Hemingway is the son of a doctor father and a musician mother. People whose families were well-educated and graduated from university. However, when Hemingway’s adolescence, born in 1899, coincided with the outbreak of the first world war, he decided to become a war correspondent and took his way to the newspaper. In fact, he also has a desire to join the army voluntarily, but this desire is not fulfilled due to his eye disability. However, when he heard that the Red Cross was looking for a volunteer medic in 1918, he resigned from the correspondent and tried his luck in this way and found himself at the front.
What he saw at the front leaves a striking impression that will not be erased from Hemingway’s memory for many years. Within a few meters, he sees people with broken arms and legs. He is seriously injured. He even falls in love with the nurse at the hospital where he was admitted for treatment. When the war is over, they agree to marry, but Hemingway’s dream is unfinished because the nurse marries someone else.
After returning to America, he marries Hadley Richardson, returns to war correspondent, but because his son was born, this life abroad becomes unsustainable and Hemingway returns to America.
He married Pauline Pfeiffer after divorcing Hadley Richardson in 1931. Hemingway, who also has two children from Pauline, cannot continue this relationship and settles in Cuba and begins to live there with Martha Gelhorn. His most influential work, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is also alive during these years he spent in Cuba.
The novel begins with a Spanish professor named Robert Jordan, who sided with the republicans in the Spanish civil war, tasked with blowing up a bridge in the war.
Having to cooperate with Pablo’s gang, one of the local organizations, to accomplish the task, Robert confronts the striking thoughts of love and death here and has to reconstruct all his value judgments about life in three days.
The first-person narration of the professor, who experiences the feeling of love while being the subject of a war full of unbearable pain, takes the impressiveness of the events to the next level and an unforgettable classic emerges.
But despite the success of For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway’s life, whose life was spent with wars, is haunted by the shocking experiences and he is dragged into a psychological depression. When the electroshock treatment, which was widely used in those years, did not respond, his condition worsened and he committed suicide by following his father’s footsteps.
I want to mention about quotes. There are many For Whom The Bell Tolls quotes. Just one is enough to see how shocking the others are:
“There is no one in this world who will not be harmed by disaster.” – Page 39.
I think this classic novel should be read one more time today. We are repeating Ernest Hemingway’s question these days, when we almost entered a new cold war period with Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
For Whom Are The Bells Tolls?
We answer like Ernest Hemingway. The bells ring for all of us, not just Ukrainians. If a person is suffering somewhere, those bells are ringing for all humanity.
