For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

This may be the best book by my favorite author. I am incredibly partial to Hemingway's short stories but this full length novel is amazing.

Robert Jordan an American College teacher is in Spain and has joined the movement against the Fascists. The movement being a communist movement. These are not the big bad communists of the late 40's and 50's, though one wonders how this book would have been received if released ten years later in that time frame, but the idealistic peasantry fighting against the fascism which begat Franco.

Joining a guerilla group behind the Fascist lines, tasked with a mission to blow a bridge we are with the characters for four days.

All the characters are well drawn. Pablo the guerilla band's leader who does not bless the mission as it he feels is too dangerous and will expose them, Maria, a young woman ravaged when her family was killed and still recovering, and Pablo's woman who is really the leader of the group, a big ugly faced Spanish woman who believes in the Republic with all her heart.

My favorite character is surely Anselmo however, an old man who in the Communist way acknowledges that there is no God anymore but wonders repeatedly if after the war when the Republic is in power if there shall not be some kind of public penance so that all the sins of the war can be washed away. He cries when he must kill a sentry though he performs his duty admirably. Like Hemingway's best male characters Anselmo is stout and decided in his actions, despite any internal dialogue he might feel.

Hemingway uses much internal dialogue with the main character Robert Jordan but it is the character of Anselmo who we see very little of his internal dialogue but by what we do see we feel his internal decision making much more vividly because of the simpleness of it. Robert Jordan thinks for pages on end, Anselmo just worries about his soul in short sentences. In the end is not that what we all do.

The ending is one of great dignity and forgive me manliness. A wonderful book.