In 1936, Spanish army regiments rebelled against the Republican government of Spain (Payne 750). The following, bloody civil war would leave hundreds of Spaniards dead, but only be remembered as the precursor to World War Two. Ernest Hemingway, as a war correspondent and who advocated for the Republican side of the war by raising money for ambulances (Nagel 104), viewed the atrocities of the war. His acute sensitivity and passionate response to the cause (Meyers, 320) of the Republicans were forces which led him to write several novels (as well as a few plays) which related to the Spanish Civil War (Nagel 104), including For Whom The Bell Tolls. “The driving emotion behind Bell is Hemingway’s sense of betrayal of the Spanish people” (Baker 102). Through his use of symbolism, tone, and setting, Hemingway illustrates how people are manipulated and depleted by the messy conflict of a war.
Symbols in For Whom The Bell Tolls are used to express various parts and concepts of the Spanish Civil War, each which had its own effect on the betrayal of the Spanish. Each of the symbols represents either the foreign powers who manipulated the Spanish, or an event of the Spanish Civil War which led to the Republican defeat.
“[Pablo] is a recognizable symbol for the general canker of defeatism, gnawing at the tissues of Republican morale from within” (Baker 111). Pablo’s defeatist attitude, and lack of initiative and assistance, leads him to represent the failure of the Republican morale. Just as Pablo’s lack of reliance fails to rally the guerrillas (Hemingway 53), the lack of Republican morale led to the Republican failure. “Antisocial parasites like Pablo infest the Republican ranks” (Benson 132). Pablo’s theft of the detonators symbolizes the lack of adequate supplies on the side of the Republicans (Meyers 106). This condition led to the downfall of the Republicans and the devastation of Spain. The messenger André’s failure to cease the attack symbolizes the failure of the Republican’s to convince France and Great Britain to attack Italy and Germany (Meyers 106). Not being able to obtain allies was a cause of the failure of the Republicans’ effort in the war. However, the fact that the Republican’s had to search outside their nation for help illustrates the manipulation that was occurring. The foreign Fascists and Communists were pulling at all the Spanish in a way that they had to turn to them for help. This was the most devastating situation that led to the betrayal of the Spanish.
The Spaniards in civil conflict in 1936 were manipulated by the foreign powers, who supported the sides of the conflict only to advantage themselves. Hemingway openly displays this through the use of symbols. “The Spanish Civil War served as a military proving ground for Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. [It] split the world into forces that either supported or opposed Nazism and Fascism” (Stokesbury 474). “Gaylord’s symbolizes the cold, practical, hardheaded, cynical ruthlessness of the Comintern” (Baker 107). This cold ruthlessness and almost crusader-like (Hemingway 235) mentality allowed the Comintern to recruit young Spaniards, thus disillusioning a generation and brain washing them with thoughts of idealism. The young guerilla Joaquín symbolizes the Spanish who were overwhelmed by the ideals that flooded into the war. However, Joaquín also represents the betrayal of the idealistic Spaniard, as he dies after he praises Communism (Hemingway 309). The Communism betrayed him as it did many other Spaniards. As representation of the military proving ground, Hemingway uses the “mechanized doom” (Hemingway 87) of the Heinkel bombers and the tanks. Whenever a foreign fighter is present, it is aboard a Heinkel or a tank. Whenever there are Spaniards fighting, it is done on horses. This symbolizes that the foreign powers manipulated the Spanish, allowing the Spanish to do the fighting and dying, while the foreign powers just tested their superior weapons.
“Muck all the insane, egotistical, treacherous swine that have always governed Spain. Muck everybody but the people” (Hemingway 370). This tone represents the emotion that Hemingway felt for the betrayal of the Spanish people. Throughout the novel, he exhibits the treacherous acts of those with influence and power. In his initial conflict of the novel, Hemingway exposes that if the operation is carried out, it will expose the Spanish guerrillas, ruining their mountain existence (Hemingway 53). The ruthless generals and officials in power are willing to endanger a hundred local Spaniards for a holding action from which they almost certainly will retreat. “There are no real villains in this war except those endangered by the general human frailties which make war possible” (Benson 130). Only those with authority are the true villains.
