Book Notes: For Whom The Bell Tolls

There are many editions of this 1940 book available. This cover art is just one of them that I found online.

True Confession: I had never read this book before. Not in high school. Not in a college literature class. I just picked it up from the remaindered shelf at a local bookstore as part of my ongoing effort to read more classics.

What I didn’t like:

• The book took awhile to get going. It’s a 471 page novel and for the first 267 pages there was lots of scene setting and character building. I agree that’s important, but c’mon, Ernie–enough is enough!
• The dialogue in the book is filled with thees, thous, thyst, and so on. To me, it’s a little hard to read.

What I liked:

• From page 268 onward it’s really hard to put the book down. Lots of action-both physical action and peeks inside the psyche of the various characters as they wrestle with some tough decisions.
• The book was published in 1940 and Hemingway had to make sure that the language didn’t get edited by the censors. He adroitly uses oblique references to Spanish slang and the use of the word “obscenity” to let the reader fill in the blanks themselves. My favorite example
  • “You hijo de la gran puta”, he said softly. “Where the obscenity have you been?”
• The book graphically captures some of the physical descriptors and the mental anguish associated with people involved in warfare.

I’ve always thought that Hemingway was noted for short, simple language in his sentences and paragraphs. Maybe he is, but this book features some long passages. Maybe the sparse style evolved in his later works?

I have to give props to Hemingway for his management of the story. As I was reading, the ending of the story was becoming clear to me. Without providing any spoilers, I knew what would happen to each of the characters since he found ways to telegraph the ending along the way.

But the story ended differently than that! In fact, he doesn’t really provide THE ending…. we have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

I’m glad I read the book, but it was less inspiring than I thought it would be. I’ll probably read other Hemingway books later just to compare versus this one.