Thinking activity: For Whom the Bell Tolls

 Thinking activity : For Whom The Bell Tolls

Hello readers,

Today I'm going to Find out some similarities of Hemmingway as a writer…

So, I also have to touch upon such key areas like Language, Narrative Technique , Characterization , Point of view...etc. so, let's start with a basic introduction…

Earnest Hemmingway:

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman. His economical and understated style which he termed the iceberg theory  also had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.more

For Whom The Bell Tolls:

The novel which Written by Hemingway Set in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls follows the struggles of an American college instructor who has left his job to fight for the Republicans. Robert Jordan has been dispatched from Madrid to lead a band of guerrilleros that operates in a perpetual state of leadership crisis.

Characteristics:

Robert Jordan:

An American volunteer for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and the protagonist of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robert Jordan is pragmatic, very good at what he does, and never lets his emotions interfere with his work. He appreciates physical pleasures like smelling pine trees, drinking absinthe, and having sex. At the same time, he is conflicted about his role within the war and within the larger world. Interior dialogues in which he argues with himself about these conflicts constitute a significant part of the novel. Over the course of the novel, he gradually resolves these tensions and learns to integrate his rational, thinking side with his intuitive, feeling side.

Pablo:

The leader of the guerrilla camp. Pablo is an individualist who feels responsible only to himself. Hemingway often compares him to a bull, a boar, and other burly, stubborn, and unpleasant animals. Pablo used to be a great fighter and a great man but has now started drinking and has “gone bad,” as many characters remark. Tired of the war and attached to his horses, Pablo is ready to betray the Republican cause at the start of the novel. 

 Pilar:

Pablo’s part-gypsy “woman.” Pilar means “pillar” in Spanish, and indeed, the fiercely patriotic, stocky, and steadfast Pilar is—if not the absolute leader—the support center of the guerrilla group. Pilar keeps the hearth, fights in battle, mothers Robert Jordan, and bullies Pablo and Rafael. She has an intuitive, mystical connection to deeper truths about the working of the world.

Maria:

A young woman with Pablo’s band who falls in love with Robert Jordan. The victim of rape at the hands of Fascists who took over her town, Maria is frequently described by means of earth imagery. Hemingway compares her movements to a colt’s, and Robert Jordan affectionately calls her “Rabbit.”

These are the main characters of the novel…

Themes:

The main themes of the novel are that 

⚫The Loss of Innocence in War,

⚫The Value of Human Life

And

⚫Romantic Love as Salvation

 These are the main themes of the novel which is taken by Hemmingway here.

Another novel by Earnest Hemmingway named…

A Farewell to Arms 

A Farewell to Arms is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. 

Critical reception in this :

A Farewell to Arms was met with favorable criticism and is considered one of Hemingway's best literary works.

Gore Vidal wrote of the text: "... a work of ambition, in which can be seen the beginning of the careful, artful, immaculate idiocy of tone that since has marked ... [Hemingway's] prose."The last line of the 1929 New York Times review reads: "It is a moving and beautiful book."more

Characteristics:

 Lieutenant Frederic Henry:

The novel’s narrator and protagonist. A young American ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I, Henry meets his military duties with quiet stoicism. He displays courage in battle, but his selfless motivations undermine all sense of glory and heroism, abstract terms for which Henry has little patience. His life lacks real passion until he meets the beautiful Catherine Barkley.

Catherine Barkley:

An English nurse’s aide who falls in love with Henry. Catherine is exceptionally beautiful and possesses, perhaps, the most sensuously described hair in all of literature. When the novel opens, Catherine’s grief for her dead fiancé launches her headlong into a playful, though reckless, game of seduction. Her feelings for Henry soon intensify and become more complicated, however, and she eventually swears lifelong fidelity to him.

Rinaldi:

A surgeon in the Italian army. Mischievous, wry, and oversexed, Rinaldi is Henry’s closest friend. Although Rinaldi is a skilled doctor, his primary practice is seducing beautiful women. When Henry returns to Gorizia, Rinaldi tries to whip up a convivial atmosphere.

These are the main characters of this novel…

Three things came together for Hemingway…

He had been a war journalist in the WW1, and he used to send his reports back to the Newspaper he worked for by telegrams

His laconic style of writing is the outcome of having to sum up events in short terse statements

His experiences in the war gave him the Fatalist attitude that underlies his works

He live at a time of rapid change in Post-war America when there was a burst of creativity in what F. Scott-Fitzgerald called ‘The Jazz Age’, that not only referred to music but to the technology of radio, movies, fashion, and all an aspect of a new world, but at the same time the Depression, and a loss of hope

It was a world split apart, with the demand for instant gratification and ‘Live for today’, against the background of Prohibition, censorship, and America emerging as a Global power

Hemingway’s stories use characters to sum up the times, and reflect on the beliefs that traditionally worked, but were being tested at every level of society….

What kind of talent Hemingway had ?

He had a talent for the kind of ambiguity found in Modernist writing without the inaccessibility of some of those peers, notably, Joyce, Stein, and Eliot. He wrote about things more ordinary with a deeper context behind them, yet in language that was straightforward.

Lastly, he worked very hard. Wrote a lot, and lived a lot. The reason he ended his life is attributed to the fact that shock therapy made him unable to write. Writing, in many ways, was his life.

Hemingway’s Language Style and Writing Techniques:

Among many great American writers, Hemingway is famous for his objective and terse prose style. As all the novels Hemingway published in his life, The Old Man and the Sea typically reflects his unique writing style. The language is simple and natural on the surface, but actually deliberate and artificial. Hemingway’s style is related to his experience as a journalist. The influence of his style is great all over the world. The Old Man and the Sea is full of facts, most of which comes from Hemingway own experience. In the forepart of the novel, they are used to show the quality of Santiago’s life, and are narrated simply and naturally; while in the latter part of the novel, they are used from inside Santiago’s own consciousness and form part of a whole scheme of the novel. 

Hemingway has often been described as a master of dialogue; in story after story, novel after novel, readers and critics have remarked, "This is the way that these characters would really talk." Yet, a close examination of his dialogue reveals that this is rarely the way people really speak.

 

 The effect is accomplished, rather, by calculated emphasis and repetition that makes us remember what has been said. 

And also Hemingway took great pains with his work; he revised tirelessly. "A writer's style," he said, "should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous." Hemingway more than fulfilled his own requirements for good writing. His words are simple and vigorous, burnished and uniquely brilliant….

⚫ Words

1388

⚫ Characters

8366

⚫ Sentences

99

⚫ Paragraphs

56