For Whom the Bell Tolls

The events of For Whom the Bell Tolls, and past events described by the characters, reveal the brutality of war and the psychological damage such brutality has on those who experience it. Hemingway’s chosen epigraph, taken from the works of John Donne, reveals the sense of connection and sorrow that result from true empathy for those who suffer death and brutality: “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe […] any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee [sic]” (5).

Robert Jordan begins to understand this sentiment before his own death; he has spent a year manufacturing explosions for the Republican cause while living, emotionally, at a distance from the people he meets in passing. This wears on him after a time, and the connections he builds with Maria and the guerrilleros of Pablo’s band highlight, for him, how much he had distanced himself from the death around him. He justifies his actions and the orders he is given by claiming they are necessary for winning the war, but his struggle with these final orders increases as he realizes that “now he was compelled to use these people whom he liked as you should use troops toward whom you have no feeling at all if you were to be successful” (128).