For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway's Undiscovered Country (Twayne's Masterwork Studies) Hardcover – June 1, 1994

Read this book, then study that war in Spain. Then read the book several times more.

Didn't realize it was a a guide

I have read a number of these Twayne books and they have all been of a pretty high quality. They all tend to be structured the same and they almost always have lots of interesting insights into the work that is being analyzed. For Whom the Bell Tolls is by far my favorite Hemingway book. I have also read at least one essay by Allen Josephs before, an essay on The Sun Also Rises, and it was probably the best essay I have ever read on Hemingway's first novel. There is no doubt that Josephs is a very knowledgeable Hemingway scholar and he tends to be interested in the Jungian mythico-religious symbolism of Hemingway's works, something that I am very interested in, but most Hemingway scholars ignore or pass by. So, I had high hopes for this book but I wound up being pretty disappointed. There were a number of reasons for that.The main problem I had with the book is the amount of time Josephs spent trying to figure out who the real people the various characters in the novel were based on or the real events behind the action. Josephs points out right at the beginning that Hemingway's novel is a work of fiction and Hemingway believed that it was often possible to reach a higher truth through a work of imagination than a strictly literal or factually accurate account. I agree with Hemingway in that regard but, instead of analyzing the book as a work of fiction, Josephs spends pages and pages trying to find the little factual details that might have been the germ for various characters or events in the book. Of course, any claims as to Hemingway's sources are always going to be somewhat uncertain, but even if it were possible to reach certainty, I don't think that would add very much to our interpretation or appreciation of the book, and it would not help us understand Hemingway's artistic choices.A great example of what I am talking about comes late in the book. Josephs asks: why did Hemingway center the novel around the blowing of a bridge? There are a couple of ways you could answer that question. You could try to figure out what the bridge represents symbolically and why Hemingway made an artistic choice to have the action center around the blowing of a bridge. You could also analyze why the choice of a bridge made for a more exciting climax or why a bridge was able to solve certain problems of the action that a train would not have solved. In other words, you can go about asking why Hemingway made an artistic choice to have the action center around the blowing of a bridge rather than a train or something else.That, to me, is the appropriate way to go about answering such a question when you are dealing with a work of fiction, but Josephs instead spends pages speculating about what real events Hemingway might or might not have witnessed that might have provided the real life event upon which Hemingway based his account (he actually does examine the symbolic element too but only after pages of speculation on real life prototypes). Even if Hemingway had used a real event, he would only have chosen that particular event because it suited his artistic purposes. Even if Hemingway had witnessed a real blowing of a bridge he would only have used it if the bridge suited his purpose. That means that we can understand Hemingway's artistic choices, and the meaning of the novel, without knowing whether there was a real event behind it.Josephs seems to be trying to defend Hemingway through much of the book from criticisms of historical inaccuracy. Many of Hemingway's Spanish critics criticized the novel for being historically inaccurate. Josephs rightly points out that Tolstoy's War and Peace suffered from the same criticisms when it was published but they eventually died down and were forgotten and the book was treated as what in fact it had always been: a brilliant work of FICTION. It seems like a waste of time for Josephs to spend so much time defending Hemingway's book from similar criticisms that are certainly going to meet a similar fate with or without Josephs help. It is not necessary to defend the book from such critics.The sections on the action were a bit more interesting but I did not feel like I got very many interesting insights out of them. They were, in places at least, not much more than a summary of the action of the novel. Anyone who has recently read the book, and who has the action fresh in their mind, will feel like they are just being told what they already know. Yes, I know that on the third day X happened and then Y happened, etc.. There were certainly a few interesting insights in the book. I enjoyed Joseph's discussion of the novel as a spiritual quest for union between the male and female principles, the search for mystical union, and the introduction of a new earthy primeval feminine perspective in Hemingway's fiction (represented primarily by Pilar). There was also some interesting biographical information, and quotes from letters, but I was more interested in getting an analysis of the novel than biographical information.Unfortunately, I don't feel like this particular book added much to my understanding of the novel or the themes or Hemingway's writing style. I now know that the cave that all the characters stayed in was not really a cave but just some rocks that looked like a cave from a distance, and that the bridge was really a stone bridge and Hemingway changed it to an iron bridge, and that the bridge was really behind Republican lines and there was no guerilla action in that area, and Hemingway might or might not have observed some guerilla action first-hand. I am not sure how any of that knowledge increases my understanding of Hemingway's novel though...

Truly one of a kind, highly fascinating if you're interested in Ernest Hemingway