‘FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS’ BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Today, The Grandma has been reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel written by Ernest Hemingway and published on a day like today in 1940.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940.

It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.

It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which many foreigners went to Spain to help and which was supported by the Communist Soviet Union, and the Nationalist faction, which was supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered World War II, which began on September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.

The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway's best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1939 from three locations: Havana, Cuba; Key West, Florida; and Sun Valley, Idaho.

In Cuba, he lived in the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where he worked on the manuscript. The novel was finished in July 1940 at the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel in New York City and published in October.

The story is based on Hemingway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance and features an American who fights alongside Spanish guerillas for the Republicans. The novel graphically describes the brutality of the war and is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan.

The characters in the novel include those who are purely fictional, those based on real people but fictionalized, and those who were actual figures in the war. Set in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range between Madrid and Segovia, the action takes place during four days and three nights. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls became a Book of the Month Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and became a literary triumph for Hemingway.

Published on October 21, 1940, the first edition print run was 75,000 copies priced at $2.75.

The book's title is taken from the metaphysical poet John Donne's series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness (written while Donne was convalescing from a nearly fatal illness) published in 1624 as Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, specifically Meditation XVII. Hemingway quotes part of the meditation (using Donne's original spelling) in the book's epigraph. Donne refers to the practice of funeral tolling, universal in his time.

The novel takes place in late May 1937, during the second year of the Spanish Civil War. References made to Valladolid, Segovia, El Escorial, and Madrid suggest the novel takes place within the build-up to the Republican attempt to relieve the siege of Madrid.

The earlier battle of Guadalajara and the general chaos and disorder (and, more generally, the doomed cause of Republican Spain) serve as a backdrop to the novel: Robert Jordan notes, for instance, that he follows the Communists because of their superior discipline, an allusion to the split and infighting between anarchist and communist factions on the Republican side.

On November 5, 2019, BBC News listed For Whom the Bell Tolls on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.

In 1941, the Pulitzer Prize committee for letters unanimously recommended For Whom the Bell Tolls be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for that year. The Pulitzer Board agreed. However, Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University and ex officio head of the Pulitzer board at that time, found the novel offensive and persuaded the board to reverse its determination; no Pulitzer was given for the category of novel that year.

In Spain, it was initially viewed very suspiciously by the Francoist censorship office; in 1942-43 the Spanish diplomatic corps went to great lengths in trying to influence the final edit of the Hollywood film based on the novel, which was not permitted to be shown in Spanish cinemas.

Download From Whom The Bell Tolls

But man is not made for defeat.
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Ernest Hemingway