Analysis Of For Whom The Bell Tolls

Kaitlynn Gates Gates1

Mrs.Litts

English III

9 May 2014

For Whom The Bell Tolls Research Paper

War is said to be human nature. "To make war all you need is intelligence.” (Hemingway)

It is pre-wired into our brains and can have an outcome with some serious psychological problems but yet humans continue to put themselves through battles because of our “...war-prone ‘human nature’” (Barash) . Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls takes place during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the main character, Robert Jordan suffers through emotional trauma as being part of the war. He sees people being killed, loses friends and is forced to be part of an operation to blow up a bridge that will in turn kill people. This takes a toll on his psychological state of mind. As supported through Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, war can cause loss of morals and values, be detrimental to one’s psychological and physical health, and is a part of human nature.

War affects people differently, depending on the person’s morals and their position in the war, whether it be a soldier, family member, or a civilian. Robert Jordan was not necessarily eager to enter the Spanish Civil War in For Whom The Bell Tolls but he knew that he was needed for his knowledge of explosives. Robert Jordan had planned to not be involved in battle because of his religious morals but after arriving he realized that his plans could not be a reality. In For

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Whom The Bell Tolls “The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man…” (Hemingway). Robert Jordan and m...

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...tracks pretzeling of snipers taking out troops that stumble into their sights.”(Stephan) The author makes direct comparisons to For Whom the Bell Tolls and explains how “...that image has...shaped modern day impressions” on war. Wilkinson blames Hemingway and other authors for putting this point of view into readers’ minds about war. It states that people only thing this way because of the books and that real war is not as exciting as it seems. This article is very biased but still makes a good argument about what an actual reader feels about war and war novels. The author specifically targets Hemingway’s work. In my research paper I can support people’s views on war from a different viewpoint and not that we want to get in wars. And the claim that we even know anything about war except for the images that have been put into ours mind by writers like Hemingway.