For Whom the Bell Tolls (Themes)

Themes

Love in War

        For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway examines the role of love and relationships in a time of crisis. The two main relationships described—between Jordan and Maria, and Pilar and Pablo—differ dramatically: Jordan and Maria’s love is pure and all-consuming, while Pilar and Pablo argue frequently, with Pilar often threatening to kill Pablo and take over his position in the guerilla squad. Nonetheless, love is omnipresent in the midst of the chaos of civil war, with both positive and negative consequences for those who choose to love. Jordan (the only one of the main characters in the novel with the last name given) has never experienced love before he meets Maria, and his relationship with her affirms the value of trust and compassion between individuals, while Pilar’s relationship with Pablo reveals the extent to which love cannot cure hopelessness and fear in the face of war and impending disaster.

        Maria serves as a symbol of hope, renewal, and tenderness, tending to Jordan and demonstrating the healing power of devotion. Though she is part of the guerilla fighters, Maria is barely involved in any of the strategizing or political discussions. Whereas Pilar is the clear leader of the group, fiercely devoted to the cause of liberation from Fascist command, Maria’s role is domestic, focused on assisting the fighters behind the scenes. This sense of helpfulness and docility extends into her relationship with Jordan, whom she views as her redeemer, capable of restoring her after her experience of rape at the hands of Falangists (Spanish fascist nationalists): “if I am to be thy woman I should please thee in all ways,” Maria tells Jordan, promising herself to him.

        Jordan and Maria’s relationship often seems somewhat one-sided, since Jordan is more pragmatic about love and relationships with other individuals. He tells himself that he has “no responsibility for them”—meaning Maria, Pilar, Pablo, and the other guerillas—“except in action,” yet he also realizes that love has added value to his life and eased his suffering: “but when I am with Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and I never believed in that nor thought that it could happen […] Maria made things easier.” Jordan also acknowledges that the time he and Maria have together is limited, given the danger he faces, and he reflects that they have “two nights to love, honor and cherish. […] Till death do us part. In two nights. Much more than likely.” Most people, Jordan appreciates, “are not lucky enough to have” love, and he feels fortunate to have experienced it; he is contented to imagine a life with Maria in Madrid, after the war, although he knows that this is only a distant possibility.

        Ultimately, Jordan is injured in the final ambush at the bridge, leaving Maria to flee the fascist attackers, though he tells her that even in death, they are united: “there is no good-by, guapa [beautiful], because we are not apart […] I am with thee now. We are both there. Go!” Jordan’s love for Maria and his desire to see her led to safety, lends him strength as he faces death, since while he cannot do anything for himself, he “can do something for another.”

        On the other hand, Pablo and Pilar’s relationship—though also developed during the war—does not prove to strengthen or encourage for either of the fighters. Unlike Maria with Robert Jordan, Pilar cannot control Pablo, soothe his hopelessness, or embolden him. From the beginning, Pilar and Pablo’s relationship is strained by their differing views on the value of destroying a bridge in the mountains outside of Madrid, where the guerillas have been fighting, to cut off access to the area for the Francoist fascist forces. When Pilar announces that she is “for the Republic,” and thus supports Jordan’s plan to detonate the bridge, Pablo calls her foolhardy, with a “head of a seed bull and a heart of a whore”: this debate continues to strain their relationship and makes the guerillas lose faith in Pablo as a leader as he becomes increasingly erratic and fearful.

        Pablo eventually betrays the guerillas by stealing the detonation equipment necessary to destroy the bridge, despite Pilar’s attempts to regain control of the group and prevent her husband from sabotaging their plot. Though Pilar is a stabilizing, maternal force in the novel, encouraging Robert Jordan and the other guerillas to continue agitating for the Republic and constantly working to organize the group, her relationship with Pablo proves to be her weakness: Pilar is unable to manipulate Pablo into acting in the best interests of the group.

        Faced with Pablo’s brash, impulsive behavior, “the woman of Pablo could feel her rage changing to sorrow and to a feeling of the thwarting of all hope and promise.” It is implied that Pilar and Pablo were once deeply connected by their belief in the Republic, but Pablo no longer feels the confidence that Pilar does. Though Pilar tells Robert Jordan about Pablo’s heroic (though entirely brutal and violent) defeat of the fascists in his hometown, the Pablo she now knows is defeated, disillusioned, and, in her opinion, “cowardly,” lacking all hope for victory. The remaining love she ostensibly shares for him—since their marriage endures, despite rising tensions—is not enough to restore his courage.

