Summary: Epigraph
For Whom the Bell Tolls opens with an
epigraph, a short quotation that introduces the novel, sets the
mood, and presents a theme. This epigraph is from a short essay
by the seventeenth-century British poet John Donne. Donne writes
that no person stands alone—“No man is an island, entire of itself”—because
everyone belongs to a community. As a result, the death of any human
diminishes Donne himself because he is a part of mankind. Donne
admonishes us not to ask who has died when we hear a funeral bell
toll, for it tolls for everyone in the human race.
Summary: Chapter One
On a Saturday afternoon in May 1937,
a young man and an old peasant named Anselmo survey the Spanish
countryside from the side of a hill. The young man is Robert Jordan,
an American university instructor fighting on the Republican side
against the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Anselmo is guiding
Robert Jordan behind enemy lines to join a small band of guerrilla
fighters near the bridge that Robert Jordan has been instructed
to blow up.
Anselmo leaves Robert Jordan near a stream outside the
camp and goes ahead to warn the other guerrilla fighters that a
stranger is approaching. As he waits for Anselmo to return, Robert
Jordan thinks back on the night before, when he received his bridge-blowing
assignment from the Russian General Golz. Golz explained that the
bridge operation is part of a larger Republican offensive to take the
city of Segovia. The bridge must be blown up on Tuesday morning,
after aerial bombardment begins. Both Golz and Robert Jordan understood
that the assignment was difficult.
Anselmo returns with Pablo, the leader of the guerrilla
camp. Pablo is openly hostile to Robert Jordan, who shows the illiterate Pablo
identification papers that Pablo cannot read. Pablo challenges Robert
Jordan’s plan to blow up the bridge and refuses to help carry the
packs full of dynamite until Anselmo scolds him.
At the top of the mountain, the three men pass Pablo’s
makeshift corral of five horses that his guerrilla band has found
or stolen. Pablo tests Robert Jordan’s knowledge of horses by asking
him to identify which of the five horses is lame. Anselmo recalls
the last major guerrilla operation, the bombing of an enemy train,
which Pablo and a Russian operative named Kashkin carried out. Robert Jordan
reveals that Kashkin is now dead. Pablo says that he doesn’t want
to follow Robert Jordan’s orders.
Robert Jordan thinks to himself that Pablo’s sadness is
a sign that Pablo is losing his loyalty to the Republican cause.
Robert Jordan predicts that Pablo will betray the Republican cause.
Robert Jordan believes that he will know when Pablo has made a decision
to betray the guerrillas because Pablo will suddenly start to be
nice. Robert Jordan dismisses his thoughts and looks forward to
dinner.
