(c)2024 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved.
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899. Growing up, he was very close to his father, Dr. Clarence Edmonds (Ed) Hemingway, who taught him to shoot, fish, and camp as a boy. Ed was also a strict father, with harsh discipline who often argued with his wife, Grace. In 1928, Ed killed himself with his father's revolver from the Civil War.
Although Ernest Hemingway's problems in his relationship with his mother had started during his adolescence, after his father's suicide, his estrangement from his mother became worse. He believed in male supremacy, and the heroines of his books are submissive and serve their men. He had four wives, Hadley Richardson (m.1921-1927), Pauline Pfeiffer, (m.1927-1940), Martha Gellhorn (m.1940-1946), and Mary Welch (m. 1946-1961), usually marrying one a short time after divorcing another.
He wrote for his school paper and wrote short stories in high school, often with himself as the hero, and he got his first writing job at the Kansas City Star in 1917. There he learned much of what influenced his later works. He learned to write like a journalist; his style is very readable, objective, clear, and avoids a great deal of description.
In 1918, he was called to the war to drive an ambulance for the American Red Cross in Italy. There he was severely wounded in both legs, but saved another man's life, and was awarded a medal of honor from the Italian army. This experience rid him of any romantic notions of war, for he became an insomniac and thought often of death.
In 1921, Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson moved to Paris. Hemingway loved Paris, and quickly made friends with expatriates such as the famous authors James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. These expatriates are the models for one of his earliest novels, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which features not very complimentary or well-disguised portraits of many of his friends and acquaintances.
Hemingway had spent extensive time in Spain during the 1920's, and was especially interested in the annual festival of San Fermin in Pamplona in mid-summer, where the running of the bulls takes place. It is here that he was introduced to the Spanish tradition of bullfighting. He was entranced with the people and the culture, and especially obsessed with bullfighting, about which he wrote Death in the Afternoon (1932). In 1937, Hemingway was sent to Spain to write about the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. The war had broken out in 1936, as large landowners, military, the church, and monarchists, supported by German and Italian fascist forces, revolted to overthrow the Republican, pro-democracy government which had replaced the monarchy in 1931. Hemingway sided with the Republicans, and his sympathy for them is obvious in For Whom The Bell Tolls, in which he glorifies three intense and often tragic days in the life of a group of Republican guerrilla fighters.
His novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952) met with wide acclaim, and he won the Nobel prize in 1954. However, in the last years of his life, he was unable to write a novel that met with comparable success. He felt barren and alone, and sunk into deep depression and heavy drinking. In 1961, he killed himself in Ketchum, Idaho. Several of his manuscripts for novels have been published posthumously, including A Moveable Feast and Islands in the Stream. His distinctive style was considered the most influential aspect of his writing, and he had an enormous stylistic influence on American literature. Samuel Shaw writes in his biography of Hemingway: "The positive, humanistic core of his fiction-tentative, held in check by his toughness and his style-has not been fully explored or appreciated... In an age of spiritual decay and defeat, presenting honestly the condition of that age, he yet upheld the goodness, nobility, and spiritual worth of mankind."
Castillo-Puche, José Luis. Hemingway in Spain: An intimate look at the importance of Spain in the life and work of a great artist. Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1973
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987
Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemingway. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Shaw, Samuel. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1973.
It is the late 1930's in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, and a guerrilla group is in the mountains behind enemy lines. Robert Jordan plans to blow up a bridge, which the enemy uses to move trucks, tanks, and artillery. Pablo, the leader, objects to blowing up the bridge, for it puts them in danger. Robert Jordan worries Pablo will betray them. They arrive at the camp. A beautiful girl, Maria, brings stew. She and Robert Jordan fall in love at first sight. Robert Jordan meets Pablo's woman, a large and heavy peasant with gypsy blood.
One of the guerrillas, Anselmo, tells Robert Jordan that he is a hunter and not a killer of men. They meet Agustín, who speaks in a filthy manner, but is a loyal man. The gypsy Rafael says they want him to kill Pablo. Robert Jordan does not want to. That night, Robert and Maria make love. She confides that she has been raped, and he says that if she is with him, all her pain will go away.
Pilar tells about how Pablo arranged for the massacre of over thirty fascists. She tells Robert Jordan she is jealous of he and Maria and feels old. Robert Jordan thinks about how one can live as fully in seventy hours as in seventy years.
