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The Sun Also Rises & For Whom the Bell Tolls

dual characters of the story. The setting is clearly a part of the author's effort to depict the tragedy of these individuals who are, in essence, "homeless" in the world. Their travels in Europe are meant to reflect an aspect of this homelessness, this tragedy.

If The Sun Also Rises depicts the tragedy of Americans in Europe after the First World War, then For Whom The Bell Tolls shows a later generation in the midst of one front of the next World War, and the tragedy is even more intense because of the intensified setting, both in terms of time and place. It is as much a tragedy of an entire country, an entire world on the brink of Fascist catastrophe, as it is a tragedy of the characters, American and European, depicted. As Williams writes, "Nineteen years later, when Hemingway visited Franco's Spain for the first time since the civil war, fearing arrest, he was instead treated like royalty by the Spanish people, former comrades and enemies alike. They understood better than anyone else, it seems, the truth of his telling of their own tragedy" (Williams 154).

The settings of both books similarly help establish Hemingway's value system, his ethical vision, which argues that man is essentially an existential creature, alone in the world, and defined by his action, his loyalty toward his own duties and principles, and bound to a tragic fate. In For Whom The Bell Tolls, for example, the setting of the Spanish Civil War gives Jordan the opportunity to express the author's ethical and philosophical reality. Jordan refuses to commit suicide, as Williams points out, but puts himself in a situation--perhaps inevitably--which led to his death. The death, however, was one in which Jordan's life found meaning, despite the tragedy. He resists suicide and "endures to engage in a fight with the pursuing Fascist cavalry that can only end his life, but will give his friends time . . . Thus the final passage is the Hemingway signature...

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The Sun Also Rises & For Whom the Bell Tolls. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:35, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705098.html