Jeffrey Boyd

Mrs. Clark

Honors American Literature/Period 3

December 6, 1999

Jeffrey Boyd on For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is typical of Ernest Hemingway's entire body of work and does showcase his most significant stylistic and thematic contributions to American letters. His portfolio includes pieces ranging from Nobel Prize winning novels to Sports Illustrated articles. His work continues to profoundly influence a new generation of writers and stands as a monument in the history of American novelists. Maxwell Geismar once said, "His work as a whole has been a sort of literary catalyst which has affected the entire course of American writing, and like a catalyst it has remained untouched by and superior to all the imitations of it" (142).

Born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Miller Hemingway grew up in an upper middle-class suburb of Chicago. He was the second son of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway; he had one brother and four sisters. He was named after his grandfather Ernest Hall, and his great uncle Miller Hall. Unfortunately he dropped his middle name in 1930. He later described his hometown as a place of "wide lawns and narrow minds" (Wilson). He grew up with the typical, small-town Midwestern values of hard work, physical fitness, and self-determination, which he tried to emulate in the heroes of his stories. His father, a physician, bought him a fishing rod at age two and a gun by ten. With these items and frequent family vacations to their summerhouse on Lake Michigan, came a deep love for nature and a sense of adventure. That sense of adventure led him to run away at age fifteen, but he returned shortly after.

His father wanted him to follow medicine, but his mother wanted him to be a cellist. She was a talented singer, who dreamed of performing on stage, but decided to settle down with her husband and children. She gave voice and music lessons to local children, including her own. Hemingway never showed much enthusiasm for music, but endured his mother's choir and cello lessons.

Upon graduation in 1917, Hemingway tried to enlist in the U. S. Army for duty in World War I, but was refused because of a bad left eye. Disgruntled, he settled for a job at the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. There he learned important stylistic lessons that influenced his work to come. The newspaper stressed short sentences and paragraphs, active verbs, clarity, and immediacy. He later said: "Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them" (Wilson).

After hearing that the Red Cross was accepting volunteer ambulance drivers, he immediately signed up. He left for Europe in May of 1918. The day he arrived, a munitions factory was destroyed and he had to carry mangled bodies and body parts to the morgue. This served as a powerful initiation to a new world for Hemingway. On July 8, an Austrian mortar exploded a few feet away from Hemingway and several Italian soldiers. The blast killed one soldier, blew the legs off another and knocked Hemingway unconscious. A doctor took over 200 pieces of shrapnel from his leg and Hemingway received a platinum kneecap for his injuries. This incident was an important turning point in Hemingway's life. He later reflected:

There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew all around and then came back and went in again and I wasn't dead anymore. (Wilson)

This accident is significant in that Hemingway bases the wounds of many of his protagonists around his own wartime injury. It changes from one character to the next, but nonetheless, each character who receives a wound is representative of Hemingway's own trauma. Hemingway returned home the next January. At nineteen years old and only a year and a half after graduating from high school, he returned home mature for his age.

Hemingway met Hadley Richardson in 1920, fell in love with her, and married in September of 1921. He landed a job for the Toronto Daily Star in November of 1921, two months after the marriage and was offered the opportunity to be the European correspondent for the Star in Paris. He did not pass up this opportunity to visit a place where "the whole of literature was being changed by the likes of Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Ford Maddox Ford" (Wilson). This period of time in Hemingway's life was significant because this was when and where he "crossed over" to the world of literature and novelists. From this time forth, Hemingway solidified his place in literature. The influences of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein radically changed the way he wrote. These mentors opened all the right doors for Hemingway's career and they actively engaged each other in developing each other's writing. In his book, Hemingway: The Paris Years, Michael Reynolds reflects: "Paris was changing him [Hemingway] in ways that he did not see in the mirror; slowly his turn-of-the-century values from Oak Park were eroding" (217).

