He was severely wounded on the Austrian front on July 9, 1918. Failing to qualify for the United States Army because of poor eyesight, he enlisted with the American Red Cross to drive ambulances in Italy. After graduation from high school, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked briefly for the Kansas City Star. Reading Group Guide for For Whom the Bell TollsĮrnest Hemingway was born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author’s previous works, For Whom the Bell Tolls stands as one of the best war novels ever written. In his portrayal of Jordan’s love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of a guerilla leader’s last stand, Hemingway creates a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving, and wise. Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, is attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from “the good fight” and one of the foremost classics of war literature.įor Whom the Bell Tolls tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal.

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Ernest Hemingway's masterpiece on war, love, loyalty, and honor tells the story of Robert Jordan, an antifascist American fighting in the Spanish Civil War.

Author for whom the bell tolls