For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway went to Spain in 1937 as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance to chronicle the country's civil war. He finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the best book to come out of "the good fight," three years later. The tale of Robert Jordan, a young American serving in the International Brigades and a member of a guerrilla group fighting fascism in the Spanish highlands, is one of bravery and devotion, love and loss, and the untimely demise of an ideal. Hemingway surpasses his accomplishments in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work that is at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. Examples of this can be found in his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria, his outstanding account of El Sordo's last stand, his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria, and his refusal to believe in blind faith. After reading the manuscript, Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway, "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality, no one ever so completely performed it." It is one of the greatest war books ever written, stronger, more expansive, more deeply emotional than any of the author's earlier writings.