For Whom the Bell Tolls (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ernest Hemingway
- First Published: 1940
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Love or romance, Courage, 1930’s, Guerrillas or guerrilla warfare, Civil wars, Spain or Spanish people, Gypsies, Bridges
- Locales: Spain
In this novel, Hemingway clearly demonstrates what the title, taken from a John Donne poem, promises. The essence of the poem from which the title is drawn is that when anyone dies, all humankind is involved—everyone dies a little. Hemingway, himself a correspondent in Spain during its civil war, uses his novel to show that a small skirmish confined to a single nation affects the entire world and cannot be dismissed as something local.
Robert Jordan, the protagonist, is an American teacher who is in Spain to fight alongside the Loyalists. The book chronicles three crucial days...
[The entire page is 1215 words long]
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