’t work as well. First, Hemingway didn’t need to make the novel 471 pages because not much occurs during a good chunk of it, and it takes place over the course of 3-4 days. There’s a lot of waiting and talking about what’s going to happen, but I’m forgiving since a lot of war involves waiting and strategizing, especially when to blow up a bridge. However, there comes a point, where there could’ve been more compelling short stories from the various parts from the novel. For example, Pilar’s recounting of the rampage at a village during the early part of the war was pretty interesting. However, once I came across Chapter 27, the book had a wake up call and started building up to the finale. This held my interest til the very end.

Nothing and everything occurs in For Whom the Bell Tolls . During the 3-4 days that Robert is with the group, he falls in love with Maria and gets involved in a plot to kill Pablo – the designated leader and Pilar’s husband. So, there’s plenty of action. It could’ve been a lot worse, it could’ve been The Polished Hoe , which has all the events taking place during one night and is 480 pages. Was there much action? Barely!

In addition, Robert Jordan feels a bit bland, for he’s the typical Hemingway Hero. That’s the problem. He’s typical. He displays honor, courage, and endurance like any other hero in Hemingway novels. What makes Robert stand out is that he loves to think long and hard about things like his father’s suicide and contemplates about whether or not this war is worth fighting for. This helps and hinders him, especially when his group tries to convince him to kill Pablo. Heck, even Hamlet does more in the namesake play than Robert Jordan does. I found it hilarious that in Chapter 35, Robert swears like a sailor but with the word muck. In the subsequent chapter, the author inserts the word obscenity like “what the obscenity.” I guess Hemingway wanted to make sure For Whom the Bell Tolls got passed the censors?

There’s also casual racism. During the course of the novel, Hemingway wanted to make sure that readers knew that the majority of the characters were Spaniards by mentioning their brown skin at almost every possible chance he got. You think that he would be aware of the fact that not every Spaniard has brown skin since he actually was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, right? A lot of Spaniards have lighter skin. Moreover, there’s a Romani character named Rafael, who is seen as worthless because he’s lazy and a criminal. Robert Jordan even thinks that Rafael is those things because he’s a part of the Roma group.

Others complained about the use of thees and thous, but I really didn’t mind. Early on, Robert identifies that the Spainards speak in the old Castilian dialect. Anytime those characters used those archaic words, it meant they were speaking old Castilian Spanish, and Hemingway incorporated some real Spanish words and phrases to drive home the point.

Overall, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway is a rather okay book. I’m not sure if it should be in the literary canon today, but it has its worthy aspects that I’m sure some readers will enjoy. I would recommend it to those who love Hemingway and those interested in reading novels that take place during the Spanish Civil War. It’s no wonder why the book’s legacy basically lies in a 1943 movie version, a great Metallica song , and a Dog Man sequel .

Speaking of that film, there’s a special reason why I read this novel. I made a guest appearance on The 300 Passions Podcast , where we talked about the film version starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman as well as why it failed to make the cut on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…Passions list. I figured it would be best to read the book first, and then see how the film translates it to the screen. So stay tuned for my movie review as well as for that episode!

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