For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Sittin’ around talkin’ about doin’ somethin’

Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in 1940, is set during the recently concluded Spanish Civil War. Hemingway worked as a war correspondent in Spain during the war, and he references some real historical figures and events in the text. The narrative is informed by Hemingway’s own experiences of the war, as well as second-hand knowledge he gleaned as a journalist, but this is not an autobiographical novel like A Farewell to Arms.

Robert Jordan is an American who has volunteered to serve on the side of the Spanish Republicans in their fight against Francisco Franco’s Nationalists. The leftist Republicans have the support of the Soviet Union, while the right-wing Nationalists are backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In his civilian life, Jordan is a professor of Spanish at the University of Montana, but in his guerrilla life he is an expert in demolitions. A Soviet general has tasked Jordan with blowing up a bridge in order to prevent fascist troops from thwarting a major Republican offensive. In order to fulfill his mission, Jordan needs the support of some locals, so he rendezvous with a band of anti-fascist guerrillas made up of Spaniards and Gypsies. Jordan joins them in their hideout in a mountain cave, where they plan their upcoming strike. Among the group, Jordan meets María, a young Spanish woman raped and orphaned by the fascists, with whom he falls in love. 

The first 270 pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls consist of Jordan and this band of partisans sitting around their cave talking about what they’re going to do. Frankly, the book really could have used a lot less of that. The last 200 pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls, however, consist of the characters actually doing what they said they were going to do, and those 200 pages make for a very good novel. One wonders why Hemingway waited so long to get the ball rolling. The answer, as I’m sure some lit critic would tell me, is character development. Much of that intended development, however, feels more like stunted growth.

Hemingway made some odd stylistic choices when writing this novel. The most glaring and persistent is that he decided to use the second person pronouns “thee,” “thou,” and “thy” throughout. At first, I thought this was his way of showing the contrast between the Spanish “usted” and “tu,” but that turned out not to be the case, since the word “you” isn’t used anywhere in the book, regardless of degree of intimacy. Another awkward convention that Hemingway employs is that whenever a swear word is spoken in dialogue, he substitutes the word “obscenity” instead, as in, “Go obscenity yourself!” It’s like the written equivalent of bleeped profanity on television. Was this really necessary in 1940? Apparently so, since the Post Office banned it as obscene anyway, but this stilted and sanitized language undermines the book’s realism. Another faulty dimension to the novel is the romance between Jordan and María, which now reads as a stereotypical story of a White Anglo male colonizing a subservient third-worlder. Despite portraying Maria as a survivor, Hemingway makes her dumber than she needs to be, which feels like he’s just fueling some shady male fantasy.

I’m not a huge Hemingway fan, and none of his books have ever really blown me away, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is the best work of his that I’ve read. Although there is enough depth to this novel to qualify as high literature, at times it often reads like a Clint Eastwood movie (Two Mules for Sister Sara and Where Eagles Dare come to mind). If you can endure the first half, the rest makes for a compelling read.