Paper no. 108 assignment

Paper no.108 American Literature

Topic: Symbolism in For whom the Bell tolls

Name:Pandya Mayuri

Roll no.14

Enroll no.4069206420210023

Email id: pandyamayuri0610@gmail.com

Batch:2021 to 2023

Submitted to: S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a 

newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman’s journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

Hemingway – himself a great sportsman – liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters – tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.

Introduction of novel

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 the Second World War, which had begun 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 uses symbols in For Whom the Bell Tolls to represent the essence of the relationships between major characters in the novel, the vulnerability they experience in hiding, and their physical environment.

Symbolism in For whom the Bell Tolls

Rabbit

In Spain rabbits are commonly used as meat, so they represent nourishment. Pilar cooks rabbit stews for the guerrillas, and they "eat like generals." Rabbits are also sweet little creatures, so in addition to calling Maria guapa, meaning "beautiful," Robert Jordan also calls her "little rabbit," a term of endearment. Both references appear frequently in the novel. However the term "rabbit" is also used to represent the vulnerability of the guerrillas in the mountains. The peasants are hunted down like rabbits, meaning that they are easy prey.

Pines

Pines are part of the landscape in the Spanish Pyrenees, and they serve as protection for the guerrillas, shielding them from gunfire and keeping them out of sight. The ground is covered with pine needles, and they can either cushion a person who is hiding or they can get into one's weaponry, bags, and clothing. The smell of the pines is everywhere in the mountains, and Robert Jordan also enjoys the beauty of the sunlight through the pines to keep him occupied as he waits for the perfect moment to shoot a sentry. As a symbol the pine needles provide a connection to nature and the land of Spain, with which Robert Jordan has a physical relationship that mirrors his relationship with Maria.

Sleeping Robe

The sleeping robe is one of Robert Jordan's prized possessions, and it is extremely warm. Jordan uses it to sleep outside the cave. When Maria comes to make love to him under the sleeping robe, it represents safety and the warmth of their love. At the end of each full day in the novel, they are again safe in each other's arms under the sleeping robe.

Planes

The guerrillas in the mountains are only armed with explosives and guns, but the Fascists are heavily armed thanks to help from other countries. The planes bombing El Sordo on the hill are an example of how unprepared the disorganized Republicans are in fighting such a powerful enemy. Planes are also able to see all of the people hiding below, so for the guerrillas, they represent the vulnerability of hiding in the woods and the hopelessness of being so vulnerable to attack.

Absinthe

Robert Jordan’s flask of absinthe (a green liqueur flavored with anise, a substance similar to licorice) embodies his deep appreciation for sensory pleasures—food, drink, smells, touch, sex, and so on. For Robert Jordan, absinthe “[takes] the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all the chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month . . . of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten.” Although Robert Jordan uses absinthe to buy trust and build relationships with the guerrilla fighters, he cannot help begrudging every drop. In the novel’s wartime setting, absinthe represents the attitude that one should take advantage of carnal or sensory pleasures while one has the chance.

 

 

First, death is a primary preoccupation of the novel. When Robert Jordan is assigned to blow up the bridge, he knows that he will not survive it. Pablo and El Sordo, leaders of the Republican guerrilla bands, see that inevitability also. Almost all of the main characters in the book contemplate their own deaths. Before the operation, Pilar reads Robert Jordan's palm, and after seeing it, refuses to comment on what she saw, foreshadowing his untimely demise. Throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway characterizes suicide as an act of cowardice by associating it with characters who are vulnerable or lack strength of spirit. A number of characters contemplate suicide: Karkov always carries pills to use to kill himself if he is ever captured, and Maria carries around a razor blade for the same purpose. Robert Jordan’s father committed suicide, an act that Robert Jordan says he understands but nonetheless condemns. The traits of these characters who contemplate suicide connect the act of suicide to weakness. Robert Jordan’s father is characterized as weak, Maria is young and female, and Karkov is a man of ideas, not action. At the end of the novel, Robert Jordan contemplates suicide but rejects the idea, preferring to struggle to stay awake despite the pain. Robert Jordan’s reliance on inner strength in his rejection of suicide contrasts the othercharacters’ weakness, which demonstrates that the will to continue living requires psychological strength. Second, sacrifice in the face of death abound throughout the novel. Robert Jordan, Anselmo and others are ready to do "as all good men should" – that is, to make the ultimate sacrifice. The oft-repeated embracing gesture reinforces this sense of close companionship in the face of death. An incident involving the death of the character Joaquín's family serves as an example of this theme; having learned of this tragedy, Joaquín's comrades embrace and comfort him, saying they now are his family. Surrounding this love for one's comrades is the love for the Spanish soil. A love of place, of the senses, and of life itself is represented by the pine needle forest floor, both at the beginning and, poignantly, at the end of the novel, when Robert Jordan awaits his death feeling "his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest." Suicide always looms as an alternative to suffering. Many of the characters, including Robert Jordan, would prefer death over capture and are prepared to kill themselves, be killed, or kill to avoid it. As the book ends, Robert Jordan, wounded and unable to travel with his companions, awaits a final ambush that will end his life. He prepares himself against the cruel outcomes of suicide to avoid capture, or inevitable torture for the extraction of information and death at the hands of the enemy. Still, he hopes to avoid suicide partly because his father, whom he views as a coward, committed suicide. Robert Jordan understands suicide but doesn't approve of it, and thinks that "you have to be awfully occupied with yourself to do a thing like that." Robert Jordan resolves these tensions at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, in his final moments as he faces death. He accepts himself as a man of action rather than thought, as a man who believes in practicality rather than abstract theories. He understands that the war requires him to do some things that he does not believe in. He also realizes that, though he cannot forget the unsavory deeds he has done in the past, he must avoid dwelling on them for the sake of getting things done in the present. Ultimately, Robert Jordan is able to make room in his mind for both his love for Maria and his military mission. By the end of the novel, just before he dies, his internal conflicts and tensions are resolved and he feels “integrated” into the world. . . . You felt that you were taking part in a crusade. . . . It would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as a religious experience and yet it was authentic. . . . It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. (1827 WORDS)

Work cite

telaumbanua, faehusi, editor. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/276188-an-analysis-of-symbols-in-spanish-civil-d06690ed.pdf.

Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom The Bell Tolls: Symbols.” SparkNotes, 

Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls. Accessed 7 May 2022.https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/belltolls/symbols/. Accessed 7 May 2022.

White, William, and Philip Young. “Ernest Hemingway – Biographical - NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/hemingway/biographical/. Accessed 7 May 2022.