eller and became the literary work that most Americans believed was the best portrayal which had ever been written about of the events of the Spanish Civil War.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway's study of men in battle, from the traitors and the cowards to the bravest of soldiers. The action-filled book gives a suspenseful account of many of the atrocities inflicted by the officials during the Spanish civil war. Just as Goya's Disasters of War etchings depicted horrors like theft, rape, and mutilation which were inflicted on rural Spanish communities, Hemingway's story details how peasants were tossed over a steep cliff to their death and how children's parents and siblings were shot during that war (Hemingway 134).
As in many of Hemingway's novels, the actual and the fictional live side by side. The book's hero is Robert Jordan, a former professor of Spanish at the University of Montana who had, like Hemingway himself, written a book (albeit an unsuccessful one) about what Jordan had discovered in 10 years of traveling through Spain (Hemingway 248). Moreover, Hemingway's leading character was based partly on himself and his own experiences in Spain (Mellow 518). For example, the gypsy c
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