For Whom the Bell Tolls

The events of For Whom the Bell Tolls, and past events described by the characters, reveal the brutality of war and the psychological damage such brutality has on those who experience it. Hemingway’s chosen epigraph, taken from the works of John Donne, reveals the sense of connection and sorrow that result from true empathy for those who suffer death and brutality: “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe […] any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee [sic]” (5).

Robert Jordan begins to understand this sentiment before his own death; he has spent a year manufacturing explosions for the Republican cause while living, emotionally, at a distance from the people he meets in passing. This wears on him after a time, and the connections he builds with Maria and the guerrilleros of Pablo’s band highlight, for him, how much he had distanced himself from the death around him. He justifies his actions and the orders he is given by claiming they are necessary for winning the war, but his struggle with these final orders increases as he realizes that “now he was compelled to use these people whom he liked as you should use troops toward whom you have no feeling at all if you were to be successful” (128). Robert becomes weary, continually reconvincing himself to follow through on the bridge explosion and not to fall into despair or anger over how hopeless the attack seems: “You are instruments to do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours” (42). Despite these inner arguments, the pushing aside of one’s empathy and humanity, however temporary, required to kill in war are affecting Robert, whose inner voice challenges him into asking himself if his motivating words make his acts of violence any more honorable.

Anselmo struggles even more than Robert with the killing that he has had to do. He admits to Robert that, although he kills in the war because it is necessary in the fight to preserve Republicanism, he also hates killing, and feels as if he sins every time, despite his loss of faith in God. Determined to absolve himself, he explains, “[I]f I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to anyone, that it will be forgiven” (41). His feelings of sorrow and shame over killing turn him into one of the most empathetic and forgiving members of Pablo’s band, and perhaps of most of the Republican and guerrilla fighters. He knows that some of the men he kills are not “true” fascists, but rather poor men like him who simply follow orders. When one of the other men says they must win the war and kill all fascists, Anselmo instead advocates for educating the fascists and ceasing indiscriminate exterminations of enemies.

Pilar reveals emotional scars from the brutality of war, as well, through her retelling of the beginning of the war in Pablo’s hometown, where she had been with him. Describing the shooting of the guardia civil and then the systematic executions of all fascist townspeople, in which all the Republicans of the town took part, she witnessed the brutality that even the “good” side, as she would see it, can take part in. The well-organized flaying of the fascists turns into bloodthirsty chaos, and Pilar tells Robert and Maria that “[i]t was then [she] knew that the lines had become cruel” (97). She explains that although she had felt “much emotion” at the shooting of the guardia civil, thinking it “a thing of great ugliness,” she had thought it necessary and appreciated that “at least there was no cruelty” (99). But when the townspeople became crazed in their executions, “[she] felt a feeling of shame and distaste” (99). As such, Pilar remains a character of great and deep thought, occupying some of the nuance of war that Robert later comes to appreciate.

Each of the characters suffer, as the narrative shows through the explanation of how soldiers killed Maria’s parents and then raped her, and in the way that characters speak of losing their loved ones in the war. The brutality that For Whom the Bell Tolls highlights can be summed up by the words of one of the Nationalist officers, who turns away from the beheading of El Sordo and his men, not wishing to see the results of his own order: “‘Qué cosa más mala es la guerra,’ he said to himself, which meant, ‘What a bad thing war is.’ […] He did not wish to stay to see his order being carried out” (235).