Love in For Whom the Bell Tolls Essay

The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is based on Ernest Hemmingway's own experiences in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's. This novel depicts how irony and love get in the way of a war and how devastating these affects can be.

Ernest Hemmingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, and the second of six children. Clarence Hemmingway, his father, was a physician and his mother was a religious woman with a talent for music. When he was young he got the nickname "champ" which he felt it showed his rowdy outdoor sense of adventure. His father loved to hunt so in that he took on that love for hunting and did it often in upper Michigan.

When he was in High School he edited the school newspaper, loved playing football and boxing, two things that he was very good at, and ran away from home twice.

After graduation he went to Kansas City to try to get into the army for World War I. the only problem was that the army rejected every attempt he made because of permanent eye damage from his years of boxing. Finally giving in to the army's rejections, he added a year to his age and applied for a job as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. While working at the star, he kept trying to participate in the war, finally succeeding when he joined a volunteer Red Cross ambulance unit as a driver. In 1918 he was seriously injured at Fossalta on the Piave River. He had to get twelve operations and an aluminum kneecap; in return he was awarded two Italian Decorations. After a long time of recuperation in Milan, He once again joined the Italian infantry to fight another round.

The experiences Hemmingway had here gave a base for his lifelong fascination with war. Surviving World War I, he later fought in the Greek-Turkish war as well in 1920. What we might not expect is that he also went through World War II and the Spanish Civil War in 1937, the setting for For Whom the Bell...