For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway
List(s):"Racine Library List"
"Carp 500"
Category: "Fiction - General"
Pages:507
Year of Publication:1940
Date Read:03/27/1994
Notes:Robert Jordan, an American who has joined the Loyalists in Spain’s Civil War, is holed up with a guerrilla band in a cave near Segovia. Their mission: to support a Loyalist advance by blowing up a strategic bridge nearby. With Jordan is the woman he loves, Maria, the daughter of Republicans who saw her parents shot and was herself raped by Fascists. The band succeeds in destroying the bridge, but during the retreat Jordan is seriously wounded and left behind.

COMMENTS — The title is from a sermon by John Donne containing the famous words “No man is an island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the continent … and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
My Rating: 6

Reviews for For Whom the Bell Tolls

Review - For Whom the Bell Tolls

I hate Hemingway's writing style. Jordan and Maria's dialogue gets downright annoying with pages of choppy two- and three-word phrases repeated over and over. As for the Spanish Civil War, I think both sides deserved to lose.

Reviewed by Roger on 2003-07-21 08:12:38

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