Thus began Hemingway's illustrious career. His first successful novel, The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926, thrust him into the limelight and awarded him both money and fame. In his lifetime, Hemingway published five collections of short stories and/or poems, ten novels, and one play. Eight books were published posthumously. In 1952 Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. In 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but did not attend the ceremony due to injuries he sustained in two plane crashes that summer in Africa.

Despite his literary success, Hemingway's personal life suffered greatly. He divorced his first wife, Hadley in 1928. They had one son, John, in 1923. He then married Pauline Pfeiffer in 1928 and had two more sons, Patrick in 1928 and Gregory in 1931. They divorced in 1940 and later that same year he married Martha Gellhorn. They divorced 5 years later but did not have any children together. Hemingway married his fourth and final wife, Mary Welsh, in 1946.

On the morning of July 2, 1961, Hemingway woke up early, selected his favorite silver-plated 12-gauge shotgun, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the triggers. His suicide was the culmination of several factors. He had recently been admitted into the Mayo clinic for severe depression and there he received electro shock therapy, one side effect was a disastrous loss of memory. Physically, his body had broken down from a lifetime of abuse and wear and tear. His ailments included rapid weight loss, skin disease, alcoholism, failing eyesight, diabetes, hepatitis, high blood pressure, and impotence. He lost his ability to write like he wanted to, and ultimately decided the most courageous thing to do was to take his own life.

Common in Hemingway's work is the "code hero" and themes of violence, courage, death, and self-discipline. Many of his stories are set in times of war or involve high-risk activities such as bullfighting and hunting. For example, Death in the Afternoon is a novel set around bullfighting, Green Hills in Africa revolves around a big game hunt on a safari, and A Farewell to Arms takes place during World War I. Violence motivated his writing and the emotions he wrote about were inspired by pain and killing (Frohock 141). The influence of violence stems from Hemingway's experience in both World Wars. The violence inflicted by his characters is not random; it is structured and comes from a sense of dignity and duty. Violence is enforced when the character feels a sense of responsibility to himself and those in his care, when duty calls for it. Participation in these activities requires strict adherence to the unwritten rules because the hero is a man of action rather than theory.

Much of Hemingway's popularity came from his idea of the "code hero," or "man's man," of the 1920's and 1930's. The hero does the kind of activities that the typical American male did not; activities such as heavy drinking, promiscuous love affairs, wild game hunting, and bullfights. The combination of understandable short prose and the characters of the code hero appealed to both the typical American and intellectual critic. Also apparent in the code is the concept of grace under pressure. The hero must act in an acceptable manner when faced with adversity. He also realizes that death, which is the end of all things, is a possibility, but he can not be afraid or show cowardice. "…Hemingway's protagonists share a concern with performing well under the mental and physical stress of richly varied lives" (Lewis 353). Performing well consists of the coolness, grace, and discipline the hero exemplifies whenever faced with death and other forms of adversity. The hero does not have to shut out thoughts of defeat or retreat, but must maintain perfect dignity and exercise self-discipline. "To risk more—love, for example—invites disaster, but the risk is often worth taking, the joys to be savored, the agony to be endured with the courage and dignity that demonstrate 'grace under pressure'" (Waldhorn 28-29).

Courage is important in Hemingway's literature. It "…is the permanent element in a tragic formula: life is a trap in which a man is bound to be beaten and at last destroyed, but he emerges triumphant, in his full stature, if he manages to keep his chin up" (Frohock 141). It seems that in each piece of Hemingway's literature, the hero must face adversity and act with grace under pressure. The hero accepts his wounds with dignified silence and keeps his honor to the bitter end.

One character that exemplifies Hemingway's code of courage was Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. Santiago has been unlucky for three months, not catching anything of significance. He also lost his apprentice to a luckier boat. Despite these travails, he remains confident with his eyes "cheerful and undefeated" (Waldhorn 190). In this story the hero, Santiago, faces impending doom with all the grace and style of the ideal Hemingway code hero. Santiago knows doom is a fate shared by all creatures wrought by the necessity of killing and being killed. He accepts this with humility as an important value of the code hero. At the time of Hemingway's Nobel Prize, the Nobel Academy said The Old Man and the Sea is "…an example of human courage in a world of reality overshadowed by violence and death" (Nobel Prize Winners 595).

