Unnatural Habitat

Ernest Hemingway’s famous war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is often cited as an exploration of the effects of war on people — in particular, the Spanish people during the tragic Spanish Civil War. The novel’s protagonist, Robert Jordan, is an American professor who volunteers on the side of the Spanish Republic, and, through the course of the novel, exhibits all the traits of a rugged Hemingway hero. Although set in the midst of the civil war, the war atmosphere Hemingway created is poorly executed, and his characters — with the exception of Robert Jordan — are hardly credible. It is really a novel about Ernest Hemingway’s ideal man: heroic, graceful in the face of death, enduring, macho, and, more than any of the other characteristics, a rugged individual. But it took him 400 pages too many to explain this.

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