For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway about Robert Jordan, an American in the International Brigades attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. The novel follows Robert over four days as he works with the guerrilla group to blow up a bridge during an attack. Though he succeeds in destroying the bridge, Robert is wounded in the process and knows he will not survive. He bids farewell to his lover Maria and prepares for a final ambush, facing his death with dignity. The novel examines themes of death, honor, and Hemingway's archetype of the stoic male hero who confronts danger courageously.

1. “ For Whom the Bell tolls”
Ernest Hemingway

2. maine; if a Clod bee washed
away by the Sea, Europe is the
lesse, as well as if a
Promontoire were, as well as if
a Mannor of thy friends or of
thine owne were; any mans
death diminishes me, because I
am involved in a Mankinde; And
therefore never send to Know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls

3. About the Autor
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899 and began his
writing career as a reporter with “The Kansas City Star” in 1917.
He partecipated to the First World War as a volunteer with an ambulance
unit on the Italian front ; in 1973 Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover
the Civil War there for the North America Newspaper Alliance and three
years later he completed his great novel “ For Whom The Bell Tolls”.
During the Second World War he was a war corrispondent in Europe and
in his last year he lived in Cuba where he wrote his masterpiece “ The
Old Man And The Sea” . In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize and
he died shooting himself in 1961.

4. Background
The novel is based on his
experiences during the Spanish
Civil War, with an American
protagonist named Robert Jordan
who fights with Spanish soldiers
for the Republicans. Set in the
“Sierra de Guadamarra” mountain
range between Madrid and
Segovia, the action takes place
during four days and three nights.
The story graphically describes
the brutality of the Civil War.

5. Plot
However, when another band of antifascist guerrillas
led by El Sordo are surrounded and killed, Pablo
decides to betray Jordan by stealing the dynamite caps,
hoping to prevent the demolition. In the end Jordan
improvises a way to detonate his dynamite, and Pablo
returns to assist in the operation after seeing Jordan's
commitment to his course of action. Though the bridge
is successfully destroyed, Jordan is maimed when his
horse is shot out from under him by a tank. Knowing
that he would only slow his comrades down, he bids
goodbye to María and ensures that she escapes to safety
with the surviving members of the guerillas. He refuses
an offer from another fighter to be shot and lies in
agony, hoping to kill an enemy officer and a few soldiers
before being captured and executed. The narration
ends right before Jordan launches his ambush.
Robert Jordan is an American in the International
Brigades who travels to Spain to oppose the fascist forces
of Francisco Franco. As an experienced dynamiter, he was
ordered by a communist Russian general to travel behind
enemy lines and destroy a bridge, with the aid of a band
of local antifascist guerrillas. In their camp, Robert
Jordan meets María, a young Spanish woman whose life
had been shattered by the execution of her parents and
her rape by the Falangists (part of the fascist coalition) at
the outbreak of the war. His strong sense of duty clashes
with both guerrilla leader Pablo's unwillingness to
commit to an operation that would endanger himself and
his band, and his new found love to life arises out of his
love for María.

6. The Characters
The novel has three types of characters: those who are purely
fictional; those based on real people but fictionalized; and those
who were actual figures in the war.
Robert Jordan – American university instructor of Spanish
language and a specialist in demolitions and explosives.
Anselmo - Elderly guide to Robert Jordan.
Golz - Commander who ordered the bridge's demolition.
Pablo - Leader of a group of anti-fascist guerrillas.
Rafael – Incompetent and lazy but well-intentioned guerrilla,
and a gypsy.
María – Robert Jordan's young lover.
Pilar – Wife of Pablo. An aged but strong woman, she is the
leader of the guerrilla band.
Agustín – Foul-mouthed, middle-aged guerrilla.
El Sordo – Leader of a fellow band of guerrillas.

7. Hemingway’s Hero
E v e n i f h e
c a n n o t o v e r c o m e
t h e f o r c e s h e
f i g h t s w i t h , h e
a l w a y s f a c e s
d e a t h a n d
d a n g e r o u s w i t h
d i g n i t y ,
p r o v i d i n g a n
e x a m p l e o f h o w
“H e m i n g w a y ’s h e r o ” i s f i r s t o f a l l
m o d e l l e d c l o s e l y u p o n t h e a u t h o r
h i m s e l f . H e i s a n o u t d o o r s m a n b u t
h e i s n o t a y o k e l : h e i s s t r i c t l y
s e n s i t i v e t o t h e r e a l i t y o f t h e
w o r l d h e l i v e s i n a n d t h e
s u f f e r i n g i t i n f l i c t s .
H e i s h o n o u r a b l e a n d b r a v e a n d h e
w i s h e s h e w e r e a b l e t o d o t h e b e s t
i n a n y s i t u a t i o n s .

8. Themes
Death is a primary preoccupation of the novel. When
Robert Jordan is assigned to blow up the bridge, he
knows that he will not survive it.
Pablo and El Sordo, leaders of the Republican
guerrilla bands, see that inevitability also.
Suicide always looms as an alternative to suffering.
Many of the characters, including Robert Jordan,
would prefer death over capture and are prepared to
kill themselves, be killed, or kill to avoid it. As the book
ends, Robert Jordan, wounded and unable to travel
with his companions, waits a final ambush that will end
his life. He prepares himself against the cruel
outcomes of suicide to avoid capture, or inevitable
torture for the extraction of information and death at

9. Hemingway and Suicide
From boyhood on, Hemingway was fascinated by death and
particularly by suicide : five of his seven completed novels end
with the death of a male protagonist, a sixth ends with the death
of the heroine. His preoccupation with suicide was brought to him
during 1920 when he began to suffer from attacks of depression.
The suicide of his father left a mark to him but he always
identified the loss of money and the bad relationship with women
as the most important causes of his suicide.

10. Narrative Style
The book is written in the third person limited omniscient narrative mode.
The action and dialogue are punctuated by extensive thought sequences told
from the viewpoint of Robert Jordan. The novel also contains thought
sequences of other characters, including Pilar and Anselmo.
Hemingway frequently used images to produce the dense atmosphere of
violence and death his books are renowned for; the main image of For Whom
the Bell Tolls is the automatic weapon. As he had done in "A Farewell to
Arms", Hemingway employs the fear of modern armament to destroy
romantic conceptions of the ancient art of war: combat, sportsman like
competition and the aspect of hunting. Heroism becomes butchery: the most
powerful picture employed here is the shooting of María's parents against
the wall of a slaughterhouse. The novel also contains imagery of soil and
earth, most famously when Jordan was on intimate with María and feels "the
earth move out and away from under them" then afterwards asks María,
"Did thee feel the earth move?“.

11. Curiosities …
 A film adaptation of
Hemingway's novel,
directed by Sam Wood ,
was released in 1943
starring Gary Cooper
and Ingrid Bergman . It
was nominated for
nine Academy Awards ,
including Best Picture
,Best Actor and Best
Actress ; however, only
the Greek
actress Katina Paxinou

12. The End