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    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    Audiobook16 hours

    For Whom the Bell Tolls

    Written by Ernest Hemingway

    Narrated by Scott Campbell

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from “the good fight” and one of the foremost classics of war literature.

    For Whom the Bell Tolls tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, is attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain. 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. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2006
    ISBN9780743565110
    Author

    Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, he died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961.

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    Reviews for For Whom the Bell Tolls

    4.5/5

    362 ratings78 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Oh boy. The printer almost did me in with this one. I got to page 442 and the next page was 412. Only the fact that Jim had the text on Kindle saved me from self-explosion. And it's a library book! Didn't anyone tell the librarian about the defect?!?!ok. got that said. Now, about the book.I was somewhat surprised by how many people in my f2f reading group actively disliked this book. They objected to Hemingway's portrayal of women (gee, the younger one is pretty naive, and the older one isn't. right). They objected to his attempt to represent the difference between 'usted' and 'tu' in Spanish by using 'you' and 'thou', etc. in English. And I admit that some of the attempts to make the text sound like a translation from the Spanish were worse than awkward,and the editor did the story no favor in insisting that the naturally obscene language be masked so clumsily.But what about the story? What about the naive volunteer trying his best to be a good soldier for a cause he thinks he believes in, in spite of what we know about the errors and excesses of that cause? The partisan band in the hills, trying to say alive so that they can go back to being farmers and vintners, each one delineated as a distinct person with frailties and honor in unique proportion? And the honesty of the brutality on both sides of this gruesome war, the ineptitude and cynicism of the commanders, the pain of both dying and killing, and the fatalism war can engender.The intense writing made me see everything as if through a close-up lens. Although the language can seem moderately straightforward (and no, it's not all simple declarative sentences by any means), I had to slow down to capture the vivid detail, even when I wanted to story to move faster because the tension mounts even though the inevitability of the outcome seems clearer every step of the way. Bad grammar, bad usage can pull me right out of a mediocre story, but nothing could pull me out of this one.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This was kind of a long haul for me. If I could give it another half a star, I would. I wanted to give it 4 stars, but I couldn't. It was just a little too slow for me. The characters were well developed and interesting, but Hemingway's prose and style I did not take to as I hoped I might. A little too terse and short in it's delivery. Definitely written in a world where men are brave heroes and women are there to love them.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Oh dear, I fear this review will be lambasted and that people will note that this is the second time I have dismissed a "classic" this week. In my defence, I did enjoy Orwell's Animal Farm.

      I really wanted to like this and persevered to past the half way point. But when I got to the stage where I was dreading picking up the book as I was finding it so monotonous, I decided enough was enough--it was going back to the library from whence it came.

      The lengthy novel tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.

      By the half-way point, he still hadn't blown up the bridge but was instead engaging in seemingly never-ending debate about why it needed blowing up, how to do it, whether or not everyone in his group was in favour of the destruction .....the list could go on but I will spare you. I turned each page wondering if it would be the culmination of 250 pages of planning but sadly it was not to be. Or maybe that was a good thing because the soldiers guarding the bridge were spared for another day.

      Imagine writing down every single action you take in a typical day from morning until evening whether relevant and interesting or not. Then gather a group of people and ask them to do the same. Then merge the pages and you have this book.

      There is limited bad language although I found it amusing that for the stronger language they have simply inserted the word "obscenity" whether it made sense or not. There is some violence and some sexual content. The content wasn't offensive enough to put me off. I just thought this was extremely dull...

