For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | Heminway is a GOD !

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For Whom the Bell ...

	For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway Scribner, 1995 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 269 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

This book should be a "must read" for everyone. It is one of the top twenty-five books of modern times.

Heminway is a GOD !

Hemingway is the best American author ever. He says more in fewer words than anyone else. His descriptions are so vivid and concrete and his stories are moving. Simply unrivaled.

A Must-Read

This tackles several questions: How war shapes men, past and present and what a real hero is.

Set in the Spanish Civil War, the story revolves around the experiences of a volunteer fighter, an American college professor named Robert Jordan. Filled with idealism at first, watch him reconsider as he faces the prospect of his own death.

One of Hemingway's finest.

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The best of Hemingway

Filled with complex and interesting characters and written in Hemingway's characteristically simple, but effective style, For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway at his best. There are few novels I would recommend more highly.

Hemingway's fascinating characters, from the American, Robert Jordan, to Pablo and Pilar, often referred to "the woman of Pablo" (if there can be one criticism of Hemingway, it is that his female characters are often simple; however, this is not true of Pilar), make this novel so wonderful, along with Hemingway's vivid descriptions of everything from the characters themselves to the horrors of war (one scene that comes to mind particularly is Hemingway's description of the execution of a group of fascists, who are beaten to death before being hurled from a cliff).

Although it is not a tale for the faint-hearted (forgive the cliche), For Whom the Bell Tolls is arguably Hemingway's greatest work. Anyone who enjoys Hemingway, McCarthy, or Faulkner should enjoy this novel.

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Stylistically superb but lacking in action and thin on the background of the Spanish Civil War

I began reading For Whom The Bell Tolls directly after finishing a particularly bad modern novel. At first, For Whom... was a breath of fresh air: no long, run-on sentences; no excessive adverbs in the dialog tags; not a whole lot of meaningless adjectives, etc. The dialog was crisp and terse and enjoyable, and the setting was captivating.

But then... nothing happens. For a really long time. And all of the flashbacks via thought and story start to get confusing. At times, I wasn't sure if the story was in the present or past; in the thoughts of the protagonist or the speech of another character. And speaking of characters, four of them are strong and compelling: Robert Jordan (the protagonist), Maria (his love interest), Pilar (a tough old woman), and Pablo (a once-great but now tarnished soldier). A fifth character of note is the Gypsy, but the other characters in this ensemble cast are largely indistinguishable from one another.

One more criticism: I was really hoping to get a better understanding of the Spanish Civil War and its politics. Maybe I did. But Robert Jordan and his cadre are not hardline Communists nor anarchists (they have special contempt for the latter) but "republicans" in their fight against the Fascists. Not a lot of background is given as to the roots of this conflict or the underlying motivations of each camp.

Overall, I feel I have been enriched by reading this book, and I like Hemingway's writing style (this is my first Hemingway since reading The Old Man and the Sea in 9th grade), but all in all, I understand why this has been called one of the "10 Books Not to Read in your Lifetime." Also: Did I have an edited version? What was with all of this "I 'obscenity' in your milk," etc.?

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