For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom The Bell Tolls is a war novel by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of a young American during the Spanish Civil War.

Summary of the Book

Robert Jordan is a young American with the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. He is an experienced dynamiter, and he is tasked by a communist Russian general to travel behind enemy lines and destroy a bridge with the aid of a band of local anti-fascist guerrillas. This way, the general assures him, the enemy troops would not be able to respond to an upcoming offensive. In the Spanish camp, Robert Jordan meets María, a young Spanish woman. She is scarred from her parents’ execution and her rape at the hands of the Falangists. He begins to fall for her, and his feelings spark a lust for life deep within him. Hemingway’s epic novel of war and love has become a signature tale of courage and loyalty, love and defeat, and the demise of an ideal in the tragedy of one man’s stance against all odds.

About Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was an American novelist and journalist. He is best remembered for: A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises.

Hemingway was a World War I veteran, where he enlisted with the World War I ambulance drivers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

The above title was adapted into a film in 1943 by Sam Wood starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress, but won only one. The book was also adapted in the eponymous Metallica song in their second album, Ride the Lightning.