        Whereas Maria and Robert Jordan’s relationship provides both characters with a sense of security and emotional support, even when death is imminent, Pablo and Pilar’s partnership is only one in the name. Despite Pilar’s strength of character, neither she nor Pablo is able to support each other in the way that Maria and Robert Jordan are. The novel thus provides an ambivalent view of love, suggesting that intimate relationships are not always redeeming or positive; Maria and Robert Jordan’s relationship may merely be an outlier. However, though Pablo survives the war and Jordan does not, Jordan dies with the knowledge that he has experienced the emboldening effects of life-altering love, while Pablo must own up to his own moral failings.

Cultural Connections

        For Whom the Bell Tolls is a distinctive work in part because Hemingway attempts to translate Spanish idioms and grammar directly, without removing their original contexts. The result is a novel that is acutely attuned to cultural differences. Instead of assimilating Spanish culture into a wholly American writing style, Hemingway combines the two, helping to express Spanish to an English-speaking audience. Similarly, Robert Jordan’s own experiences as American fighting for the anti-fascist Spaniards reveal more resemblances between the two cultures than differences. The United States, Jordan discloses, is no less corrupt than Spain, and Jordan’s own allegiance toward the anti-fascists demonstrates the extent to which cultural differences can be transcended. Though Jordan initially believes that he cannot understand the Spanish people, whom he views as profoundly two-sided—caught between extreme “kindness” and extreme “cruelty”—he finds himself overcoming this conviction to form intense bonds with his fellow fighters, confirming the importance of connection and empathy across cultures.

        For Whom the Bell Tolls takes up the project of cross-cultural linguistics, attempting to depict the Spanish language in an American style without fully “Americanizing” its facets. Some dialogue in the novel reads as archaic or outdated, since Hemingway attempts to express the difference between formal and familiar addresses in Spanish, using “thou” and “thee” to represent “usted,” and “you” to represent “tú.” Hemingway’s translations are not always seamless or modern in feel, allowing the English-speaking reader to “hear” the linguistic differences between English and Spanish. For example, the somewhat awkward, unfamiliar phrase “I obscenity in the milk” recurs throughout the novel, a direct (though partially censored) translation of the Spanish curse me cago en la leche. Thus, English and Spanish are marked as distinct but uniquely intertwined, allowing for cross-cultural exchange at the level of language.

        The novel also explores the impact of cross-cultural dynamics on its American protagonist and Spanish characters, drawing parallels between the political situations of both the United States and Spain, and developing Robert Jordan’s attachment to Spain throughout the novel. Robert Jordan wonders “what sort of guerrilla leader” Pablo “would have been in the American Civil War,” comparing his own knowledge of American warfare—imparted on him by his grandfather, a veteran of the American Civil War—with his impressions of the Spanish Civil War. American and Spanish violence, he realizes, are not so different. Prompted by Pilar’s story of Pablo’s massacre on the fascists in his hometown, Jordan reveals that he once witnessed a lynching in Ohio, incited by the same kind of drunkenness and mob behavior that took shape in Pablo’s town: “I have had experiences which demonstrate that drunkenness is the same in my country. It is ugly and brutal.” Furthermore, Agustin, another guerrilla fighter, asks Jordan about taxes and land ownership in the United States, arguing that “the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes […] they will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here,” and suggesting that the United States, like Spain, will soon confront fascism, given their shared problems.

        At first, Jordan believes that there are few connections to be made between Spanish and American culture, despite his own immersion in Spanish culture and his former position as a Spanish teacher in the United States. Jordan declares that “there are no other countries like Spain,” and that “there are no finer and no worse people in the world” than the Spaniards, explaining that he does not understand them, because if he did, he “would forgive it all,” and he finds it difficult to forgive their brutality. Yet he also never feels “like a foreigner” in Spain, since the Spaniards trust his command of the language and his knowledge of different regions.

