Tuesday, July 2, 2013

E(rnest)=mc12: My Review of "For Whom the Bell Tolls"





Hemingway and the Relativity of Time

One of the best things about long plane trips with lots of connections and waiting is that you can catch-up on all your reading. I cannot imagine how people fly who do not like to read a good book -- it is the only way to pass the time in these situations.

In my case, the page turner was “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, published in 1940 and a book many consider to be Ernest Hemingway’s finest novel and even the pinnacle of his writing career. Written about an American fighting for “The Republicans” in the Spanish Civil War -- something which EH reported on directly from the front in the late 1930s -- it very well could be his finest novel indeed.

The novel begins with the famous passage by John Donne that gives the book its title, advising us that “no man is an island” and that we are all part of humanity “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

We follow the journey of Robert Jordan, a young American professor and journalist form Montana who loves Spain and its people and has traveled to fight on behalf of the people and “the Republicans” against the fascists who are trying to take over country during the Spanish Civil War, a real event that occurred in the late 1930s and that did not end well for the Republicans.  

At the time, Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco in his bid to turn Spain into a fascist ally, and the Russian communists supported the Republicans as a way to counter Hitler and with hopes of creating a socialist ally themselves.  We know that Franco would win, and that it would remain a totalitarian regime until his death in the 1970s. Most people my age actually know him better from the SNL skit after his death when Chevy Chase would repeat the mantra that he is “still dead” every time he did the “news.”

Of course, we know that Ernest is Robert in many ways. Ernest loved Spain and saw it as the best country in Europe if not the world. He especially loved Madrid and the highland areas of the interior region around Madrid and to the North of Spain.  In “This Spanish Earth” -- a documentary he and Don Passos did after being a war correspondent there (you can catch this whole documentary on You Tube), we know that EH is drawing on many of his own experiences and of people he encountered.

Robert is an expert demolitionist and dynamiter, and at the beginning of the story he is given the orders of blowing a strategically important bridge as part of a great Republican offensive being planned in that area just northwest of Madrid, in the mountainous woodlands. He is introduced to a band of gypsies and guerrillas who live in caves and operate behind enemy lines, frustrating the fascists.  He is to blow the bridge just at the start of the offensive, presumably to keep the fascists from retreating across the bridge and pinning them down with no where to go but to surrender to the Republican forces.

One of the amazing things about Hemingway is that he can take what happens over the next three and half days and turn it into a full length novel of interesting story telling and narrative and dialogue between Pillar, Robert, Maria and the whole ban of guerrillas. Interestly, “Pillar” is also the name of his boat, which was short for his wife Pauline, even though this book is dedicated to his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. It could be a derogatory term in some ways, for Pillar was a matronly older women who is domineering over her husband. At the same time, she is very much a pivotal figure in the book who is very close to Robert.

Robert develops a close love interest with Maria, a young refugee of the war whom Pillar saved from near death and shock after her parents and entire family were brutally murdered and raped by the fascists. She was also a rape victim who had her hair cut-off. She was recovering under the wing of Pillar when Robert meets her.

Robert is in this to do war, and yet the young man and Maria, whom he calls “his rabbitt” fall deeply in love and even “get married” over the three and a half day period leading up to the demolition of the bridge and the Republican offensive.

In the process of this story, EH tells what must be autobiographical details about the suicide of Robert’s Dad, and how he used the Civil War era hand gun that his grandfather had passed down. He writes in great detail about suicide and his views on it, but is certainly not for it at this point in his life. He chastises the Dad for being a coward and selfish for taking his own life. Instead, Robert seems to look up to his grandfather, the great and brave soldier who fought well under Sheridan and out west in the “Indian Wars.”

We also get to read, once again, Hemingway’s many thoughts on war and mankind, and death on the battlefield -- a theme he returns to all of the time in his work. It is clear to me that Ernest Hemingway never quite got over his WW I experience as an ambulance driver and wounded survivor of that war.

However, the most interesting impact to me of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is how EH treats time. He and Maria talk movingly of their “marriage” and how time is relative whether it is over a lifetime of 50 years or compressed into three days. Pillar is a palm reader and she has seen something ominous in the palm of Robert. We wonder what this will mean for the fate of our characters.

So Hemingway once again deals with death, war, tragedy, love and -- in this case -- the relativity of time. He seems to say that all time is limited and that -- to borrow another phrase -- “it is the life in your years not the years in your life” that matters. It is how you live your life...That death comes to us all, but life only comes to those who live it in all its fullness and richness whether over a natural lifetime of 80-90 years or just over three days.

It is clear that Robert understands that they could all be on a suicide mission, and while that meant one thing before Maria, it meant quite something else after he meets her in what may be the sweetest love story of the EH works.

Robert and Maria talk of what life will be like “in Madrid” after the battle, and the war. They speak of how they will always “be one together” and where one is the other is always, and that they can never truly be individuals anymore. That this is the true meaning of marriage. This week, as the Supreme Court basically redefined marriage for the modern era to be broader that the “traditional “view of it, I think it fits interestingly into the broader view provided us by these two characters in “Bell Tolls”.

At the end of the book, Robert learns that the fascists may have been tipped off about “the Republican offensive” and that they are preparing to surprise them at the pass and the bridge. He sends his most trusted advisor to headquarters back across dangerous terrain to tell the General in charge of the offensive. Meanwhile, Robert and his band prepare to blow the bridge when the offensive begins. We are on a race to find out if the offensive will be stopped in time or not.

It is indeed one of his greatest works. His dialogue covers much ground and yet uses only a handful fo characters of a few days in a cave north of Madrid. He manages to get all fo the best of Spain as well as the horror of war into the book. Once again, in ways only EH can accomplish, we are there with Robert, side by side, until the last page.

I write this from Drew’s dorm room early on Saturday morning in Tartu, Estonia. Today we prepare to move out of the dorm, ship his stuff home, and fly to Spain ourselves. I am excited to finally visit this country that Papa has taught me so much about in the last few months. Come join with me as we discover “Hemingway’s Spain” together.

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