“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is a novel created by American writer Ernest Hemingway in 1940. This novel tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American who teaches Spanish in a university and has deep feelings for Spain. He volunteered for the Spanish army to blow up behind enemy lines. To cooperate with the counterattack, he was ordered to contact with the local guerrillas and complete the task of bombing bridges. He enlisted the support of Bilal, the wife of the guerrilla captain Pablo, and the rest of the team. He then isolated the demoralized Pablo, and arranged each man’s task in a step-by-step manner. In the midst of the flames of war, he heals the trauma of Maria, the girl whom Bilal has taken in because she was raped by his enemies. In these three days, Robert experienced the conflict between love and duty and the test of life and death while human nature continues to sublimate. When the bridge was bombed, Robert was wounded in the thigh and left alone to block the enemy. In the end, he sacrificed his young life for the Spanish people.

In “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, efforts are made to achieve a universal sense of harmony between nature and man, and man and woman. This harmony, Hemingway tells us, is the most difficult type of struggles. To understand one’s intimate relationship with nature and one’s co-existence with others requires breaking the consciousness of the human ego, overcoming the arrogant sense of domination and understanding the ethics of interconnectedness, interdependence and care.

-Coreen C.