Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Rabbits and Hares
Animal imagery pervades For Whom the Bell Tolls,
but rabbits and hares appear most frequently. Robert Jordan’s nickname
for Maria is “Rabbit.” When Robert Jordan first meets Rafael, the
gypsy is making traps for rabbits. Later, Rafael, distracted by
trapping a pair of hares that he has caught mating in the snow,
leaves his post. The guerrilla fighters have a somber meal of rabbit
stew after the Fascists slaughter El Sordo’s men. And shortly before
his death, El Sordo invokes the image of a skinned rabbit when thinking
about how vulnerable before enemy planes he feels on his hilltop.
The association of the guerrilleros with rabbits underscores
their fragile position relative to the Fascists. Throughout the
novel, we get the impression that the Fascists are the hunters and
the guerrilleros the hunted: much like rabbits, Robert Jordan and
his band are prey rather than predators. Like rabbits, the guerrilleros
live in close contact with the natural world: they are a small,
vulnerable group, in sharp contrast to the well-equipped Fascists
with their incessant plane patrols and threatening, industrial war
machinery.
The Forest Floor
For Whom the Bell Tolls opens with Robert
Jordan lying “flat on the brown pine-needled floor of the forest.”
We see him amid the evergreens on the forest floor at several points
throughout the novel, implying how he literally embraces the Spanish
land. On the second night, after it snows, Robert Jordan makes a
bed of spruce branches for himself and Maria to share. His embrace
of Maria and his closeness to the ground becomes a physical act
of love both for the woman and the country. Toward the end of the
novel, Robert Jordan assumes his post as he awaits the start of
the attack on the bridge. On he is again “on his belly behind the
pine trunk” and feels the “give of the brown, dropped pine-needles
under his elbows.” His literal closeness to the earth highlights
the natural, pre-civilized lifestyle that the guerrilla fighters
lead in the wilderness. Robert Jordan takes this position one final
time, at the very end of the novel, when he again lies behind a
tree and feels “his heart beating against the pine needle floor
the forest.” Comparing his position at the end of the novel to his
almost identical position at the beginning reminds us of the ways
in which Robert Jordan has changed over the course of the novel.
There is a new element at the end—his beating heart, which he has
reawakened through his relationships with Maria and with the guerrilla
fighters.
Signs and Omens
Omens abound in For Whom the Bell Tolls,
and the belief in them indicate closeness to a pre-civilized, natural
way of life. For example, the worry Pilar feels after reading Robert
Jordan’s palm is borne out when Robert Jordan is wounded at the
end of the novel. Even characters who claim not to believe in signs
often rely on them subconsciously. Although Robert Jordan professes
not to believe Pilar’s superstitions, he plays games with himself
and repeatedly interprets natural phenomena as signs. His framing
of other people’s behaviors as good signs or bad signs further undermines
his claim not to believe in omens. At the end of the novel, however,
as Robert Jordan faces death and comes to terms with his life, he
grudgingly admits that gypsies do indeed “see something . . . feel
something.” Ultimately, Hemingway implies that the wisdom associated
with the natural, Spanish way of life trumps the other characters’
cynical rationality and skepticism.
Suicide
Throughout For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
characterizes suicide as an act of cowardice by associating it with
characters who are vulnerable or lack strength of spirit. A number
of characters contemplate suicide: Karkov always carries pills to
use to kill himself if he is ever captured, and Maria carries around
a razor blade for the same purpose. Robert Jordan’s father committed
suicide—an act that Robert Jordan says he understands but nonetheless
condemns. The traits of these characters who contemplate suicide
connect the act of suicide to weakness. Robert Jordan’s father is characterized
as weak, Maria is young and female, and Karkov is a man of ideas,
not action. At the end of the novel, Robert Jordan contemplates
suicide but rejects the idea, preferring to struggle to stay awake
despite the pain. Robert Jordan’s reliance on inner strength in
his rejection of suicide contrasts the other characters’ weakness, which
demonstrates that the will to continue living requires psychological
strength.
