ABSTRACT
Scholars identify For Whom the Bell Tolls as “Hemingway’s most overtly political novel” (Nakjavani 1988, 144), or, in the words of Meyers (1990, 104), it is “the greatest political novel in American literature.” First published in 1940, it is set during the Spanish civil war. Hemingway himself was an active participant in the war, and MacDonald (1997, 327) states that Hemingway takes a “defi nite . . . political attitude” towards the war. Yet in sharply contrasting analysis, Cooper (1987, 109) notes that several critics assert that the novel is not political, or misses the main issues in the war, because it refrains from propagandizing. The discrepancy between these two interpretations of the work as a political novel hinges on the defi nition of “political” or politics. Within a political science framework, if “political” tends to focus on a specifi c set of political institutions or specifi c party politics, the novel appears less political because in the book, neither Hemingway nor his protagonist profess support for a certain type of democratic institutions or political parties. In terms of ideology, the novel clearly adopts an anti-Fascist stance, yet it reveals no obvious preference for the type of society that would be desirable if the Republican Loyalists won the war. The protagonist Robert Jordan maintains a commitment to the “Republic” in terms of an electoral, democratic republic rather than specifying concrete institutions that might reveal attachment to a more transparent and coherent ideology. Hemingway portrays support for the Republican cause, but surprisingly, he also exposes the brutality on the part of the Republican fi ghters. Similarly, the novel does not present uncritical and enthusiastic support for the Communist leaders of the Republican war effort. Thus, rather than offering support for a specifi c type of polity, or defending a specifi c political ideology, the political aspect of the novel is more nuanced. It describes the Republican struggle during the war and profoundly depicts the impact of politics in defi ning people’s lives. Watson (1992b, 103) observes that “For Whom the Bell Tolls may not be a novel about the politics of the Spanish Civil War, but the politics
of that war permeate the novel at almost every level of thought and action.” While our social science lens focuses attention on institutions and institutional change through well-defi ned interests and more formal organizations, For Whom the Bell Tolls probes the more intimate and individualistic defi ning process of those interests. In particular, the novel focuses our attention on the meaning of rebellion as a political act of self-realization, best exemplifi ed in the actions of the novel’s rebel protagonist, Robert Jordan.