      I now await the barrage of comments bemoaning my ignorance and explaining why I should have been excited about this book.....please feel free.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The best novel of an overrated writer. Compelling. For once his minimalist writing is well used in creating an aura of imminent danger. Good book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The problem with Ernest Hemingway I guess is that, well, he's Ernest Hemingway.He was the first author in modern days who consciously forced an image of himself out on the world - and that image was a big bluff self-contained "Man's Man" who could shoot and fish and drink and run with the bulls with the best of them.And and one who let us say had complicated relationships with women. So a book like For Whom The Bell Tolls it has to come with a lot of baggage. Easy to forget that Hemingway also hung around with Gertrude Stein and was in his own way constantly experimenting with prose style and narrative structure. You probably know the plot - from the movie anyway. Spanish Civil War. American in love with Spain joins up with a ragtag band of Rebels to blow up a bridge. Along the way he meets and falls in love with a damaged young girl, a child of the forest, and meets others who represent archetypes of different kinds of people in Spain. Farmers who just want a bit of land to farm. Generals who order their soldiers to kill and sometimes stop and wonder why. Foolish people and angry people and complex loving people too. Each one has his story and his moment.The futility of war. How quickly idealism changes into something else, but never quite quite dies. Can't say enough about the writing - it's tight and clear and at times deeply lyrical. The chapters about the massacre of the "Fascists" and the clear sharp description of El Sordo's last stand are amazing and almost journalistic. And yet . . . and yet. I think to see Hemingway as a "Journalist" is to miss something. He's after bigger game here, I think. (He even sneaks in a little tribute quote to Stein late in the book - just to see if you're paying attention.) A lot of people in my book group had trouble with it - or with him. But I cared deeply about the people and stood openmouthed in awe at the writing. Sometimes it's too formal and sometimes it doesn't work - but when it does work it's amazing. A big ambitious book with a lot of little lovely surprises. Recommended

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Magnificent; Hemingway at his best. I truly recommed this one, not only because of the text, but also because of the narrator.
    • 3/5
      It isn't a great sign when the epigraph is the part of a novel that you found most affecting and memorable. For me this was the case with For Whom The Bell Tolls.