        Ultimately, Jordan sacrifices himself for the safety of his fellow guerrillas, allowing them to escape to safety and devoting himself to the cause of the Republic: “he fought now in this war because it had started in a country that he loved and he believed in the Republic and that if it were destroyed life would be unbearable for all those people who believed in it.” In becoming a martyr, Jordan demonstrates his own understanding of and connection to the Spanish people, and he declares that “I have been all my life in these hills since I have been here. Anselmo is my oldest friend […] Agustin, with his vile mouth, is my brother, and I never had a brother. Maria is my true love and wife.” Though many of Hemingway’s novels and writings are set away from the United States—such as A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises—they usually feature a globalist perspective, drawing comparisons between an American home and a European setting. Cultural differences are likewise emphasized in For Whom the Bell Tolls, but these differences do not preclude the possibility of a cultural connection or mutual understanding. Robert Jordan is familiar with and sensitive to his adopted country, and by the end of the novel, he has reached a level of profound empathy and acceptance, transcending his American roots and living up to the novel’s epigraph, “No Man is an Iland [Island].”

Violence, Cowardice, and Death

        Though the novel is rife with images of murder and destruction, the characters who commit or witness these gruesome acts are highly conflicted about the necessity of killing and the value of brutality in human life. The guerillas Pablo, Robert Jordan, El Sordo, and Anselmo express concern about killing fascists and fear about facing death themselves. Even as the novel seems to uphold a monolithic view of courage, often portraying Robert Jordan as a capable, single-minded fighter destined for martyrdom, this image is undermined by Jordan’s own struggle with motivation and disillusionment as he attempts to understand his place in the war and his perspective on violence, death, sacrifice, and suffering.

        Anselmo, Robert Jordan’s guide, is a “very good man” who wonders about the “problem of the killing,” becoming a source of morality and righteousness in the novel: “I think that after the war there should be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living.” Anselmo tells Robert Jordan that he has killed several times, “but not with pleasure,” since he feels that “it is a sin to kill a man,” demonstrating a kind of religious conviction that the fascists—though heavily Catholic—do not share, given their belief in authoritarianism and oppression. While Pablo, El Sordo, and Robert Jordan face the task of killing fascists with less guilt than Anselmo, they still feel ambivalent about their role in perpetuating violence. On one hand, violence is necessary to match the force exerted by the fascists; nonetheless, the guerillas believe themselves to be supporting a moral cause, the cause of the Republic and thus find it difficult to reconcile morality and violence.

        Feeling guilty about his own participation in killing fascists, Jordan orders himself to “admit that you have liked to kill as all who are soldiers by choice have enjoyed it at some time whether they lie about it or not.” Though he approaches his tasks as a volunteer soldier with steely, grim determination, he also tells himself not to “believe in killing,” regarding it instead as a terrible “necessity” (thus, he refuses to keep track of the number of men he has killed): “but to shoot a man gives a feeling as though one had struck one’s own brother when you are grown, men.”

        Moreover, Jordan’s own equivocations throughout the novel, presented in the form of disjointed inner monologues, demonstrate his vacillation between fear and impassivity. He tells himself that he knows “death was nothing,” and that he must stay focused on his work, believing that “harm to one’s self” can be ignored, and that “if I die on this morning now it is all right.” Yet these attempts at self-reassurance simultaneously demonstrate his severe apprehension about death, which is especially heightened because of his own repressed grief about his father’s suicide: Jordan is forced to command himself to act brave and stoic.

        Additionally, though El Sordo is “not at all afraid of dying,” he “hates” his fate, since death represents “nothing,” while living is a “hawk in the sky […] an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing”—that is, tangible and understandable. Like Robert Jordan, El Sordo grapples with the notion of his own inevitable demise, finding a degree of peace but continuing to wonder about the nature of death.

        Pablo presents the most clear-cut example of a fighter disillusioned with violence and killing, since he openly admits that he has become disenchanted with the Republican cause, explaining that the day he murdered the fascists living in his hometown—an act heralded by Pilar as his most courageous—was the “worst day” of his life until the fascists took back the town three days later. Pilar declares that the “depriving of life” is “a thing of ugliness but also a necessity to do if we are to win, and to preserve the Republic,” but Pablo feels that further destruction is useless, given the fascists’ strength—and that violence will only create more danger and suffering for the anti-fascists.

