Hemingway’s Demonstration of Gaze through For Whom the Bell Tolls
Adam Soto
For Whom the Bells Tolls tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting with a group of guerilla militants in the Spanish countryside against the fascist regime during the Spanish Civil War. It is about the birth of a natural worldview in the death of an ideal through the shift of narrative gaze. Hemingway illustrates this fundamental transition from narrow objective focus to all encompassing reverence by drawing from his own personal development of craft and philosophy during his time in Paris and Africa, studying art and primitive civilization; fortifying a stronger understanding of the natural world and his place in it.
Robert Jordan begins his work in Spain with a narrow focus, a strict rhetoric, and abides by social and military constructs. The novel opens with Robert Jordan evaluating his vantage point atop a great mountain. Hemingway notes “high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees,” and that “The mountainside sloped gently where he lay” (1). However, Robert Jordan pays little attention to his environment and instead he asks his guide, Anselmo, from which point he will be able to see the bridge, his objective. He averts his gaze from the gorge and spreads a “military map on the forest floor” (1), a synthetic, man-made representation of the land he stands on, thus ignoring the natural world in favor of a tool that aides in the manipulation and control of the environment for the sake of his mission. Here, Hemingway’s narrative gaze is narrowed and focused; lending itself to a military objective rather than the awe inspiring country Robert Jordan is fighting for.
This narrowed gaze not only affects the way Robert Jordan perceives things but the way he feels, communicates, and acts as well. Even after sparking a love affair with Maria, Robert is incapable of drawing his attention away from the objective of blowing up the bridge. Hemingway writes, “He was walking beside her but his mind was thinking of the problem of the bridge now and it was all clear and hard and sharp as when a camera lens is brought into focus” (161). His usage of the camera metaphor pulls Robert and the reader further away from the natural world, describing the biological process of sight as a highly mechanized and technical operation, disregarding the natural subject that may exist within the gaze, and building the importance of Robert’s control of his faculties instead.
Robert Jordan is capable of such efficiency through his usage of rhetoric that prevents his mind from wandering, and placing new weight on things that exist outside of his objective. His rhetoric is not associated with any creeds that may convince him that he is fighting for people, freedom, or ideology, but rather to stop a force that the collective conscience of his time deemed an enemy. He describes himself not as a Communist, but as an “anti-fascist” (66), prescribing to a sentiment that has more to do with the immediate elimination of a threat than the prospect of building a hopeful future, demonstrating a gaze that is not only limited in width of perspective but depth as well, focusing only on the present foreground of existence.
Hemingway’s usage of dialogue demonstrates these limitations as well. When Andrés asks him if believes “in the possibility of a man seeing ahead what is to happen to him” (250), Robert immediately responds, no, and proceeds to bring attention to the objective at hand. He is incapable of understanding, has no tolerance for superstition, and nearly exclusively discusses his rhetoric and mission. These limitations of communication prevent camaraderie, trust, and unification. In this sense, the group functions on two different planes, the guerillas, flexible, improvisational, and passionate, and Robert Jordan, structured, independent, and objective oriented. Robert Jordan is fighting a battle while the Spaniards are fighting a war.
This divide, based on the fundamental differences of perspective, lends itself to many complications throughout the operation. Early on, when faced with the reality that Pablo was incapable of leadership due to his disillusionment with the resistance, and disgust for his own blood lust, Robert Jordan struggles with the decision of whether or not to kill the once fearless leader in an act of power upheaval (53). Abiding by military constructs that demand discipline, determination, and consistency, Robert must evaluate a human life; a man, a husband, and a hero of the resistance using a narrow set of qualifiers. In the same scene, the Spaniards encourage Robert Jordan to kill Pablo, falling in line with his effective and promising leadership, fearing that Pablo’s weakness may prove damaging to their efforts. However, their perspective is more aligned with the theory of natural selection than military constructs, much in the same way that a herd will leave the weak behind to be eaten in an effort to ensure the success of the larger group. Ultimately, Robert does not kill Pablo and continues to struggle with this question of morality over efficiency, hinting at the early widening of his gaze, peering into the history of the resistance and the role that Pablo played in it, thus opening his perspective and increasing his depth of understanding of not only Pablo’s place in the movement, but his own as well.
Robert Jordan is also stricken by his struggle with social constructs and their limitations of his gaze as well. The strict male-over-female dominance, a reactionary stance in light of his father’s submissive relationship with his mother, describing his disappointment with his father and fear of his own personal trajectory in saying, “if he wasn’t a coward he would have stood up to that woman and not let her bully him. I wonder what I would have been like if he had married a different woman” (339), plays into his own understanding of woman, relationships, and love. The submissive Maria becomes an instant tool in quieting his thoughts and increasing his efficiency as a soldier.
These same limitations that plague Robert’s understanding of Maria affect his understanding of his father, compassion, and forgiveness as well. Incapable of forgiving his father for committing suicide, Robert remembers, when in a symbolic act of defiance against his family’s legacy, he dropped his father’s suicide weapon, a revolver passed down for generations, in a Lake near the Bear Tooth plateau, “and saw it go down making bubbles until it was just as big as a watch charm in that clear water, and then it was out of sight” (337). He refuses to have compassion for his father, calls him a coward, and devotes the rest of his life to doing things his father shied away from, eliminating his fears and weaknesses. In turn, this becomes the largest issue in regards to Hemingway’s message on gaze and the overall meaning of his novel. Robert’s struggle in understanding his father is a metaphor for the way people view life, purpose, mortality, and ultimately, death. Hemingway comments on the way that humans validate their lives and existence, using Robert’s perspective as a symbol of how contemporary social constructs such as religion and virtue can narrowly objectify one’s existence; disregarding the ethereal, existential, and spiritual aspects of one’s life that play a larger role in qualifying existence than the tangible accomplishments our society seems to focus so heavily on, such as blowing up a bridge.
