For whom the Bell Tolls

Rehmat Nseer
Roll No. 15
Presenting on: Chapter 16
& 17
Presenting to: Dr. Amna
Umar
Brief Overview of Chapter 16 & 17

 When Jordan returns to the camp , Maria

helps him to dry himself, much to Pilar’s
contempt.
 Jordan asks Maria to take dinner with him.
 Jordan tries to provoke Pablo to get an
opportunity to kill him.
 Pilar insults Pablo and asks him to go out of
the cave probably in terms of saving his life.
 Inside the cave, guerilla band decides to kill Pablo the
same night.
Pablo enters into the cave in a reconciliatory mood,
smiling, over-friendly and markedly questions whether
they were talking about him.
 The idea of killing him is abandoned, probably, because:
 He has over-heard the plan
 He also proposes a good defense when he reminds
them that he is the only one who can lead them to
safety after blowing the bridge.

 Pablo’s threat is now more prevalent in the minds of

band.
Critical Analysis of these two chapters

 Fernando
 A dignified personality
‘the sound of the word, of the gross word
spoken before the women, was offensive to
him’(page224)
 A comic relief
 Symbol of Christ for Jordan:
 ‘’the Lord and the master’’, Pilar
said.(page222)
 Republican’s sense of Religion
‘First he is the Lord of the Manor. Now he is our ex-Lord
himself’(page 220)
 Pilar’s contempt for Robert Jordan and its causes:
In chp 12:
‘He can have thee, Pilar said and ran fingers around the
lob of her ear but I’m very jelous.’(page167)
In chapter 16:
‘you would think that man had never dampened foot
before.’(page220)
 Bacchus: A Bacchus:
symbol for Counterpart of
Pablo Greek God
‘Go with Dionysus
Bacchus’, said God of
Robert Jordan. agriculture
(page 221) and wine
 Difference between Spanish and American culture
“Come on and eat. In my country a man doesn’t eat
before his woman.”
That is thy country. Here it is better to eat after
(page 223)
 Transformation in Pablo’s character:
• Symbol of changing conditions of war
 Jordan’s fear regarding Communism
“Then you have a communism in your country?
No. That is done under the Republic.”(page224)
O Misuse of the Cause (page 238)
‘Fernando said. I believe we are justified in
believing that he constitutes a danger to the
Republic’.
O Connectivity: A major theme of this novel
Articles: 1. A matter of Love and Death:
Hemingway’s developing
Psychosexuality in For Whom the
Bell Tolls.
2. Jordan as Hemingway & concept
of suicide In For Whom the Bell
Tolls.

3. Commentary on varieties of
dying and not dying in For Whom
the Bell Tolls.
1.Hemingway’s developing
psychosexuality
 Carl Eby’s recent psychoanalytical investigation
of For Whom the bell Tolls
• Hemingway: A patriarchal grounded man
• Solid masculinity

 Eby’s lack of understanding

• Nancy Comley and Robert Scholes’s views
• Relation of Pilar & Maria(Homosexuality)
• Hemingway’s changed perceptions about the
gender roles
O Hemingway’s former concept about love:
“ultimate impossibility between man and woman”
Examples:
1. Lack of trust between Jake & Betty in ‘The Sun also
Rises’
2. Love game between Frederic and Catherine in A
Farewell to Arms
 Developed conception about Love in For Whom the
Bell Tolls
1. Love: A symbol of life
Jordan thinks that he and Maria are ‘making an alliance
against death’ (264)
 Treatment of Time
1. Time defying temporal logic
2. Time here is not chronological but psychological
“if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I
have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it.
And there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the
rest of your lives.”
 Love: less physical, more
mystical

“ We will not go to Madrid now but I go always with thee

wherever thou goes. Understand? … as long as there is
one of us, there is both of us.” (463)
O Hemingway: deviating his patriarchal Heroic concept
O Male self-transcendence into the ‘other’
Hemingway’s transformed views
about Gender Roles
 Maria: a submissive & passive woman
“ I will make thee as good wife as I
can…clearly I am not well trained but I will try
to make up for that… I will go to a school to
learn to be a wife , if there is such a school,
and study at it.”(348)
 Male protagonist’s views on Inter gender
harmony
“what we have, we have together and we will
keep it and guard it.” (349)
2.Jordan as Hemingway & the
concept of Suicide

O Jordan v/s Hemingway

O Comparison of Jordan’s father with Dr. Clarence
Hemingway
O Gun: A symbol of cowardice
“…he climbed out on the rock and leaned over and
saw his face in the still water and saw himself
holding the gun, and then he dropped it, holding it
by the muzzle, and saw it go down making
bubbles…
O …until it was just as big as a watch charm in
that clear water, and then it was out of
sight.”
O Psychological effects of Parents’ death
O Difference between Jordan and Hemingway
3.Varieties of dying and not dying
in For Whom the Bell Tolls
O Robert Motherwell
 A major 20th century artist
 Youngest American expressionist
 Elegies reflecting:
1. Spanish Civil War
2. Bullfighting
3. Figures
4. Lamentation
s
s
O Alive character (Finito) & (Pilar) are dead
inside
O Finito and Bullfighter:
‘the head of the bull was though he were alive,
his forehead was curly as in life and his
nostrils were open and his eyes were bright
and was looking straight at Finito…… looked at
the bull and pulled further back and then he
said, ‘No. very loudly and a big blob of blood
came out and he didn’t even put up the
napkin and it slit down his chin and he was
still looking at the bull.’
O Pilar:
“when such a woman comes out…holding her
whiskers of age on her chin and on her
cheeks, set in the waxen white of her face as
the sprouts grow from the seed of the bean,
not bristles but pale sprouts in the death of
her face.”
O Misogynistic tone
Different connotations of ‘Earth-moved’:
O Earth moved for Guerilla band after the
attack of Fascists:(page 321)
 “then through the hammering of the gun,
there was the whistle of the gun,….and then
the earth rolled under his knees and then
waved up to hit him in the face…But he was
not dead because the whistle came again
and the earth rolled under him…then they
came again and the earth lurched under his
belly…”
 Retaliation of Nature
Earth-moving on page174
O “the earth moved,’Maria said, not looking at
the waman. ‘Truly. It was a thing I cannot tell
thee…’For you Ingles?’ Pilar looked at Robert
Jordan. ‘Dont lie. ‘Yes’ he said. ‘Truly’.
‘Good’, said Pilar. ‘Good that is something.’”
O Unpredictability of Hemingway’s narrative
Varieties of Dying: Robert’s father as a
cobrade(coward)
“I will never forget how sick it made me the
first time when I knew he was a cobrade. He
was just a coward and that was the worst luck
any man could have.”
Varieties of not Dying: Pablo as Cobrade
“ Augustin hit him hard in the mouth and Pablo
laughed at him…Nobody here has cojones to
kill me and this hand is silly. ‘Cobrade’
Augustin said.”
Thank You.