Humanistic Approach of Hemingway toward War in "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

Abstract: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is the significant novel of Ernest Hemingway which achieved worldwide fame. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War became that great experience for Hemingway and out of it he published his great novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. He has taken title and theme from Elizabethan preacher John Donne’s meditation that no man is an island that the bell of death tolls for all mankind. This novel title is epigraph, symbolic and suggestive. Hemingway used this epigraph as a statement of the theme of brotherhood, of human solidarity, of the involvement of all men in a common humanity. Robert Jordan is the protagonist. He is a tall, thin, Fair-haired young American. He loves Spain and hates Fascism. During the Spanish Civil War he joined the Loyalist Forces. In the spring of 1937, he has been sent into the Guardarrama Mountains to join Pablo’s band of guerrillas. His mission is to destroy a strategic bridge at the very moment that the Loyalists launch an attack toward Segovia. During the four days he spends at Pablo’s cave preparing to carry out his assignment. The Present Paper deals with war novelist Hemingway’s hatred for war. War destroyed humanity. According to Hemingway, brotherhood is indeed universal. The death of republican Spain means our death too.