A bad snowstorm starts. Pablo is very drunk, and things get tense as they try to provoke him. He leaves, then announces that he is back with them. Robert Jordan resents the situation. He thinks of the Hotel Gaylord in Madrid, where he used to talk to his friend Karkov about wartime politics.
Robert Jordan shoots an enemy soldier who comes to the camp. They take his horse. El Sordo goes to look for more horses and he and his men are massacred. The others can do nothing. Robert Jordan sends Andrés with a dispatch for Golz asking him to cancel the attack. He tells Maria of a fantasy that they will live in Madrid. She tells him about her rape when Falangists took her town and shot her parents.
Pablo steals dynamite and equipment and disappears. He returns with five men, and they are shocked. Robert Jordan feels optimistic again. Andrés reaches brigade headquarters. Commander André Marty is crazy and locks him up and confiscates the dispatch. Karkov arrives and gets it back. They are able to reach Golz, who says they are all screwed.
At dawn, Robert Jordan and Anselmo shoot the sentries and blow the bridge. The impact kills Anselmo.
While escaping, Robert Jordan's horse falls on his leg, breaking it. Maria is grief-stricken and he says she must leave, but she will carry him with her always. They leave, and Robert Jordan knows he must keep himself conscious so that he can kill one of the approaching enemy officers to delay them on the trail of his friends.
Robert Jordan: Robert Jordan is the hero of the novel. He is a man of great bravery and loyalty. He is an American, and most of the Spaniards call him Inglés, which means English. He has been sent as a demolition expert to blow up a bridge in a strategic position. He meets María, a girl taken prisoner by the Falangists who the guerillas rescued from a train they exploded, and they fall in love. He calls her 'little rabbit.' When she tells him about her rape, he is understanding and still loves her, but is filled with hate for such abominable acts done intentionally. He is unable to let his love for Maria and his focus on his task coexist, and is often cold to her when he has his mind on his work. He is tall and thin, with fair hair. He is originally from Montana, where he is a professor of Spanish. He has lived in Estremadura, in the west of Spain, for ten years; there he learned Spanish fluently and is not often treated like a foreigner. He loves Spain and for that reason, he volunteered to fight in the war behind enemy lines. Throughout the novel, he wrestles with inner conflict over whether by following orders he is using the guerrillas and then leaving them in a worse position than they were before. He thinks to himself a lot. He blows the bridge and while they are all escaping, his horse is injured and falls on his leg, breaking it. He knows he must stay behind, and makes Maria and the others continue on without him. In the last scene, he is lying on the ground, getting ready to shoot an officer in order to delay the cavalry from catching up to his escaping friends.
Anselmo: Anselmo is an old Spanish man. He is from the city of Barco de Avila, in Spain. He is sixty-eight years old. He is a hunter, and has a bear paw of which he is very proud. He believes that killing a man is a sin, and he cries when he has to shoot the sentry before they blow up the bridge. Because Pablo stole the detonator and threw it away, they must blow up the bridge with a device involving grenades. Anselmo is responsible for pulling the wire to detonate it, and is killed by a piece of flying steel. Robert Jordan respects him greatly and considers him his closest friend out of all the guerrillas.
Golz: General Golz gives Robert Jordan his orders to blow up the bridge. Robert Jordan describes his features as thin and sharp. Robert Jordan, conflicted, often curses Golz, but knows that orders are orders. Robert Jordan sends him a dispatch when he realizes that the mission will fail because they don't have enough people, but it reaches him too late.
Pablo: Pablo is the leader of the group of guerrilla men in the mountains. He is a large and heavy peasant. The area is considered his territory and he is considered the leader of the band. He has led many successful and violent uprisings, including blowing up an enemy train and arranging for the massacre of over thirty fascists in his small town. However, there is much talk that he has now lost his nerve, has become cowardly, and is too afraid to die, and this is making him inactive. He is often sullen and defensive, and most of his men no longer trust or respect him, and want to provoke him so they can kill him. He is able to remain calm and they cannot provoke him. He thinks that blowing up the bridge is too big of a risk, and resents that Robert Jordan put them in danger. At one point, he leaves, stealing dynamite and the detonator. Robert Jordan is furious at himself for trusting Pablo. He returns, though, with five men and horses, saying he still does not approve of the bridge plan, but he got lonely and knows they must finish together. At the end, he escapes with the others across the road and up the slope.
