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OTHER ELEMENTS
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SETTING (HFORSETT)
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Because For Whom the Bell Tolls is set during the Spanish Civil War,
it is important to know some of the elements of Spanish geography
incorporated in the book. If you look at the series of maps entitled
\"The Course of the Spanish Civil War,\" (see illustration)
you\'ll
notice the increase of Nationalist-held territory from July 1936 to
October 1937. (The novel takes place in May 1937.) By 1937 the
Republicans were steadily losing ground, and Robert Jordan\'s
mission- to blow up a bridge crucial to enemy Nationalist interests-
takes on added importance.
Almost in the center of Spain is Madrid, the capital, once a
Republican stronghold, but in May 1937 close to falling to the
enemy. To the north of Madrid (see map) is the Guadarrama
Range, where
Pablo\'s band is hiding and where the bridge is to be demolished. The
town of La Granja is where members of the band go for supplies and
news of the war. To the southwest of the Guadarrama mountains is the
Gredos Range, where Pablo intends to retreat after the bridge is blown
up. To the west of the Guadarrama Range is the city of Segovia, a
Nationalist stronghold the Republicans hope to capture in their
offensive.
Farther northwest of Segovia is Valladolid, where Maria was taken
prisoner. It was there she was transported by the train that Pablo\'s
band seized and blew up.
Notice, too, the region of Estremadura in the western part of Spain,
where Jordan was working before his current assignment.
Many readers have pointed out that one of Ernest Hemingway\'s major
goals in writing For Whom the Bell Tolls was to demonstrate that the
real victims of the Spanish Civil War were the Spanish people
themselves, torn by the savage self-interest of the competing
political ideologues. The tragic effects of a brutal war on the
peasants for whom it had become a daily reality are revealed in the
rebel camp where Jordan and the others are hiding. These simple,
earthy people have been transformed permanently by the war, and its
toll is immeasurable. Hemingway shows us the cost of war in a
variety of ways: Pilar\'s lengthy and vivid description of the
atrocities inflicted upon Nationalist enemies in her village;
Maria\'s suffering at the hands of the enemy; Pablo\'s erratic behavior;
Anselmo\'s pathetic conflict between loyalty to the cause and his
dislike of killing, to name the most obvious examples. Because the
fate of the Spanish people (mostly farmers) is so directly tied to the
land the war has ravaged, they act as an indivisible part of the
novel\'s setting.
By placing most of the action in the mountain retreat of the
guerrilla band, Hemingway has created a setting that is symbolic in
contrasting ways. On the one hand, the camp hidden in the Guadarrama
Range is a refuge that offers safety for many of the characters.
Here Pablo, Pilar, and the other guerrillas have come to find
temporary safety; here, too, Maria has come to heal physical and
psychic wounds after her imprisonment by the Nationalists. It is in
the mountains that Robert Jordan begins to question his motives as a
participant in this war: through his love for Maria and his
association with the peasants, Jordan is humanized and slowly comes to
realize the truth of the quotation from John Donne at the opening of
the novel: \"No man is an Iland.\"
On the other hand, the mountain hideout also represents the plight
of the Republicans- there they are trapped, blocked by fascist
troops below them and enemy aircraft whizzing over their heads. The
snow of the mountains offers a similar two-sided symbol: beautiful
to look at, it suggests nature at its most peaceful, but the snow is
also deadly, since it reveals the whereabouts of the rebels once
they have walked in it.
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