For Whom the Bell Tolls

So it's been quite a while since I posted about anything that I've read lately, but the book I've been working on lately is Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. I'm not finished reading it yet, but there are some things that I wanted to mention. I really like Hemingway's writing style. It's very readable, and the way he does stream-of-consciousness is very similar to the way I think. One of the things that stands out to me about his writing is how much action really takes place in a conversation. When the characters get together, they talk about a lot of different principles that pertain to what it's like to be a human being.

This particular novel takes place during the Spanish Civil War and centers around the orders Robert Jordan, the main character, has to blow up a bridge across enemy lines. So he hooks up with some revolutionaries that are hiding out in the mountains to help him with that task. In their interactions they talk about everything from killing--whether it's okay and how it affects you--to what it means to love another person. Robert Jordan has many internal conversations about whether--or how much--he's been corrupted by the war and his role in it.

One of the biggest themes that I've seen so far in the book is that both sides of the conflict have so much in common. Both sides have decent people who might be good friends if only they didn't wear different uniforms. Both sides have also committed atrocities against the other. In this way Hemingway rips away the "us vs. evil" mindset and reminds us that every person has a name, a face, a history. Which leaves us with the question, what cause is so important that it's worth fighting and killing your brothers to accomplish? Is it really worth the suffering war creates? It all comes back to the words of John Donne quoted at the beginning of the text:

"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."