Jan 5, 2010

For Whom the Bell Tolls | Characters

Robert Jordan is the main character and the central consciousness of the story, the apprentice hero who, for some readers, achieves wholeness, triumph over doubt and uncertainty, and, in the end, a clear moral victory. For others, Jordan is intellectually vague, self-absorbed, and an unconvincing hero. Clearly, Hemingway intended the former portrait, and hoped the reader would identify with Jordan's "ridding of self you had to do in war. Where there could be no self," as with his triumph over human aloneness in a community of resistance and the recognition that "with another person"...