        Though Jordan and El Sordo die as martyrs, while Pablo is branded a coward for his desertion of the guerillas, the novel refuses to condemn Pablo for failing to live up to the examples set by Jordan and El Sordo. All three men are deeply concerned with death and killing, and all are intent on surviving in some way or easing the pain of death. Though El Sordo and Jordan face death with less fear than Pablo, who wishes desperately to return to an enjoyable, peaceful life, they are no less worried about the end of their lives than Pablo: both El Sordo and Jordan search for images of life to give them solace in the face of death (for El Sordo, the mountain landscape, and for Jordan, his love of Maria). Ultimately, Jordan confronts death peacefully, content with the life he has led and no longer concerned about his own “cowardice,” or his own inability to remain stoic in the midst of destruction and chaos. Using Jordan, El Sordo, Pablo, and Anselmo as examples, Hemingway argues that even emboldened fighters are not immune to the difficulty of maintaining courage, committing acts of violence, and facing certain death.

The Eternality of the Present

        Although the antagonizing fascists are a central topic of discussion in the novel, it is not until its end that Pablo, Pilar, and Robert Jordan’s guerilla group encounter the fascists themselves. It is immediately clear that the Republican fighters are outmatched: the novel ends with Robert Jordan confronting death and planning an act of sacrifice. The idea of the future plays a major role throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls, since Pilar predicts Robert Jordan’s death at the beginning of the novel, and both Jordan and Pablo seem to foresee a tragic end for the Republic. Despite these predictions, however, the novel is concerned mainly with the narrative present—the last days of the Republic. As Robert Jordan says, “there is only now […] now is the thing to praise,” suggesting the fundamental importance of living in and for the present, regardless of negative omens for the future.

        It is suggested that the anti-fascists’ mission is doomed from the beginning, since the guerillas are disorganized and prone to disagreement, while the fascists are highly militarized and command a great deal of societal power; many of the guerillas are civilians forced to become combatants to restore the Republic. Nonetheless, instead of concentrating solely on the threat of fascism, the novel concerns itself with the precise details of the anti-fascists’ work for the Republic, giving credence to their beliefs and struggle for power. Hemingway creates a feeling of urgency and immediacy: the novel begins in medias res, plunging readers into the action and allowing for a charged narrative present. The past—meaning Jordan and the other guerillas’ backgrounds—occasionally factors into the plot, but Hemingway’s focus remains on tensions building in the present.

        As the fascists close in on the guerillas, Robert Jordan’s thoughts turn to timelessness and the eternality of the present, which helps to sustain him in the face of disaster. “This was what had been and now and whatever was to come. This, that they were not to have, they were having. They were having now and before and always and now and now and now. Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet”: Hemingway’s repetitive, ode-like incantation of “now” emphasizes the importance of living in the present, since every moment lived is a moment that the guerillas “were not to have,” given the likelihood of sudden death. Jordan wishes that he “were going to live a long time instead of going to die today” because he has “learned much about life in these four days”—more “in all the other time” of his life. Thus, the four days that the novel covers become the whole of Jordan’s life, especially since little information is given about Jordan’s life outside of his experiences with the guerillas.

        Throughout the four days of the novel, Jordan develops substantially, as one might develop over a lifetime, learning to form bonds with his fellow fighters and coming to understand the meaning of love. “A good life is not measured by any biblical span,” Jordan reflects: “that is all your whole life is; now.” On one hand, Hemingway’s compression of time reflects the collapse of civilization: the normal boundaries between past, present, and future have been disrupted, resulting in an eternal (yet simultaneously fleeting) present, consistent with the sense of disaster and disruption civil war creates. At the same time, however, by focusing on Robert Jordan’s allegiance to the “now” and his marked development within a short period of time, Hemingway uses the idea of the present to affirm the notion that there is no fixed standard for a “good life.” Even lives that occur outside of the norm—such as Robert Jordan’s—have value.

        Thus, For Whom the Bell Tolls can be read not only as a war novel, concerned with the pathos of tragedy and dedicated to exposing the ugliness of war, but also as a highly optimistic work focused on the value of living in the moment. If fascism, the future, entails rigidity and obedience, Robert Jordan’s brief life in the narrative present is filled with moments of joy, hope, and relief.

Courtesy: www.litcharts.com