For Whom the Bell Tolls

Prompt: The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings. “The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from their readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events — a marriage or a last minute rescue from death — but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death.” Choose a novel or play that has the kind of ending Weldon describes. in a well-written essay, identify the “spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation” evident in the ending and explain its significance in the work as a whole.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In this novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, the author provides a happy ending for everyone’s pleasure. Ernest Hemingway wrote the story to a fate that allowed Robert Jordan, the main character, to have a spiritual reassessment in the closing stages of the novel.

In the end of the story, Robert Jordan is riding a horse who receives a bullet with ill intentions. The horse collapses, and in the storm of events, Robert Jordan’s leg is broken.  The group he is stationed cannot be held back. With their best interests at mind, Jordan, as well as the rest of the crew, acknowledges he must be left behind. So, he says goodbye to his recently discovered lover, Maria, and stays behind. He’s sitting on the ground, and feels the nature around him. He feels the ground and the trees, the pine needles. He knows he can survive long enough to kill the opposition as they cross the hill to allow his guerilla warfare team to gain a little ground in the chase of their lives.

This guerilla warfare team is a crew of soldiers who fight for the Communist regime and their mission was to destroy a bridge. Experiencing tension and difficulties in the process, their mission was accomplished and it was time to escape.

Now, at the beginning of the novel, a quote in the epigraph set up a theme for the rest of the story. The quote said: “No man is an island, entire of itself.” This powerful quote was followed by the thought of church bells ringing upon the death of man. Basically, it was saying that the church bells should toll for all men, not just those of imaginary importance over others. All men are equal. Anyway, in the final scenes of the novel as Jordan has a spiritual epiphany that he is one with the land and the people, he feels whole. He feels attached to the others and as a final gift to his fellow partners of humanity; he protects them with a final assault on the enemy as they reach the hill. Jordan is no longer an island, he has become spiritually apart of everyone else and everything else.

In the end, even though he lays to his death, Jordan experiences self-discovery that gives everyone a strong sense of joy. It was a happy ending that gives everyone who experienced the novel something to ponder. For whom does the bell toll?

 

Book2Media Post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg92QpjRcJk

This is a link to a youtube song called, appropriately so to this blog, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Please listen to the lyrics, this song is powerful and features my favorite band performing at the tender age of about 18. Listen to this melodic translation of Hemingway’s novel and be enlightened 🙂

Tagline

—“No man is an island, entire of itself”—

Blog Post 5

“He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind.”

This passage from the last chapter of the novel describes Robert Jordan at the moment when, wounded and alone, he realizes that he will be able to stay alive long enough to ambush the approaching Fascist cavalry, thereby buying the guerrilleros some time to escape. Also, the “looked up at the sky” is almost directly quoted in the For Whom the Bell Tolls song performed by Metallica where a line goes “look up to the sky just before you die, it’s the last time you will”

Blog Post 4

“Pasionaria says ‘Better to die on thy—’” Joaquín was saying to himself as the drone came nearer them. Then he shifted suddenly into “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. . . .”

This excerpt comes from Chapter Twenty-seven, El Sordo’s last stand on his hill. The Republican government outlawed religion when it came to power six years earlier, and the teenage Joaquín came of age under its propaganda. He clings to Republican rhetoric throughout the attack on the hill, despite the laughter of his older and more cynical comrades.

Blog Post 3

“We do it coldly but they do not, nor ever have. It is their extra sacrament. . . . They are the people of the Auto de Fé; the act of faith. Killing is something one must do, but ours are different from theirs.”

After the guerrilleros hide from four passing Fascist cavalrymen in Chapter Twenty-three, Agustín reveals that the anxiety he experienced was caused not only by fear, but also by a thirst for the kill. Robert Jordan ends by forcing himself to face up to the fact that he, too, has felt the urge and excitement of killing.

Blog Post 2

“. . . . You felt that you were taking part in a crusade. . . . It would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as a religious experience and yet it was authentic. . . . It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it.”

This passage, from Chapter Eighteen, is an interior monologue in which Robert Jordan describes his earlier idealism about the war, which the realities of warfare have long since crushed.Although Robert Jordan is jaded and cynical at the start of the novel, he comes to realize both his goals—his desire for something to believe in wholly and his desire for communion—by the end of the novel.

Blog Post 1

“For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere . . .”

This quotation from Chapter Thirteen describes Maria and Robert Jordan’s lovemaking on their way back from visiting El Sordo. Hemingway’s language in this passage strives to imitate the sexual act and re-create the structure of the experience for the reader. Here as often elsewhere throughout the novel, Hemingway’s writing style mirrors Robert Jordan’s psychological state. Just as, most of the time, the controlled, direct prose embodies Robert Jordan’s clear, logical thinking, the confusion and loss of control over language in this passage reflects Robert Jordan’s loss of physical and psychological control during sex.

Brief Publication Blurb

For Whom the Bell Tolls was published on October 21st, 1940. The novel revolves around a character loosely based on the author himself.

Author Bio Blurb

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He served in the Red Cross during WW1. In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.