Violence and courage come together with death, the climax of life and the ultimate test of character. "At the very base of all his [Hemingway's] work is the death-cult" (Twentieth Century Authors 635). True to the statement, often in his writing the protagonists end up dead. Hemingway's settings lend ample opportunity for a discussion on death because death is all around. In wars, bullfights, or big-game hunts, the death them underlies each. It is vitally important that the code hero have the physical ability to endure and focus on his goal in the face of death. This virtue is important throughout his body of work. "In dire moments, the hero reflects on his past life, reconsiders his experience, [and] tries to puzzle them anew" (Mellow 3).

The moments before death are critical in the hero's development. This time of introspection and reflection is the true test of manhood, endurance and dignity. If the hero can act with grace under pressure and do it with dignity, then he will prove to be a Hemingway hero. The idea that death is the absolute end is common to all Hemingway heroes. If death is the end then each hero must find his reward while he is living. This is why the heroes live a fast-paced life of hard-drinking, promiscuous sex, and living dangerously close to death. The hero satisfies worldly and sensual pleasures because he believes that is all the rewards of this life.

The code hero follows a strict discipline, which keeps him in line during his life. This discipline can also be described as a conscience, if a Hemingway hero has a conscience. The hero may drink heavily, but will not drink to the point of sloppy drunkenness. A loss of control would be contrary to that discipline. Many of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are not viewed as heroes because of their slopping drinking. Another aspect of this discipline is humbleness. A Hemingway hero will often say, "let's not talk about it" (Young 252). He does not like to talk about his accomplishments or something personal. They are men of action, not thought and talking because talking is only a way bring up emotions. They think action is paramount and talking about the act too much, loses the importance.

Hemingway heroes fear nada, the state of nothingness or emptiness more than death. They strive against opposition to even be alive and participate in activities that make them feel alive. Nevertheless, the fate of Hemingway's heroes is nothingness, as demonstrated in Harry Morgans dying words in To Have and Have Not, "One man alone ain't got…no bloody f---ing [sic] chance" (Waldhorn 152). Darkness and nighttime are awkward times for the hero because they imply and suggest an absolute nothingness. Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms stays awake all night with Catherine Barkley to avoid the combination of sleep and darkness. Both of these symbolize the eternal sleep of death. Hemingway also did not like the night. He often slept with a light on and arose early each morning. In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" the older waiter reflects on nothingness when he offers this bitter parody of the Lord's Prayer:

Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. (Columbia Dictionary of Quotations)

Hemingway wrote himself into nearly every story he wrote. Unlike other authors, many of Hemingway's characters directly parallel his own life. There is a direct correlation between the code heroes and Hemingway himself. "Like many of his heroes, Hemingway was a wanderer on the face of the earth, an outsider with a keen eye for what places and feelings were really like, strictly speaking he was not an intellectual who valued ideas in and of themselves" (Josephs 354). Jake Barnes, the ex-patriot in The Sun Also Rises, has a wound symbolic to that of Hemingway's and Nick Adams, except that Jake's wound is on his genitals. Nick Adams is wounded in the spine. He wrote about heroes that he would like to have been. The characters he created are the ones that do everything he would have done had he been in their place.

In the three books Hemingway wrote in his retirement, Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, and To Have and Have Not, the central character is Hemingway as the character of Harry Morgan. He is the one that does everything Hemingway would like to do. The point of view changes from Death in the Afternoon to Green Hills of Africa; he changes from the on-looker to the participant, as if he is not content in just being witness to the action, but actually wants to be involved. This is a direct correlation to his own life because at this time in his retirement, he was not physically fit enough to be involved in the activities of his earlier years. Robert Lewis sums up the Hemingway metaphor in these words:

…In 1918 he [Hemingway] received his violent initiation to life 'in our time' when he was blown up by an Austrian mortar shell and narrowly escaped death. While this traumatic event may not have been essential and critical to his artistic development, it does provide a metaphor for much of his subsequent work. In his fiction, many of his protagonists are the wounded, sometimes sacrificed heroes, not simply of a historical world in crisis, but of a mythic world emotionally felt by a wide-ranging audience that has crossed intellectual as well as national boundaries. Those of Hemingway's heroes who survive become, as he put it, 'strong at the broken places,' but the first reaction of the maimed body and sensibility was a withdrawal from life and then a gradual return to it as a sensitive observer of life. (353-354)

Hemingway's trademark is his short prose. His astute use of language won the favor of the public and its simple complexity the respect of intellects. This writing style is derived from years of journalism and the rules he learned while working for the Kansas City Star before becoming famous. The rules are simple: use short sentences and paragraphs, active verbs, be clear, and immediate. In Paris he learned from James Joyce, who was an excellent example of an author who painstakingly reworked every paragraph and every word until it was exactly in it's proper place. One characteristic of the code hero he emulated in the actual writing process was discipline (Waldhorn 30). He cut out the complicated language of the time and created a new style of writing. He said, "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over" (Columbia Dictionary of Quotations).

William Faulkner once complained that Hemingway had "never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary…." Hemingway replied, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use" (Columbia Dictionary of Quotations). This statement reflects his distrust of complex language and his idea that simple prose is more effective. He uses slang, fact, obscenities and subtle language to appeal to the typical person and the scholar.

He is never reduced to tampering with personalities. A Cézanne-like simplicity of scene is built up with touches of a master, and the great effects are achieved with a sublime economy. At these moments style and substance are of one piece, each growing from the other, and one cannot imagine that life could exist except as described. (Morris 141)

His ultimate struggle was to unite words with experiences. His time in journalism helped him refine and master the art of writing about actions over feelings. His use of active prose serves to say exactly what Hemingway wanted to say without confusing language.

Hemingway earned fame and recognition for his work. Other authors, hoping duplicate his success, imitated his trademark prose. These imitators capture only his tense sentence rhythms, simple diction, and generally lean expression. They lack the vigor that combines his style with vision and mood (Waldhorn 30). All fall short of the original and true master of simple prose.

A literary technique Hemingway employs is a staccato rhythm. This staggered prose came about from his short, action-packed sentences. Put into a novel, the sentences form a short, sweet, and punctual rhythm like staccato notes in music. Like the music in Jaws, you can tell when danger is near. A phrase would often be repeated to get this effect. The staccato rhythm of his language increases awareness of building tension and gives the reader a sense of an ominous overtone. The dialogue quickens, and time may seem to go by faster, though it may actually not. This desired effect shines in the short story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". This story is about the events of one day of shame. It leaps from the day of retribution, flashes back to a day of failure, then returns to the present (Waldhorn 147). This bildungsroman tells of Francis finally coming of age, at 35, by proving his manhood and dying for it. This story is often cited as one of Hemingway's best short stories.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is set around the four days it takes Robert Jordan, an American demolitions expert fighting for the Loyalists, to organize a band of guerillas hiding in the mountains surrounding a bridge. The novel begins with Robert Jordan traveling to the bridge, and through a flashback, we learn about his orders from General Golz, a Russian officer, to blow up a bridge because it is vital to the success of an upcoming major offensive. To aid him in his mission, Robert Jordan enlists the efforts of Pablo, El Sordo, the two local guerilla leaders, and their men. He stays with Pablo's band as he observes and prepares for the operation. He meets and falls in love with Maria, a young girl the band rescues from the fascists.

The last third of the novel develops two story lines simultaneously. One is the story of the attack on the bridge. The other is of Andre, a member of Pablo's band, and his journey to deliver Jordan's message to his superior to call off the impending attack. Tragedy strikes the night before the attack when Pablo decides to run off with essential equipment for blowing up the bridge. He has a sudden change of heart and returns to aid his comrades in the battle. The bridge is blown up, but not without a battle. El Sordo and his band are completely wiped out, and there are a few casualties from Pablo's band. After the bridge is blown, a tank injures Robert Jordan before he can get away. He considers committing suicide, but decides against it and the novel ends with Robert Jordan waiting for the enemy to kill him.