      There were some interesting segments here, like the depiction of how a town was rid of fascists or the chapter where soldiers wait for the enemy mortars to arrive, but most of the book just wasn't interesting to me, nor did it feel authentic or personal. For a less removed depiction of the Spanish Civil War try reading A Moment of War by Laurie Lee.
    • 4/5
      Hemingway's famously terse style is well suited to this story of derring do in the Spanish Civil War. I found myself cursing like a Spanish peasant by the time I'd finished it. Well worth a read, rewarding and interesting.
    • 3/5
      Ok - but certainly not at the top of my Hemingway list.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful tale of carrying on in the face of extinction.
    • 3/5
      Documentair interessant over Spaanse burgeroorlog: vooral relativering van het republikeinse idealisme. Blootlegging Spaanse ziel: de dood centraal. Het liefdesthema is zeer goedkoop, de figuur van Maria komt helemaal niet geloofwaardig over. Enige indrukwekkende vrouw is Pilar, maar die heeft alles van een man. Robert Jordan staat er natuurlijk, als onthechte antiheld, ge?ngageerd en zich pijnlijk bewust van wat hij teweegbrengt in de partizanengemeenschap, maar desondanks toch zijn verantwoordelijkheid opnemend. Het boek komt langzaam op gang, opbouwend naar de grote finale; enkele onvolkomenheden onderweg. Zeker niet Hemingways beste boek. Al in het Nederlands gelezen toen ik 16 was; was er toen erg door gegrepen.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book to read and wonderful to listen to as audiobook. We’ll worth the time of you haven’t done so, narrator doesn’t a great job
    • 5/5
      Campbell Scott does a great job narrating this classic story.
    • 4/5
      I struggle to follow fiction. This book was perhaps harder than many to follow. Is a testament to this story that, for the first time ever, I am immediately going back and listening to this book again, because I so much want to understand it completely. So the four stars has nothing to do with the book, and almost everything to do with my struggle to comprehend. I loved what I was able to follow and understand.
    • 5/5
      Hemingway rates short sentences, mostly dialogue or internal dialogue, yet very powerful. I love his works
    • 2/5
      I have never been a fan of Hemingway and the pages of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" have a good collection of the reasons why I never find his work enjoyable.The story is set during the Spanish Civil War, which should result in an exciting tale. Instead, there are hundreds of pages of characters repeatedly having the same conversations, musing about their oncoming deaths. Add in Hemingway's bizarre choices (such as using thee and thou and writing "unprintable" for obscenities) this book just felt stilted.There probably is an interesting novella in there somewhere... the last 75 pages or so the plot actually moves forward. Overall, the book just seemed like a lost opportunity to me.
    • 4/5
      Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War. The story is of a young American idealist fighting with the Republicans against the fascists and his love for a Spanish woman. It has a great ending.
    • 5/5
      This is such a good book. This was my first Hemingway book and I swear he has to be one of the best writers of all time. He is, at least in my opinion. I love his writing, even though there are many people who think it is kinda slow and too descriptive. I love it that way and I'll certainly read other books of his.
    • 4/5
      I read this in the summer of 1949. On Aug 19 I said: "For Whom the Bell Tolls is not much good - holds my interest but moderately." On Aug 21 I said: "Reading in For Whom the Bell Tolls - I just think the style is not the kind that impresses me. In fact, I can scarcely find a style." SPOILER On Aug 24 I said: "Finished For Whom the Bell Tolls. 'Twas quite good towards the end. He breaks his leg and is left behind to be killed at the end. Hemingway's relation of his subject's thought is novel and realistic and good. All in all, 'twas quite a good book."
    • 3/5
      An american signs up for the Spanish civil war to help the communist cause. The bigger issue is his growing relationship with the local underground and how that impacts his duty to his commanders. A lot of war and honor bullshit that just doesn't fly anymore today given the blind faith we americans gave our commander in chief in Iraq. Time to wake up and question what you're doing rather than believe you need to follow blindly. I guess you can say Hemingway is dated here.
    • 5/5
      Very well narrated, pace comfortable and well done. Good job
    • 2/5
      This book reminded me of a soap opera. I could skip pages, wander back in and never miss a thing. Dialog sounded like conversations between a bunch of drunks.
    • 5/5
      The best of Hemingway's works. Here is Hemingway's writing in all of its economical beauty.?
    • 1/5
      I am not a fan of this book. It felt like it took forever to get going and when it did get going, it went no where. I am not a fan of books about war and that should have driven me away, right away. Although, there is a love story in the book, but even that was kind of so-so for me. It was kind of weird to read, because they had sex, that seemed like every night they did it. It was just a really bad book for me to read, because it was kind of everything that I dislike in books put into one book.
    • 4/5
      Classic first world war novel set mainly in Italy. Thrilling, tragic war scenes are contrasted with beautiful love story.
    • 3/5
      Read the book in high school and all I remember now is the sleeping blanket!
    • 3/5
      Hemingway's meditation on dying well wasn't my favourite of his. I didn't like it nearly as much as A Farewell to Arms, for instance, or even A Moveable Feast. Mind you, for me Hemingway's at his best when he's writing a short story.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful. The detail and imagery are amazing. Highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      A hard read, especially for those whose Spanish is not so good (I really should have had my spanish dictionary by my side while reading, however I'm not sure it would have helped as it seems you would need to know the colloquialisms as well) but ... well worth reading and finishing, interesting group dynamics hold up in and around a cave for three days waiting to blow a bridge. I would also recommend reading about the Spanish Civil War first also, a war that people from all over the world came to fight in and that everyone should know about.
    • 2/5
      I found this book exhausting to get through, moving at a very slow pace with little real action. Little did I know when reading the first chapter, that it would be almost 500 pages before the bridge was actually blown. The last page I found to be frustrating, leaving the story incomplete in my opinion. But looking back after having finished the book, it does make one think about things and evokes some form of emotion in the reader, and in the end I guess I consider that to mean that it was at least a decent book. If nothing else, it had some interesting views on humanity and the brutalities of war: how the common people suffer while the politicians and leaders behind them sit in safety, how brutal people can be in war, and how both sides dislike the actions they must take and yet find them necessary. I can't say I agree with Robert Jordan's theory that you can live your entire life ina a few days...and I found Maria to be too submissive and eager to please Robert Jordan for my tastes. Anselmo was easily my favorite character, very down to earth, humble, and seemingly good-natured.I did enjoy aspects of Hemingway's writing style, how the words and sentences, although in English, were arranged as if they were in Spanish (i.e. the use of 'thou' like for Spanish Usted) and made me think twice when he first used the word 'obscenity' for a curse word.Overall, I guess I'm glad I read the book, but probably won't be picking up another book by Hemingway any time soon.