The action of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls takes place over four days in a mountainous region northwest of Madrid. Robert Jordan, a young American, comes to the camp of a band of Loyalist guerrillas with an assignment from general headquarters to blow up a strategically important bridge. The leader of the group, Pablo, has lost his nerve and is uneasy about the mission. Not so Pablo’s fiery woman, Pilar, who is totally committed to the cause. Pilar is nursing back to health the young Maria, who has been raped and had her head shaved by Nationalist troops. She and Jordan fall in love almost immediately. Jordan’s carefully worked out plan is sabotaged by Pablo, who destroys Jordan’s detonator before deserting the band. Jordan now has to use a hand grenade to set off the explosion, but he successfully carries out the mission, although he is wounded in the process. As the novel ends, he lies alone in a forest, a gun within reach, awaiting the enemy as the rest of the band makes its escape.

A number of flashbacks adds depth and dimension to the main characters, as does the novel’s title, taken from a sermon by John Donne: “No man is an island . . . any man’s death diminishes me. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” The novel’s language, although recognizably in the famous Hemingway style, takes on a more lyrical, even romantic tone compared to his earlier works. In this respect, the style reflects the theme. In place of a stoic acceptance of an “unfair” world, such as one sees in A Farewell to Arms, the author seems to be affirming here the possibilities of meaningful, heroic sacrifice and a common human bond.

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