Review For Whom The Bell Tolls By Ernest Hemingway

“Even if this war is over, I should go home. But It’s not home now. Let’s end this war first. After that, we’ll consider going home.”

Content Summary

In this review, you will witness the life story of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway and For Whom The Bell Tolls Let’s review the novel.

Who is Ernest Hemingway?

The son of a doctor father and a musician mother, Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899. When the first great world war broke out in Europe during his high school years, Hemingway went to the newspaper as soon as he finished high school. He started out as a reporter. He actually wanted to join the army, but he could not join the army due to eye problems.

As soon as he heard that the Red Cross was looking for volunteers for the army, when he was a reporter, he saw that he complied with the conditions, he resigned from the reporter and joined the army voluntarily in 1918. He started to work in war zones as an ambulance driver. While trying to save two soldiers, he witnessed the loss of one leg and the death of the other due to the explosion of the ball nearby, and he himself was seriously injured.

He fell in love with the nurse at the hospital he went to for treatment. She was going to marry this nurse when the war was over, but he was abandoned, which became the subject of the novel Farewell to Arms.

Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway with their children (source).

Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway with their children (source).

Returning to the United States in 1921, he married Hadley Richardson and began working as a war correspondent again war reporter. It was even sent to Istanbul by the newspaper he worked for in those years. However, his years abroad came to an end in 1923 when a son was born to Hadley Richardson, and he returned to America to publish Three Stories and 10 Poems.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

With the publication of her first novel, The Sun Also Rises, he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism to divorce Hadley Richardson and marry Pauline Pfeiffer. Two more sons were born to Pauline Pfeiffer in 1931. That same year, Hemingway’s father committed suicide.

A photograph of Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer.

A photograph of Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer.

Hemingway, who wanted to leave Pauline Pfeiffer in 1939, settled in a hotel in Cuba and met with Martha Gelhorn. He married Martha after divorcing Pauline. While living with Martha on the farm they bought near Havana, in 1940 his immortal work For Whom the Bell Tolls? published his novel.

A photograph of Hemingway's farmhouse in Cuba (source).

A photograph of Hemingway’s farmhouse in Cuba (source).

Hemingway, who worked in Europe as a war correspondent again in 1944, was awarded with a medal of bravery at the American Embassy in Cuba after the Second World War, thanks to this job by the American Army.

However, when the properties of the Americans started to be nationalized with the change of administration in Cuba, he definitely returned to America and committed suicide by shooting himself when the electro-shock therapy, which was common in those years, did not work.

Hemigway, who has experienced many actions in many places, including safari in Africa, and has always worked closely with many wars such as the Spanish civil war, left this world thinking that he lived a good life as we understand from his statements and novels.

Summary Of The For Whom The Bell Tolls

The story that begins with a professor named Robert Jordan participating in the Spanish Civil War and acting with the republicans while teaching Spanish in America continues with Robert Jordan being tasked with blowing up a bridge.

Robert Jordan has to get support from local resistance organizations to fulfill this mission. Here he meets Pablo and his team and decides to fulfill his mission. In the short time he spent with Pablo’s team, Robert Jordan, who re-weighed all the truths he had known until that day, and often thought about the value of life and what war is, will meet the feeling called love for the first time and comprehend what human means.

The novel moves forward with plans to blow up the bridge and human relations that grow rapidly during the changing war. What happened when the moment to blow up the bridge came is revealed in a fast and shocking narrative from every aspect.

Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway and General Yu Hamou, working as journalists (source).

Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway and General Yu Hamou, working as journalists (source).

The Topic Of For Whom The Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is about the tragic Spanish civil war. In this war between the fascists and the Republicans, the main character is on the side of the republicans.

Ernest Hemingway at his desk.

Ernest Hemingway at his desk.

As you know, the Spanish civil war was a brutal civil war in which both sides were very cruel to each other and massacres were committed that no Spaniard would want to remember. Hemingway, who has always been close to the battlefields throughout his life, preferred to describe emotions such as death, life and love in the witnessing of this war. Therefore, the war surrounded the whole novel like a living being beyond being a decoration.

For Whom The Bell Tolls Quotes

There are two types of narrative. One of them is full of impressive aphorisms that we have underlined, and the other is a narrative that is so striking, that we do not encounter an aphorism that can’t be removed from the text, but that describes the reality of life in a concrete way. Literary narrative is, of course, closer to this second type of narrative. In that respect, the quotations I have chosen from the book are beyond being aphorisms, they are the quotations I have drawn from concrete situations related to events that have been told in a plain style.

Robert Jordan says, “Maybe it’s always like that; he is a man of languid anxiety,” he thought. But all the good guys are cheerful. Being cheerful was a good thing, and it could be considered a sign of being good. It was as if the cheerful person had become immortal while he was alive. – Page 16

Hemingway also explains that comfortable lives can turn upside down in an instant. And while you haven’t done anything, you haven’t committed any crime, sitting in your chair and watching the sun creep into your garden from the pine tree… Out of nowhere, war may break out between the two countries and your garden may be trampled on with boots. According to Hemingway, it should be known that:

There is no one in this world who will not be harmed by disaster. – Page 39

However, Hemingway says that one should not give up believing in himself and living for his values, even if a disaster befalls you, your handling of it should be brave, humane and worthy.

Because they are all crimes, no one has the right to take someone else’s life, unless it is to prevent something worse that will happen to other people. In short, get all this in your head and don’t lie to yourself. – Page 241

Or Robert Jordan, thinking about what he saw during the war, says:

I have the right not to keep notes and to forget. No, he said himself. “You have no right to forget anything. You don’t have the right to close your eyes to anything, nor forget it, nor soften it, nor change it. – Page 241

General Evaluatıon Of The For Whom The Bell Tolls Novel

The most important feature of Hemingway, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner for literature, is that he can tell great and important events in a simple and striking way. For Whom The Bell Tolls The novel is also a magnificent example of a shocking subject, written in a simple style.

Hemingway attributes this writing skill to what he learned during his journalism years. Journalism enabled him to produce without any writing block.

For Whom the Bell Tolls Book Cover

For Whom the Bell Tolls Book Cover

For Whom The Bell Tolls, It is a work that tells that one must make the real revolution within himself, and that emphasizes the importance of being on the side of the good by being on the side of the good, or of being on the side of the good knowing that he will die.

The episode in which Hemingway experienced death and conveyed his feelings with the first person narrator, especially used by Hemingway, was also one of the most striking parts of the novel that could not be overlooked for a long time.

The Books of Hemingway

Hemingway, who mostly worked as a journalist, has published many works that are notable. These

  • In Our Time
  • The Sun Also Rises
  • A Farewell to Arms
  • To Have and Have Not
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls
  • The Old Man and the Sea

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway

https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/ernest-hemingway-books

Review For Whom The Bell Tolls
  • Story
  • Fiction
  • Wording
  • Atmosphere
4.9

Briefly My Opinion

An amazing narrative about the value of life, death, war and love in the simplest way ever.

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