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For Whom the Bell Tolls
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- The Pope of Literature
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
This forum could use a little activity, and since I've just finished up Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", I thought I'd fish around for some comments. Has anyone else read it? What did you think?I found the story very interesting -- Robert Jordan is a young American professor serving as a demolitions expert in Revolutionary Spain. He's sent on a routine but impractical mission to explode a bridge in advance of a major offensive, and the majority of the novel follows his interaction with the local guerilla band with whom he must work. The characters were well-drawn as well, and one of the chief pleasures of the book is the way in which it fills in each character's background, along and along.Yet one flaw, I think, is the length of the novel. You can take that complaint with a grain of salt -- I've said in other contexts that I prefer novels to be brief, and I tend to estimate the necessary length of a story far shorter than most people would. But just shy of 500 pages is long for a story that only covers three days and three nights, even with intermittant flashbacks. Hemingway might have cut some of the gristle here and there, in particular the rather long stream-of-consciousness passages that reveal the interior space of the main character. At times, this internal dialogue is fairly redundant, and I can't help but feel that the book would have made a far more elegant story at the more manageable size of three-hundred pages.
Re: For Whom the Bell Tolls
I have never cared much for Hemingway, misogynists not being my cup of tea, and the thing I liked best about this novel was the use of John Donne's poem:No man is an islandNo man stands aloneEach man's joy is my joyEach man's sorrow is my ownDo not send and ask,For whom the bells tollThey toll for you. ~ John DonneMarti in Mexico
Re: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Yes, that's a great poem. The exact wording isFor whom the bell tolls a poem (No man is an island) by John Donne No man is an island,Entire of itself.Each is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less.As well as if a promontory were.As well as if a manner of thine ownOr of thine friend's were.Each man's death diminishes me,For I am involved in mankind.Therefore, send not to knowFor whom the bell tolls,It tolls for thee.