For Whom the Bell Tolls By: Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls By: Ernest Hemingway

One of the most famous American novelist, short-story writer and essayist, whose deceptively simple prose style have influenced wide range of writers. Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was unable to attend the award ceremony in Stockholm, because he was recuperating from injuries sustained in an airplane crash while hunting in Uganda.

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. His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a physician, and his mother, Grace Hall-Hemingway, was a musician. Both were well-educated and well-respected in the conservative community of Oak Park

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.

It is the late 1930's in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, and a guerrilla group is in the mountains behind enemy lines. Robert Jordan plans to blow up a bridge, which the enemy uses to move trucks, tanks, and artillery. Pablo, the leader, objects to blowing up the bridge, for it puts them in danger. Robert Jordan worries Pablo will betray them.

They arrive at the camp. A beautiful girl, Maria, brings stew. She and Robert Jordan fall in love at first sight. Robert Jordan meets Pablo's woman, a large and heavy peasant with gypsy blood.

A bad snowstorm starts. Pablo is very drunk, and things get tense as they try to provoke him. He leaves, then announces that he is back with them. Robert Jordan resents the situation. He thinks of the Hotel Gaylord in Madrid, where he used to talk to his friend Karkov about wartime politics.

Robert Jordan shoots an enemy soldier who comes to the camp. They take his horse.

El Sordo goes to look for more horses and he and his men are massacred. The others can do nothing. Robert Jordan sends Andrés with a dispatch for Golz asking him to cancel the attack. He tells Maria of a fantasy that they will live in Madrid. She tells him about her rape when Falangists took her town and shot her parents.

While escaping, Robert Jordan's horse falls on his leg, breaking it. Maria is grief-stricken and he says she must leave, but she will carry him with her always. They leave, and Robert Jordan knows he must keep himself conscious so that he can kill one of the approaching enemy officers to delay them on the trail of his friends.

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The sentry posts are taken and the bridge is blown, but several people are lost, and Pablo kills the men he brought to make sure there are enough horses for his own group.
The depleted band flees on the horses, but as they escape amidst enemy fire, Robert Jordan's horse is toppled by a tank blast, and his leg is broken. Recognizing he would slow down his friends and compromise their escape, he makes them leave him, including Maria, who must be dragged away. Left alone to face death, in the hopes that he might buy his comrades more time, he lies in wait for the approaching fascists.

undulate - move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
epitaph - an inscription in memory of a buried person
gleaming - bright with a steady but subdued shining
waterway - a navigable body of water
huddle - a disorganized and densely packed crowd
arouse - call forth, as an emotion, feeling, or response
leap - move forward by bounds
unalterable - not capable of being changed
infallibility - the quality of never making an error
decoy - something used to lure fish or other animals
admonish - scold or reprimand; take to task
foreboding - a feeling of evil to come
blister - an elevation of the skin filled with fluid
digestion - the process by which the body breaks down food
traverse - travel across or pass over
eager - having or showing keen interest or intense desire

intervene - be placed or located between other things
mincing - affectedly dainty or refined
crestfallen - brought low in spirit
forthright - directly and without evasion; not roundabout
lean - incline or bend from a vertical position
tangle - twist together or entwine into a confusing mass
writhe - move in a twisting or contorted motion
saliva - a clear liquid secreted by glands in the mouth
certitude - complete assurance or confidence
firebrand - a piece of wood that has been burned or is burning
besiege - surround so as to force to give up
regain - get or find back; recover the use of
flutter - flap the wings rapidly or fly with flapping movements
locate - determine the place of by searching or examining
settled - established in a desired position or place; not moving about
right angle - the 90 degree angle between two perpendicular lines

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