For Whom the Bell Tolls is undoubtedly the best work that I read by Hemingway. However, I have only read A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, so my sample is limited. For all its strengths, I still have to characterize the book as a “flawed masterpiece.”
The book relates the story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, who has been sent on what he realizes is a suicide mission to blow up a bridge with the help of local guerrilla fighters. The entire book takes place over the course of less than four days, as Jordan wrestles mentally with his impending death. The struggle mirrors the larger problem that everyone must have with the knowledge that all men are mortal. Jordan falls in love, he plans for a future that his honest, most inner thoughts know to be illusory, and he tries to enjoy the world and justify his sacrifice in the framework of the fight for the Spanish Republic.
In these broad terms, the novel is a success. I also found the novel to be successful in highlighting that neither side in the Spanish Civil War held a moral high ground. In Chapter 10, Hemingway presents an extended narrative of the execution of landowners and the bourgeois in a small village at the hands of the communist and anarchist movements. His hero, Robert Jordan, admits that it was entirely wrong. Later, Jordan notes how the “Republic” is really being controlled by Stalinist Russians sent from Moscow with a non-democratic Marxist agenda. This is an agenda that Jordan does not share; he claims that he is for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and notions of freedom and equality.
The primary failure of the novel, from my perspective, is that Hemingway writes dialogue in a stilted English that is meant to parallel the Spanish that the characters are presumably speaking the entire time, despite the fact that Spanish phrases are also thrown in from time to time. The use of thou to designate the use of the Spanish familiar tu is not in and of itself a problem. However, when added to dialogue that is already somewhat antiquated sounding, it distances the reader from really feeling for the characters. They seem a bit stiff and wooden, and their emotions die on the page.
It probably doesn’t help that I believe Robert Jordan (Hemingway always referred to him by his full name, much as Thomas Mann referred to Hans Castorp in Der Zauberberg by his full name, which is also not a great way to endear the reader to a character) was fighting for the wrong side. I do not share the values of a rabidly anti-religious Marxist-Leninist insurrection. I was pleased to see that Hemingway hadn’t overly romanticized the efforts of the fellow travelers of Third Communist International in fighting Franco, but he nonetheless sympathized with them.
On balance, I believe that the weakness of the love story is ultimately the biggest fault that I find in the novel. It is understandable that Jordan falls in love, and passionately so, with the only woman available to him in the three days he knows he has left to live. He is clinging to life and hope and love. However, the relationship was poorly developed, the character of Maria (Jordan’s love interest) is entirely two dimensional and their dialogue is particularly bad. It is bad even when compared with other relationships in Hemingway’s works – the primary romantic relationship in A Farewell to Arms was genuine and well-written, and the romantic line in The Sun Also Rises was brilliant. In contrast, this relationship is strained and artificial.
The result was a book that I enjoyed, but which I do not feel any great affection for. This is something that I have felt in general about Hemingway’s writing. I do not think that I will read any more of his books, if the ones that are supposedly his best and most moving works leave me with a disinterested feeling.
I wonder if the impact of For Whom the Bell Tolls was exaggerated by the timing of its release. It came out in 1940, and many who read it must have seen that the rest of the world was at war and it was likely only a matter of time before the United States became involved. No doubt, thousands of its readers would face situations like those faced by Robert Jordan, dying bravely in North Africa, Italy and France in Europe, or on some God-forsaken blasted island in the Pacific. The book would have struck a nerve also with family members of soldiers and sailors left at home, worrying and wondering.
For me, however, the book is problematic. As I said, I enjoyed it, but I do not feel great affection for it. It is probably Hemingway’s masterpiece, but it has serious flaws that I think many modern readers will note. I recommend it for reading with that caveat.
Only difference in our views of the novel is that I'm more sympathetic to anarchism, but the wooden dialogue is what soured me on it when I first read at the age of 17. I liked the other two Hemingway novels you mention more than this one.
Je suis méchant.