The gypsy (Rafael): The gypsy is living in the mountains with Pablo and the others. He is a guerrilla, and eventually escapes with them. He is the subject of many ethnic slurs throughout the course of the book. At one point, Robert Jordan thinks that the gypsy is worthless and mentally unfit for war. This is after the gypsy left his post to hunt hares.
Maria: Maria is nineteen years old, the orphaned daughter of a mayor and his wife who were shot to death by the Falangists, a young radical enemy group. They captured her, shaved her head, and gang-raped her. As a result of her rape, she is probably unable to become pregnant. Pablo's group, who carried her to safety and took her in, rescued her. Pilar takes care of her and she is now able to talk again. Her hair is still very short, and she thinks she is ugly, but she is described as quite beautiful. She meets Robert Jordan and they fall in love; he declares that he will marry her, and refers to her as his wife. He calls her 'little rabbit.' She wants to be a dutiful wife to him, and serves him as such during the three days they have together. She tells him about the rape and is afraid he will not love and marry her, but he understands and says he is proud of her and her family. When Robert Jordan has to stay behind, she desperately wants to stay with him, but he will not let this happen and wants her to continue life without him, and says that she will carry him with her always.
Pilar: Pilar is Pablo's woman. She is also Maria's guardian after they rescue the poor girl from the train. She is large and heavy with a friendly manner, and she likes to make jokes, and can stand up to any man, especially Pablo. She knows that she is the real leader, and that Pablo's men have turned against him, but she remembers the brave man he once was. She believes she was born ugly, but is beautiful on the inside, and has had many lovers, including a famous bullfighter. She is happy for Robert and Maria, but also jealous because she feels old. Throughout the book, she stands up for herself and is loyal. She escapes with them at the end.
El Sordo: El Sordo is the leader of a band of guerillas, including Joaquín and Ignacio. His name means 'the deaf one' because he is hard of hearing. He is loyal and brave. He goes to get them more horses and the cavalry follows the tracks and massacres him and his band. Pablo's group hears, but can do nothing.
Agustín: Agustín is one of the men in Pablo's band of guerrillas. He is loyal, but quick to judge, and has a bad temper. He does not trust Pablo, and stands up to him often, but he knows that Pablo has the intelligence and talent necessary to be a good guerrilla.
Primitivo: Primitivo is a man, whom Robert Jordan describes as flat-faced, in Pablo's band of guerrillas.
Andrés: Andrés is a young man in Pablo's band of guerrillas. He has a brother, Eladio. Robert Jordan sends him with the dispatch to Golz to cancel the attack.
Fernando: Fernando is a young man in Pablo's band of guerrillas. He is very optimistic and even naïve throughout the book. During the attack, he is shot in the groin. He knows he must be left behind, and they leave him behind with his gun.
Kashkin: Kashkin is already dead when the book begins. He is a foreigner to the Spaniards, and fair and tall like Robert Jordan. He died in April, after an explosion of a train, which he planned with Pablo, leader of the guerrilla group in the mountains. He was shot in the back and unwilling to be left behind, so Robert Jordan had to shoot him. The band in the mountains agrees that he was very rare, with a strange voice and a nervous manner. Robert Jordan, an explsoives expert, is sent to replace him and blow up the bridge. Kashkin is not very well liked at the Hotel Gaylord, where Robert Jordan goes to talk to Kashkin.
Finito: Finito is a bullfighter who Pilar, now the woman of Pablo, had as a lover. Their time in Valencia was very romantic, and they made love to the smell of fireworks and flowers. Pablo disparages him, and Pilar tells him that Finito, unlike Pablo, was not afraid to die. In the ring, he was fearless, but out of the ring, he was one of the most fearful people Pilar had ever met. He would not even put the head of a bull in his house. He is presented with a head at a banquet in his honor and is horrified when they uncover it and it is staring right at him as if alive. He is very short for a bullfighter, and for that reason, he keeps getting hit in the chest with the horns of the bull, and he eventually dies from the internal bleeding of the wounds. Primitivo says that if he was so short, he should not have been a bullfighter, and Pilar is enraged with his simple-mindedness.
Don Guillermo Martín: Don Guillermo Martín is a fascist who was flailed to death by Pablo's angry mob. They got the flails and clubs from his shop. Pilar thinks that if the mob had not become drunk and crazed with hate, he might have been spared. His wife cried out to him before he was beaten to death. Later, the woman, Pilar, saw his wife crying outside by a fountain.
