Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Loss of Innocence in War
Each of the characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls loses
his or her psychological or physical innocence to the war. Some
endure tangible traumas: Joaquín loses both his parents and is forced
to grow up quickly, while Maria loses her physical innocence when
she is raped by a group of Fascist soldiers. On top of these tangible,
physical costs of the war come many psychological costs. Robert
Jordan initially came to Spain with idealism about the Republican
cause and believed confidently that he was joining the good side.
But after fighting in the war, Robert Jordan becomes cynical about
the Republican cause and loses much of his initial idealism.
The victims of violence in the war are not the only ones
to lose their innocence—the perpetrators lose their innocence too.
The ruffians in Pablo’s hometown who participate in the massacre
of the town Fascists have to face their inner brutality afterward.
Anselmo has to suppress his aversion to killing human beings, and
Lieutenant Berrendo has to quell his aversion to cutting heads off
of corpses.
War even costs the innocence of people who aren’t involved
in it directly. War journalists, writers, and we as readers of novels
like For Whom the Bell Tolls have to abandon our
innocent expectation that wars involve clean moral choices that
distinguish us from the enemy. Hemingway shows in the novel
that morality is subjective and conditional, and that the sides
of right and wrong are almost never clear-cut. With no definite
sides of right and wrong in For Whom the Bell Tolls,
there is no sense of glorious victory in battle, no sense of triumph
or satisfaction that good prevails and evil is defeated.
The Value of Human Life
Many characters die during the course of the novel, and
we see characters repeatedly question what can possibly justify
killing another human being. Anselmo and Pablo represent two extremes
with regard to this question. Anselmo hates killing people in all
circumstances, although he will do so if he must. Pablo, on the
other hand, accepts killing as a part of his life and ultimately
demonstrates that he is willing to kill his own men just to take
their horses. Robert Jordan’s position about killing falls somewhere
between Anselmo’s and Pablo’s positions. Although Robert Jordan
doesn’t like to think about killing, he has killed many people in
the line of duty. His personal struggle with this question ends
on a note of compromise. Although war can’t fully absolve him of
guilt, and he has “no right to forget any of it,” Robert Jordan
knows both that he must kill people as part of his duties in the
war, and that dwelling on his guilt during wartime is not productive.
The question of when it is justifiable to kill
a person becomes complicated when we read that several characters,
including Andrés, Agustín, Rafael, and even Robert Jordan, admit
to experiencing a rush of excitement while killing. Hemingway does
not take a clear moral stance regarding when it is acceptable to
take another person’s life. At times he even implies that killing
can be exhilarating, which makes the morality of the war in For
Whom the Bell Tolls even murkier.
Romantic Love as Salvation
Even though many of the characters in For Whom
the Bell Tolls take a cynical view of human nature and
feel fatigued by the war, the novel still holds out hope for romantic
love. Even the worldly-wise Pilar, in her memories of Finito, reveals
traces of a romantic, idealistic outlook on the world. Robert Jordan
and Maria fall in love at first sight, and their love is grand and
idealistic. Love endows Robert Jordan’s life with new meaning and
gives him new reasons to fight in the wake of the disillusionment
he feels for the Republican cause. He believes in love despite the
fact that other people—notably Karkov, who subscribes to the “purely
materialistic” philosophy fashionable with the Hotel Gaylord set—reject
its existence. This new acceptance of ideal, romantic love is one
of the most important ways in which Robert Jordan rejects abstract
theories in favor of intuition and action over the course of the
novel.