Hemingway uses these scenes of limited gaze to set up the status quo. Then through the usage of sentence construction and the opening of Robert Jordan’s focus, he begins to widen the narrative gaze, working towards the greater meaning of the piece as a whole. In order to recognize the weight of these shifts and their function in demonstrating gaze, one must first understand their metaphorical meanings, the same meanings Hemingway, himself prescribed to during his time in Paris and Africa, seeking an understanding of self and perspective. During a conversation held on May 20, 1954, fourteen years after the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Picasso, too a student of Parisian and African culture, said, “I have a model, it’s a thing I’ve never gone in before! Fortunately I can work alone, because I can see only into myself; I cannot see into other people; the model serves as a screen” (de la Souchére 23), presenting artistic creation as a demonstration of the self; a representation of one’s own perspective and understanding of subject as a reflection of the self, much in the same way Hemingway did.
Ernest Hemingway arrived in Africa on December 2, 1933, and in his first letter written for Esquire Magazine said, “Nothing that I have ever read has given any idea of the beauty of the country or the still remaining quantity of game” (Mellow 430). Hemingway would stay a month on safari, studying the art of big game hunting, African culture, and perspective.
In his novel, The Green Hills of Africa, a non-fiction recount of his time on safari, Hemingway wrote:
I saw something moving over the shoulder of one of the valleys… In the glasses it was a rhino, showing very clear and minute at the distance… Then there were three more… pushing head-on, fighting in front of a clump of bushes while we watched them and the light failed. It was too dark to get down the hill, across the valley… So we went back to camp… until we saw the firelight in the trees. (51)
Hunting in Africa taught Hemingway the discipline of judging distance, spaciality, temporality, and patience. He fine tuned his natural gaze; the ability to diminish and augment it as he demonstrates so in his craft and his character, Robert Jordan. Much like a painter’s ability to generate the illusion of depth, perspective, and dimension, Hemingway’s widening gaze in For Whom the Bell Tolls functions as the primary literary device in aiding in the progression of narrative, character development, and meaning.
Hemingway renders these qualities in Robert Jordan, who begins to learn from the band of guerillas he lives with for four days. Their technique is ad-hoc; without a clear definition of leadership, they use a natural, niche based construction of responsibility. For example, Anselmo, although old and feeble, is depended upon for guidance in traversing the wilderness because of his knowledge of the terrain (1). In turn, as the bridge blowing operation goes underway, Robert Jordan relies heavily on improvisation, and the spreading of responsibility based on capability. He allows Pablo responsibility despite his treason and when told that the bridge would not be blown if he was beneath it, he responds, “‘Take no account of me. Blow if thou needest to. I fix the other wire and come back. Then we will blow it together’” (440). His ability to compensate for their handicaps and think outside of protocol is a demonstration of this more natural, and in many ways, more logical approach. His foresight to revise his plan, similar to Hemingway’s acceptance of his inability to chase after the rhino and go in for the kill, is a clear example of the widening of perspective. His gaze now accounts for the advantage of having Pablo on his team despite his previous failures, and the need to revisit the operation even after it has gone underway. These adjustments are part of a larger objective, one that takes trust, understanding, and sacrifice in mind.
Aiding in this acceptance of a larger objective is Maria, and the true love he develops for her. Although originally, their love is superficial and one of commensalism, Robert begins to recognize the importance of moving towards the domestic and chooses to embody a more primitive manifestation of romance, where love can exist to supply inspiration, compassion, and companionship. In turn, Maria becomes the symbol of victory, a representation of a free and natural world where two beings, despite their differences, can coexist equally and in harmony. In placing Maria in this position, Robert’s rhetoric is changed. He says that until her he never thought of anything but the war and admits, “I love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the rights of all men to work and not be hungry. I love thee as I love Madrid that we have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died” (348).
Hemingway moves into this perspective immediately after describing her body like landscape, he describes Robert Jordan’s exploration of her body: “her breasts like two small hills that rise out of the long plain where there is a well, and the far country beyond the hills was the valley of her throat where his lips were” (341). Robert is able to see Maria as the symbol of freedom because of his new acceptance of the importance of his environment. Hemingway opens his gaze and builds an inventory of landscape descriptions from Robert’s perspective, which in turn diverts his attention from the bridge in an effort to absorb the natural world and its inspiration to fight for a more natural existence, the opposite of the fascists’ vision, rather than his stereotypical, American-bred hatred of fascism, and blind faith in such unfounded and unsuccessful postulates as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (305).
This perspective comes from Hemingway’s own reverence for the natural world, its purity, innocence, and reliability. He wrote of this in reference to his time in Africa, he said, “I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you been with a woman that you really love” (Mellow 437). The energy and drive Robert Jordan experiences from understanding the greater purpose of the war is a metaphor for Hemingway’s own understanding of the pursuit. In Green Hills he wrote, “The way to hunt is for as long as you live against and as long as there is such and such an animal; just as the way to paint is as long… and to write as long as you can live” (12). Hemingway and Robert Jordan’s pursuits become that of seeking a connection with nature, the discovery of the underlying currents of existence, and the unifying force of natural growth and freedom that we must all attain to gain full understanding of our world and existence.