The
Summary of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), during his duty, was hit by an
Austrian mortar in Italy and had to live in a Red-Cross hospital in Milan. He fell in love with Agnes, who appears as
the heroine in some Hemingway’s novels.
Then he decided to help the Republican in the Spanish Civil War in
1937. He settled in Cuba and bought a
small estate. He won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1954 for his novel “The Old Man and the Sea”. He committed suicide in 1961.
‘For Whom the Bell
Toll’ was published in 1940. When
the Civil War broke out in Spain many intellectuals lent their support to the
cause of the Spanish Republican Government.
Hemingway also volunteered. This
background of the Spanish Civil War is the locale of the novel.
Robert Jordan, an American has joined the loyalist army
during the Civil War, and he was asked to join the guerrilla bard in the
mountain, near Segovia to blow up the strategic bridges. He arrives at a cave, where the rebels are
hiding, he finds them disorganized, and not keen to fight, as they have found a
safe place, and the blowing of the bridge would jeopardise their security. Jordan finds two characters for support,
Pilar, the gypsy woman, and Anselmo, Pilar’s husband Pablo was a leader of the
Republican.
Then in the cave, he found Maria and fell in love with
her. She is the daughter of the
Republican Mayor, saw her parents killed and was raped by the Fascists. Her close-cropped head is the symbol of her
tortures. She was rescued by the Band;
her physical injuries were healed; but psychic would still torment her. Pilar sends Maria to Jordan’s sleeping bag
and their love-making heals her wounds.
Their intensity of love is unique because of mystic quality.
A fascist soldier comes and is shot dead by Jordan. Pablo removes detonators from Jordan’s sack,
and throws them away in the stream. However, Jordan succeeds in blowing the
bridge, the army arrives and shoot at retreating guerrillas, Jordan’s horse is
hit, he sustains a fractured thigh-bone.
Maria has become a symbol of Spain for Jordan. Despite her entreaties to run away, Jordan
declines to go with the guerrillas. In
the end, Jordan s found lying on a slope with his machine-gun aimed
at the Fascist leader. Maria and the
guerrilla band went away.
END
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