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The final, lengthy chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls is devoted
almost exclusively to action. Hemingway has completed his
philosophizing. He now leaves it to you to gather the thematic threads
and weave them into the story\'s final scenes as you learn the fate
of the bridge, of the guerrilla band, and of Robert Jordan.
As Jordan sets out to blow up the bridge, he knows that the
Republican offensive is unlikely to be successful. Subconsciously,
he\'s known that for quite some time, and he now admits it. He admits
that victory for the cause is several years away. It can\'t be expected
with this bridge, this offensive. It\'ll take better equipment for
one thing. Portable short-wave radios would have helped in this
particular operation, he muses. But he\'s going to give this
operation his all anyway, since what will happen in the future can
depend on what is done today. How do you feel about his attitude?
You might compare your feelings going into an activity that you were
virtually positive would not be successful. Did you try your best to
succeed despite the odds? Or did you simply try to avoid getting
hurt or totally disgraced- and then wait for \"next time?\"
Jordan watches the changing of the sentries at each end of the
bridge. He sees the new sentry at his end, sleepy and rolling a
cigarette. Jordan decides he won\'t look at him again.
Even here, Hemingway raises the theme of the individual person.
Why won\'t Jordan look again at the sentry? Maybe he doesn\'t care to
see the man as a man like himself, not simply as \"one of them.\" That
would be extremely uncomfortable. It might make him hesitate. At
this point, Jordan the soldier cannot afford to hesitate.
He hears the bombs- the signal for him to begin.
The sentry hears them too, stands up, and comes out of his sentry
box. It\'s the last thing he does; Jordan is a very good shot. Anselmo,
at the other end of the bridge, has done his job too, although not
quite as coldly. The big difference, when they meet at the center,
is that Anselmo has tears for what he\'s done. Jordan doesn\'t, but
notices Anselmo\'s tears and remarks to himself, \"Goddam good face.\"
The old man is left to comfort himself very briefly with, \"We have
to kill them.\"
It\'s time for Jordan the demolition expert to prove his stuff. And
he does. Remember he has to improvise, because Pablo threw out the
detonation devices.
But what does he think of while he\'s hanging on the bridge,
improvising a way to blow it up and bring victory to the great
cause? His mind leaps from one subject to the next- Anselmo\'s
killing of the enemy soldier, a trout in the water below, the colors
of the hillside. He even plays word games as he associates his name
with that of the Jordan River and the old hymn, \"Roll, Jordan roll.\"
He cautions himself to \"pull yourself together.\" Hemingway captures
very well the intense pressure Jordan must be undergoing as he waits
for whatever will happen next.
In the meantime, two of the band will not see the hillside turn
completely green. Eladio has been shot in the head. Fernando is
lying fatally wounded on the hillside. Hemingway paints a moving
picture of Fernando\'s loyalty and willingness to serve even to the
death.
Pilar is becoming impatient with Jordan\'s slowness in bringing about
the actual demolition. Jordan himself isn\'t too happy with its
progress and wishes there were more time. He\'s playing out more wire
toward the opposite end of the bridge when he hears firing from that
end.
He wishes it were Pablo, but it isn\'t. It\'s the Nationalists. Jordan
is desperate for time now. He needs only a few more seconds. He
hears the truck coming; then he sees it; then he shouts to Anselmo,
\"Blow her!\"
\"...and then it commenced to rain pieces of steel.\"
The aftermath: the center section of the bridge is gone. So is
Anselmo, killed by a piece of steel from the blast. Fernando on the
nearby hillside is unconscious, with little life left.
Pilar congratulates Jordan, but he is in no mood for
congratulations. Hemingway has an explanation for this: \"In him,
too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order
that they may continue to be soldiers.\" Sorrow to despair to hatred...
so that the cycle can continue.
Then the scene shifts to Maria, as she holds the horses for the
retreat. She follows the pattern of Joaquin and Anselmo: when danger
is imminent (in this case, as she sees it, more to Jordan than to
herself), she prays- \"automatically,\" Hemingway tells us.
It\'s the type of prayer sometimes called a bartering with God. She
promises (in this case the Virgin Mary) she\'ll do \"anything thou
sayest ever\" as long as Jordan returns safe from the bridge.
And then the bridge explodes.
Pilar shouts to her that her \"Ingles\" is all right.
Watching the planes in the sky, Jordan knows that things are going
wrong, and he feels a sense of unreality. Four days ago everything was
okay. He was the American partizan, here to do a demolition for the
sake of the Republicans just as he had done several times before.
Now he almost can\'t comprehend what he\'s become involved in.
Look at the line \"It was as though you had thrown a stone and the
stone made a ripple and the ripple returned roaring and toppling as
a tidal wave.\" This image, and those that immediately follow- the
echo, the striking of one man- emphasize Hemingway\'s theme of
interdependency. Just as one act on Jordan\'s part has resulted in a
number of other acts that affect all those around him, so the
actions of everyone affect many other people. What may seem minor
can have a monumental impact.
