For Whom the Bell Tolls | Literary Precedents
Perhaps the most famous of all epigraphs to a work of fiction, John Donne's poem sets the tone and establishes the theme of For Whom the Bell Tolls to such an extent that the novel almost becomes a dramatization of the poem. On the political level, which was very important to Hemingway, the plight of the mountain people, and indeed the Spanish Civil War, was regarded by the rest of the world as insignificant. For Hemingway, just as "no man is an island unto himself," no injustice can be ignored, wherever it is found, and he was distressed that the rest of the world did not care...
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