For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway (1940)

                A real page turner is the best description. Covering four days in such detail is incredible in that it often takes me weeks to get thru a book of this size. It’s an action packed thriller with everything required of a modern day movie; love, hate, violence, ideology and the details of each. The protagonist whose full name is used every time it’s mentioned is someone who is acting on his beliefs, but is constantly contemplating his life situation as well as the others around him. Its like so many great books putting the characters into situations of their own or others making that force them to act. As someone with some life experience I see a pattern in that the “cards you are dealt” may not come into focus until much later. In fact we are caught in the maelstrom of our era; it is best to see and acknowledge the winds of change for your generation ASAP.

The description by Pilar of the aftermath of Pablo’s triumphant capture of a small town haunts me often. The ominous and over bearing weight of having chosen to die is harsh and Pablo’s desire for the Robert Jordan (certain death) to go away is relatable only to one with age. Alternatively the love scenes between Robert Jordan and “little rabbit” are wonderful; stirring memories of young love that you too may have had. And too the descriptions of Pilar’s time of love in her younger days are warm and evocative.

I have a nice 1943 copy that I found at a local estate sale.

Compare For Whom the Bell Tolls & Gone with the Wind

Interesting that For Whom the Bell Tolls was published 4 years after Gone with the Wind. In one case it was the land itself and a very selfish personal preservation that motivates the protagonist while in the other the pro is purely ideological in his fight, only having an interested connection with the land and people he is willing to die for. Both stories are seen from the side of the repressed, however, the atrocities are perpetrated by both.

So Robert Jordan and Scarlet O’Hara are willing to do anything up to and including murder to achieve their goals. Yet Robert Jordan is an extreme sentimentalist and Scarlet is self absorbed to a frightening degree. We see how month by month Scarlet is turned from a self absorbed child into a self absorbed adult in roughly four years. Robert Jordan (in about four days) is transformed from an ideals driven bomb making machine into one who can finally see a long married life as a possibility. Robert Jordan becomes the reluctant leader of his band of misfits with all their baggage as does Scarlet. It is clear too that Scarlet is capable of the most basic deceits in any situation making her a true amoral survivor where as Robert Jordan maintains a fairly high moral code and is reaching for a higher social standard. Both have to constantly put things out of their minds in order to move on with whatever task is currently at hand. Interesting that in both it is the civil fight between two government ideals that that takes these stories aloft, and as usual the better funded side wins.