Hemingway draws every little detail together as a pounding, fist-beating recursive chimes into the readers' ears. And with the slower, more passionate journey into Jordan's memory and future, we become enthralled as well to the question of choice. How will he choose? Jordan, a formal Spanish professor in the University of Montana, chooses to forsake the capitalist luxury of America and pursues the life as a republic dynamiter in Spain.

There is no question of individuality, only a question of choice, a choice between masses and not identities. All this remains intact until Robert's own vision is no longer able to see between simple black and white in the Spanish mountains where he prepares to blow up a bridge during a republic offensive. His comrades are not all communists, nor are his enemies all fascists; these men die not for an ideal, but for an idea. And as he grows to love the rough Spaniards around him: shrewd yet cowardly Pablo, thoughtful hunter Ansemlo, strong and foreseeing Pilar, and most of all, a young woman ravaged many times by fascist soldiers, Jordan starts to doubt the path he chooses. And between life and death, ideal and real, he waivers.

Pablo is a sharp thread that seams between characters and draws Jordan on with questions; he appears cowardly despite his heroic records as a guerilla leader, and his own dawdling conviction towards the idea of republic pricks Jordan's own sense of duty. Especially with more and more emotional involvement (dependency) on Maria's love, Jordan is wondering whether enough killing is enough killing for a vague concept. Pablo's seemingly growing discontent, as a part of a mass, is complemented by his woman Pilar's undying strength. She reads palms and smells death, and it is through her strong faith in the union of freedom seekers that the guerrilla group stays together. But exactly "for whom" does the bell toll? For the Spaniards who shed blood among themselves with visible strings from Moscow? Yes, warfare befalls all. No one is missed by the silent blow, although some can smell its scent and others shun its path. A dangerous sadness identifies Pablo while an optimistic cheerfulness characterizes Pilar; why are they essentially the same "lot" then? Because Hemingway shows us, through the interaction of specter of differences, a single vibration enlivens every frequency on the scale. Robert Jordan is a mere node not knowing which direction to lean towards, especially as he is starting to doubt the vibration.

America hasn't had her share of good wars, but what happens in one war is reflected in the next, or isn't it? If one strong man's mentality comes tumbling down because the buttress isn't strong enough, why shouldn't the next one fumble as well? It tolls for thee, and there are a million "thee" out there blindly believing they are the only "thee". They hear the same ringing, although each believes he is able to distinguish a unique frequency; and they die, their deaths as mere statistics. Thus, it is actually an oxymoron Hemingway presents through Robert Jordan's developing anxieties; he feels "tricked" into believing the impact he himself can make in the war, as a part of a hovering mass. Instead, he recovers pieces of individuality when he is physically and emotionally removed from the same mass. So at the beginning, he lays on one stretch of pine forest floor and hears this bell chime calling him to begin and he joins the guerilla band; at the end, he is wounded and is left behind to lay on the same stretch of pine forest floor, and he hears this bell chime calling him to end. The integration and disintegration mark his journey from blindness to sight.

Two and a half days, who ever lives out their entire existence in such a short period? Jordan does, and he sees so far into the pattern of living that he does regret the ultimate choice he makes, not as a soldier, or a leftist, but as a man redeemed through the moral bath of contemplation.

Shirley Li, 21-year old with known characteristics such as spontaneous combustibility, outrageous determination, tendency to over-analyze / psychoanalyze, verbosity, existentialist humor, overt nostalgia for times long past (be it age of elves or age of reason).
Read More