For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway, Scribner, 471 pages

Is there anything that can be sad about this book or its author that has not already been said? One of the classic novels of the modern age, For Whom the Bell Tolls is definitely quintessential Hemingway, one of his last major works (not counting the work published posthumously, it would be followed only by Across the River and Into the Trees and The Old Man and the Sea.) By now, Papa Hemingway had clearly perfected his own inimitable style, that magnificent simplicity that so many have either envied or loathed.  And thematically, Papa Hemingway is in his usual territory of large ideas: the fine lines between courage and cowardice, between loyalty and betrayal.



Based on his own time spent in the Spanish Civil War, the novel concerns Robert Jordan, a dynamiter sent into the mountains to destroy a bridge during an upcoming attack. There, protected by a group of colorful guerrillas, he confronts his own preconceptions of war, loyalty, courage and love. He falls in love with the speed of a character in a Hollywood film - although to be fair, it's arguable that even Robert Jordan understands that his emotions are an illusion, that his love with the quiet Maria is a fantasy he indulges in to keep his mind off the terrors of the past and future. These scenes are the most effective in the novel and as always Hemingway managed to capture the uneasy emotional lives of men and women and the pressure we put on love to be our salvation.

As we are in the Spanish mountains, the characters speak Spanish throughout and to indicate this, Hemingway chose a formal dialogue that struggles to be as literal a translation as possible. As Spanish involves two forms of address, a formal and informal, Hemingway translates these as "thee", "thine", "thou" and so forth. This didn't bother me as much as it has bothered others, although it does give the dialogue an archaic, medieval flavor. But there is also a great narrative opportunity in using languages that has formal and informal forms of address, as it allows an author to reveal character and relationship. Robert Jordan begins speaking formally to most of the guerrillas, but a subtle shift happens in the language that indicates their relationship has changed. 

Hemingway was always fighting against his reader's (or maybe just his publisher's) prudish moral code and here, he relates the rough vernacular of the guerrillas with the simple act of inserting literal bleeps over their curse words. Rather then write the curse word, he simply writes the word "obscenity". This is a clever device, perhaps prompted by his frustration with the censoring of A Farewell to Arms (in which the printers replaced the swear words by dashes; Hemingway reportedly went through several copies and reinserted the words by hand). Here, Hemingway manages to both avoid using obscenities while calling attention to the fact that everyone is using them. It almost feels like he managed to do an end run around the censors. Without actually being obscene, the characters manage to be as vicious in their language as any exile from a Quentin Tarantino film.

I can't say this was my favorite Hemingway novel (that honor still goes to A Farewell to Arms.) The narrative of For Whom the Bell Tolls feels sloppy at times - we spend the first half of the book concentrated entirely on Robert Jordan and then shift suddenly so Hemingway can give us the perspective of the guerrillas and their enemies. This wouldn't have bothered me if he had done this throughout the novel, but coming in as late in the narrative as it did made it feel to me like the novel itself had shifted its focus. Nonetheless, this remains one of Hemingway's masterworks and deserves its reputation as one of the 20th century's great modern novels.