For Whom the Bell Tolls contains all the stylistic and thematic features prevalent in Hemingway's literature. The story takes place on the rugged front of the Spanish Civil War and centers around the destruction of a bridge. This scenario thrives on violence. Pilar's vivid epic of the early part of the war is one full of monstrosity and horrid savagery. Her account is in effect a short story within the novel. It recounts in explicit detail the solemn executions of the fascists in her village. Maria's account of her parents' honorable death, her malicious rape, and Pilar's epic are examples of a world enveloped by emptiness, immorality, and death. Warplanes come and go and bring an ominous ring of destruction with their throbbing engines. This world of atrocity disillusions the characters, including the hero, Robert Jordan.

Robert Jordan is a typical Hemingway code hero. He lives by the unwritten code, which sustains him until his death. He is not afraid of this mission or of becoming a prisoner of war. His courage upholds and motivates him to do his duty. He accomplishes that which he was sent to do and he does it with his own personal flavor of grace under pressure. He is a heavy drinker, but not to the point being "sloppy drunk". He exercises discipline in his drinking, and in his thoughts, words, and deeds. Although a foreigner fighting in this war, he feels an underlying sense loyalty and dedication to a land and people he loves. He forms a bond with those members of Pablo's band and he unites them in the final battle. They respect and trust him enough to do everything he asks of them. He is a passionate lover to Maria, his newfound love. They love each other exclusively and share their last days with each other as if they had been together forever. He fears death, but that doesn't stop him from finishing his job and doing his duty. Although faced with several severe challenges, his resourcefulness and determination pull him through. At the time of his fatal injury, he looks back on his life and contemplates what he has made of it. He thinks of committing suicide and nearly succeeds in that but at he then remembers dignity, loyalty to the guerilla band, and his love for Maria.

The trademark Hemingway prose sets the tone for the novel. Familiar words abound and tell the story in the peculiar complex simplicity only found in Hemingway’s work. The characters speak with an attitude that reflects this certain time period and the particular situation. They intertwine Spanish limericks in the dialogue. This gives the average American reader a certain mood and tone throughout the story that says this story is set in a foreign land where the words may be different, but the meaning is the same. Certain words can never properly be translated and they carry with them specific connotations that are lost if translated.

Robert Jordan also parallels Hemingway. He is a skilled worker, a passionate lover, and a heavy drinker. He is reserved and disciplined. He is aware of his surroundings and anticipates the future. Just as Hemingway was wounded in his legs in battle, so is Robert Jordan. Hemingway was injured by a mortar shell blasting shrapnel into his legs. Robert Jordan is injured by an attacking tank, which causes his horse to roll over on him and crush his legs. Robert Jordan's father committed suicide, as did Hemingway's. In an ironic twist, Hemingway actually commits suicide whereas Robert Jordan only thinks about it.

A staccato rhythm underlies For Whom the Bell Tolls. Personal narration is followed by a course of dialogue followed again by a chapter of personal dialogue. The language is never constant for too long a time. The addition of a second story line in the last third of the book adds to this varied tempo. In the fast-paced action of the battle scene and the destruction of the bridge, the language clearly changes to a more succinct and active tense.

Ernest Hemingway’s quality work is enjoyed by the whole world. His trademark code hero and style have won him the admiration of the people and changed the way many feel about reading and writing. His examples and standards have inspired thousands of potential authors to explore, add, and expound on the base he built. When he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 the Royal Swedish Academy "…celebrated Hemingway's determination to tell the truth, citing him as a writer who ‘honestly and undauntedly reproduced genuine features in the hard countenance of the age’" (Nobel Prize Winners 596). This is why Hemingway's work should be celebrated. His work shares and teaches both the good and bad of the world, and every word is genuine.

Works Cited/Consulted

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