Book review: For Whom The Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940.

It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to arepublican 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. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that the novel is regarded as one of Hemingway’s best works, along withThe Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and A Farewell to Arms.

Ernest Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Cuba, Key West, and Sun Valley, Idaho in 1939.In Cuba, he lived in the Hotel Ambos-Mundos where he worked on the manuscript.The novel was finished in July 1940, and published in October.The novel is based on his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, with an American protagonist named Robert Jordan who fights with Spanish soldiers for the Republicans. The novel has three types of characters: those who are purely fictional; those based on real people but fictionalized; and those who were actual figures in the war. Set in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range between Madrid and Segovia, the action takes place during four days and three nights.

“No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by theSea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mansdeath diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls

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