“The Fascist [soldier] is not simply an enemy figure, but an individual human being” (Benson 131). The soldiers that the guerrillas are fighting are mere Spaniards, as Robert Jordan discovers upon killing the cavalryman (Hemingway 265). In the conflict at Avila, the Fascists are killed solely because of what they were (Hemingway 116). The idealism instilled by the Comintern and Falange Española (Payne 750) caused the murder of the Fascists. Thus the Spaniards are betrayed into despising one another to the point of murder. In the situation of a war, both in Hemingway’ s Spanish Civil War or in Remarque’s World War 1, there is “a moral bankruptcy of the leaders who have encouraged young men to volunteer [themselves] for the holocaust of [the] war” (Rowley 111). However, as in all wars “atrocity from one side is balanced by atrocity from the other” (Benson 130). Lieutenant Berrando is required to decapitate his victims to prove to his superiors that he has in fact killed El Sordo. Similarly, in All Quiet on the Western Front, the scenes of German casualty to French mortars were equalized by the gruesome hand combat of Kat (Eksteins 337). The ruthlessness is ended, however, when Paul comes to face the humanity of the enemy in the shell hole (Remarque 194). The ruthless foreign influences have manipulated the Spanish (and similarly, the Germans of All Quiet), turning them from farmers, professors, and matadors into heartless tools of idealism. “From the ragged edges of experience and the complexities of emotional reaction, a ‘messy’ battle emerges that has its larger counterpart in the ‘messy’ civil war” (Benson 130).
“He [Hemingway] wanted a period deep enough into the war so that the possibility of Republican defeat could be a meaningful psychological force. But the time must be also far enough removed from the end of the war so that some of his people could still believe in a Republican victory” (Baker 110). Hemingway uses the setting of his novel as a connection between the pre-war Spain and the war Spain. “At the opening and at the close of the novel, Jordan lies prone on the pine needle floor of the forest” (Benson 134). This imagery relates how while the country is always the same, it is people and situations that change. The “pine needle floor” remains, regardless of whether the person upon it is merely observing or in intense conflict. Also, the “pine needle floor” symbolizes the Spanish people, who remained the same, while foreign outside powers (represented by Jordan) lay upon them.
Erich Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front also uses setting to illustrate the decimation of the warriors inflicted by combat and the overall propagandistic German military experience. The setting that the soldiers must exist in is parabolic in relation to the distress and isolation it causes to the soldiers. At one end there is the front, dismal and dangerous in its being, where the “moody or good-tempered soldiers march up . . . and become instant human animals” (Remarque 56). This is the low of the parabolic surroundings of the soldiers. At the peak are the barracks and the reinforcement depot, where the soldier is able to relax. And on the opposite side of the parabola, are the villages, the homes of the soldiers and the concepts of normal being that have become alien to the soldiers. “[They] believe in such things no longer, [they] believe in the war” (Remarque 82). Thus the normal world of existence where the soldiers ought to be, is cut off from them. The people of this region are pumped with propaganda by the government which is “stupid and distressing” (Remarque 146) for the soldiers. Similarly, the soldiers are naive to the ways of the world, blinded by their training from the government. Thus, those fighting the war are decimated and obscured from the ways of normal existence by those desiring the war to the point where they can no longer view their homes as their homes.
“Spain itself is the hero, the people, the land, the spirit and tragedy of the entire nation, here employed as an emblem of the solidarity and spirituality which makes all Spaniards and all human beings, one” (Stoneback 1490). Ernest Hemingway, in For Whom The Bell Tolls, portrays the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, where the native Spaniards were manipulated and depleted by idealistic foreign powers who used the conflict as a proving ground. “The bell referred to is the funeral bell” (Young 254). The funeral is that of a generation of people, disillusioned by the war, which was the defining factor of those “born into a time of [its] great difficulty” (Hemingway 367). Erich Remarque states similarly in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, that their tales are “of a generation of man who were destroyed by war” (Remarque x). And though Hemingway is specifically calling attention to the anguish of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom The Bell Tolls relates universally to the concept of war. It is “a declaration endorsing the importance of social responsibility. Freedom has the price of eternal vigilance” (Benson 130).
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