The Meaning of Life in Times of War: Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is now remembered as Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring work, not least because of its detailed and personal account of the Spanish Civil War. Its laconic treatment of the universal subjects of friendship, sex, and love – essentials that give additional meaning to life in times of war – is the reason for its lasting appeal.

The plot is crudely simple, like the characters’ motives. American Robert Jordan decides to do his part for the country he claims to love by working as a dynamiter for a republican guerrilla unit, and one day, owing to an assignment to blow up a bridge, he finds himself among a group of disparate rebels hiding high up in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra. The novel records only three and a half days of Robert’s experience (and yet this is the longest Hemingway novel); at the end of the “adventure,” things go horribly wrong, as foreshadowed, and the reader is forced to leave the hero behind and move on – just like the rest of the rebels.

In the brief span of three and a half days, Robert experiences intense lust, love, friendship, wartime camaraderie, and even comes close to finding the “meaning” of life. His first sighting of Maria, the group’s symbol of innocence (though she has been tarnished in unimaginable ways – which she only later reveals to Robert), re-ignites his lust. This is unusual for a man who does not feel much for anything but the “job” he does. A conversation with Pilar, the group’s matriarch, in Chapter 7 clarifies this:

‘No. In the head you are very cold.’

‘It’s that I am very preoccupied with my work.’

‘But you do not like the things of life?’

‘Yes. Very much. But not to interfere with my work.’

‘You like to drink, I know. I have seen.’

‘Yes. Very much. But not to interfere with my work.’

‘And women?’

‘I like them very much, but I have not given them much importance.’ (96)

Robert’s robotic replies (Hemingway’s trademark) suggest that he is merely going through the motions. By the time he joins the group, he has already seen some of the worst horrors of the war (he has had to kill a friend to spare him further misery), and can no longer bring himself to care for anything or anyone. The war has long desensitised him.

Pilar questions his replies, saying he lies. She is aware of his feelings for Maria and says so plainly. Robert does not deny this. He says he does care for her – “suddenly and very much.” Pilar then makes him the promise that she will leave Maria with him after a certain commitment.

Much has been written by Hemingway readers about Pilar’s willingness to unite Robert and Maria – an odd move, considering how she had fiercely protected her from the advances of the other rebels. To Pilar, Robert’s presence is a breath of fresh air. She sees beauty in the romantic connection between Robert and Maria, and is eager to keep them together to combat a world full of ugliness, including her own (she repeatedly refers to her own unappealing looks). That the world is full of ugliness and cruelty is nothing new to Pilar. She has witnessed some of the worst civil war atrocities, one of which she recounts to none other than Robert in a long, graphic, and now legendary chapter. Pilar’s account of the Ronda-inspired massacre has a profound impact on Robert. He reflects thereafter, albeit on a different incident (note how Hemingway switches from the third person to the second, accentuating personal involvement):

How many times had he heard this? How many times had he watched people say it with difficulty? How many times had he seen their eyes fill and their throats harden with the difficulty of saying my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my sister? He could not remember how many times he had heard them mention their dead in this way … You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream … You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies. Pilar had made him see it in that town. (141, italics mines)

The emotional ties between Pilar and Robert are made of the essence of war. The reality of death binds them – which explains why she is fully supportive of Robert’s affair with Maria – to her, an antidote to the insanity around her. The same goes for Robert’s identification with the other guerrilla members. Even though he distrusts the group’s leader Pablo, he has great admiration for what the man has done and is still probably able to do (despite Pilar’s insistence that he has lost his spark). Robert’s most devastating moment comes when his aged guide Anselmo is killed – something that he blames himself for. Hemingway does not directly tell us how Robert feels about Anselmo’s pointless death, but the following lines underscore his state of mind:

The anger and the emptiness and the hate that had come with the let-down after the bridge, when he had looked up from where he had lain and crouching, seen Anselmo dead, were still all through him. In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unrelated and he hated every one he saw. (465)

The unsentimental glimpse into Robert’s mind reveals how Anselmo’s death has affected him. His reaction to the death is one of stoicism. Despair has to be turned into hatred, since that is the only way a soldier can cope with a comrade’s death. It is after this that Robert himself is incapacitated and has to face his own tragic end. He faces it with staunchness – like a fearless soldier who has finally understood his calling. Three and half days ago Robert was a different man, a man who only saw what he did as a “job.” There was no real honour and heroism involved; soldierly idealism had long deserted him. In a flashback to his Madrid days, he states that every fighter always begins with a sort of fervent idealism, but loses it in the end: “So you fought, he thought. And in the fighting soon there was no purity of feeling for those who survived the fighting and were good at it” (244). So what or who has brought about this sudden change?

The answer is Maria.

Maria’s role is largely confined to that of a servile lover. (This is a bone of contention among Hemingway’s feminist readers. I am not so much interested in Maria as a young girl with or without her own mind as in her being a catalyst for Robert’s lust for life.)  She has sex with Robert several times, offers to serve him in many different ways, and even agrees to shoot him if he is in dire danger. After their first sexual encounter, Maria says: “I am so happy that I did not die. And you can love me?” Robert cautiously gives in to her plea: “I cannot have a woman doing what I do. But thou art my woman now” (76). Robert’s contradictory reply is in itself revelatory. He says “But thou art my woman now,” meaning that for the time being Maria is his woman. He does not know what will happen tomorrow or the day after that.

Hemingway reporting on the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Photograph by Robert Capa

To understand Robert’s state of mind, the reader must place himself in the time and place he is in. War is not the most ideal time for commitments; one never knows if one will live to see another day. (In Robert’s case, it is foreshadowed that the blowing-up of the bridge will prove to be a futile act.) For now, Robert wants to love Maria and experience sensual intimacy. During their lovemaking, he even feels the earth move underneath him – a hyperbole that may elicit a few giggles from modern readers. The bottom line is Robert is rejuvenated by his intense bond with Maria. She fires up his imagination (he even starts to fantasise about a future with her in Madrid), his hopes, his desires; she gives him something to live for in a time of utter desolation.

This “rejuvenation” may explain why Robert is willing to accept his fate in the end. After he has been incapacitated, he lies on the forest floor awaiting his death – which may or may not come swiftly. In his final moment with Maria, he tells her to leave with the rest, adding: “Thou art with me too now. Thou art all there will be of me” (483). This shows that Robert is already living vicariously through Maria. He and she are one; his demise may loom before him, but he will continue to live in Maria.

After the guerrilla members are gone, Robert is left to himself. His mind races through the past few days, and he comes to this conclusion:

“I have to leave it [life], is all. I hate to leave it very much and I hope I have done some good in it. I have tried to with what talent I had … I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” (485)

These lines illustrate with absolute clarity that Robert has now fully accepted his role in the war, and that he thinks life is worth living and worth fighting for. Maria has completely restored his faith in himself and in life. It is poignant that he should only embrace this thought at the very end. He takes comfort in the fact that the guerrilla members have all made it to safety: “It’s wonderful they’ve got away. I don’t mind this at all now they are away” (487).

The world-famous final line of the novel, “He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest,” suggests that Robert and Nature are now a unity. He has fulfilled his duty admirably as a fighter, and can now surrender himself to the elements. The fact that Robert is able to get to this point has everything to do with the three and a half days with Maria. Three and a half days – an eye-blink for most of us, but a whole lifetime of love, meaning, and acceptance for the disillusioned Robert.

Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. London: Arrow Books, 2004