Pablo reappears, scrambling across the bridgeless gorge. There
will be plenty of horses now, he announces. All of his recently
recruited volunteers are dead. He has killed them for their horses
so that his original band of guerrillas can escape. His
justification for shooting? \"They were not of our band.\"
Jordan and Maria share a limited but intense reunion at the scene of
the horses Maria had been watching.
It\'s time for the escape. Pablo has the plan: they will ride down
the slope to the road and cross it one at a time. Crossing the road
will be dangerous because they\'ll be within range of the enemy tank up
by the bridge. But it\'s the only way. After they have crossed the road
and ridden up into the timber of the opposite slope, they can head for
the Gredos Mountains and safety.
Pablo and the others, including Maria, make the crossing. They
draw fire but make it safely. Jordan makes it across the road too.
Then, as his horse is laboring up the slope, there\'s \"a banging
acrid smelling clang like a boiler being ripped apart.\"
The enemy tank has had a lucky shot. Aiming into the timber, it
has found a target- but not Robert Jordan. His horse has been hit
and has fallen on him. In the fall, Jordan\'s thigh is so badly
broken that the leg swivels in all directions like a piece of loose
string. The broken edge of the bone is nearly through the skin.
Primitivo and Agustin drag him further up to safety. Pilar assures
him that they can bind up the injury and he can ride one of the pack
horses. But Pablo shakes his head- meaning it won\'t work. Jordan can\'t
ride the horse and make it. Jordan nods agreement.
Pablo is a realist now. Has he, in fact, been the realist all along?
In spite of his weakness for wine, horses, and a relatively
comfortable life at the hideout, has he seen some things more
clearly than the other people have?
Jordan and Pablo converse briefly. Both are aware of the crucial
shortage of time. Both know that Jordan and Maria must say a final
good-bye. But Maria will not want to leave her man behind. Jordan
instructs Pablo on how to handle her.
\"We will not be going to Madrid,\" he tells Maria.
Of course they won\'t. But how long have you known or suspected
that Jordan and Maria\'s \"storybook\" romance would not be a \"lived
happily ever after\" tale of a college professor and his lovely Spanish
wife?
Maria will not leave until he commands her to do so. He explains
that he will live on in her, that he will go on to Madrid in her:
\"Thou art all there will be of me.\"
Pilar and Pablo take her away. A final time, just before she
disappears from sight, she begs to stay, and again he repeats, \"I am
with thee... We are both there.\"
The last of the band to say good-bye is Agustin. Even this hardened,
foul-mouthed peasant is crying. He asks if Jordan wants to be shot.
Jordan declines. He will stay there on the hillside with the one small
machine gun and try to be useful.
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NOTE: As he lies there, Jordan\'s mind wanders through a variety of
subjects: the past three days, his life in general, his grandfather,
the fate of his comrades now fleeing to another retreat. As he tries
to endure the increasing pain, he even allows a bit of humor to
enter his thoughts, as he wishes briefly that he had brought a spare
leg.
Throughout the interior monologue, the central theme that emerges is
\"No man is an island.\" Jordan has chosen to stay behind and serve as a
temporary obstacle to the approaching enemy in order to help the
others, especially Maria. At one point he says to himself, \"You can do
nothing for yourself, but perhaps you can do something for another.\"
In that simple statement, Jordan reveals that he has moved from
thinking mainly about the Republican cause to thinking about the
well-being of another individual.
The cause is still important, to be sure, but it now shares a
place in his heart and his consciousness with the realization that
human beings are equally as important. The fate of one man is
interlocked with the fate of others.
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With immense effort, Jordan manages to turn his body over and around
so that he\'s lying on his belly, facing downhill, in a position to
be \"useful\" with his machine gun when the enemy appears on the road
below.
The broken leg, which had been almost numb at first, now begins to
pain Jordan terribly and brings the prospect of suicide to mind. He
weighs the reasons for and against it. Basically, it seems cowardly
and reminds him of his father.
But several times he feels himself losing consciousness from the
pain. If enemy soldiers find him unconscious, they will revive him and
probably torture him to gain information. That possibility seems to
make suicide the lesser of two evils.
Again and again he changes his mind. Suicide would be
acceptable... then, no it wouldn\'t- not as long as there\'s something
left that you can do.
He keeps hanging on and hoping the enemy will come soon. And they
do. Hemingway says that Robert Jordan\'s luck held very good. The
Nationalist soldiers are on the trail of Pablo and his band. Holding
them up or causing confusion by killing the officer is one final thing
Jordan can do. But this time it\'s not so much to aid the Republic.
It\'s to buy time for Maria and the others.
The officer comes into view. In a final piece of irony, it\'s
Lieutenant Berrendo- the man who didn\'t climb El Sordo\'s hill
because he was positive someone was alive up there. He will pass
within twenty yards of Robert Jordan.
Robert Jordan lies, just as he did in the opening scene of the
story, on the pine-needled forest floor of the Spanish mountains.
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