Don Benito Garcia: Don Garcia is the Mayor of the town. He was the first to be flailed. At first, no one did anything. The man who first struck him was a disgruntled tenant.
Don Federico Gonzalez: Don Gonzalez was the second to be flailed. He could not speak or walk, and reached his hands up to the sky.
Don Ricardo Montcalvo: Don Montcalvo was the third to be flailed. He suggested that they all die together, and when Pablo declared they must go one at a time, he died, saying he would never be more ready. He said that to die is nothing, the only bad thing is to die at the hands of Pablo. He was clubbed quicky because he insulted Spain and the Republic and their fathers.
Lieutenant Colonel Miranda: Lt. Col. Miranda is at one of the posts Andrés stops at while delivering the dispatch.
Don Faustino Rivero: Don Faustino was handsome and well known for annoying women he pursued. He was a failed and cowardly bullfighter who faked sickness to avoid a bullfight. He had such bravado that he volunteered to come out, but they taunted him so much when he emerged, he became scared, and tried to go back in. The mob eventually threw him over the cliff without beating him.
Don Anastacio Rivas: Don Rivas was extremely wealthy and fat, and was beaten to death by the drunken mob. The drunken man in the black and red scarf tried to set his dead body, lying in the plaza because it is too heavy to move, on fire several times.
Joaquín: Joaquín is in El Sordo's guerilla band. He is a young man who helped carry Maria back from the train. His parents were killed by fascists, and his sister is imprisoned. Pilar is upset to see panic in his eyes when she jokes about kissing him, and feels old and ugly.
the priest: The priest who gave the men at Pablo's fascist massacre their last rites. When the drunken mob broke out, he was locked in with the rest of the prisoners. Pablo unlocked the door and let the mob in. Pilar saw the priest hacked with reapers and grain tools. Pablo was upset that the priest died 'badly,' that is, he tried to escape the blows. He expected the Spanish priest to have more dignity.
Gomez: Gomez is an officer in the Republican army in Estremadura. He goes with Andrés to André Marty's office.
Karkov: Karkov is a friend of Robert Jordan's whom he talks to at Gaylord's. He is an extremely intelligent and politically savvy man who tells Robert Jordan what he knows because he knows that Robert Jordan is reliable and writes truthfully. He shows up at André Marty's post and tells him to give him the dispatch that he confiscated when he threw Andrés and Gomez in prison. Marty does not know why, but he always feels that Karkov has the upper hand. He gives him the dispatch, and Andrés is able to give it to the intended recipient, but it is too late and the attack commences.
El Campesino: El Campesino is a peasant leader of the Republican forces. However, he is not really a peasant, but a Spanish sergeant who deserted the Spanish Foreign Legion. Robert Jordan knows that a war involving so many peasants needs a peasant leader, but that a real peasant leader might be too much like Pablo, violent, passionate, and unpredictable.
Mitchell: Mitchell is the British economist that Karkov admires. He is a fool, but no one realizes it because he has such an impressive appearance and people trust him because of his conspirator's face. He gets money from governments, claiming to have connections with the governments of larger, more threatening nations, but these connections are not real.
Blanquet: Blanquet is the man who smelled death on Kashkin.
Captain Mora: Captain Mora is an enemy officer. He contributes to the offensive against Sordo.
Sniper: The sniper also contributes to the offensive against Sordo.
Lieutenant Berrendo: Lieutenant Berrendo is a leader in the forces against the guerrillas. El Sordo's men kill his best friend on the hill. He orders the heads of Sordo and his men taken after their defeat.
Eladio: Eladio is the brother of Andrés, part of Pablo's band of guerrillas. He worries about his brother when he goes to deliver the dispatch. He dies on the hill the day the bridge is blown, as do Fernando and Anselmo.
Durán: Durán is a friend of Robert Jordan's whom he talks to at Gaylord's. He too fights in the army with no training.
Grandfather: Robert Jordan thinks of his grandfather one night when he cannot fall asleep. Grandfather was a hero of the American Civil War. Robert Jordan thinks his father was a coward, for he killed himself with Grandfather's Civil War gun, which Robert Jordan threw into a deep river after his funeral. He idolizes Grandfather and thinks it is a pity that so many years separate them, for he could have learned a lot from the old man, and wishes he could give him advice and that he could see his bravery.
Dolores: Dolores is also known as La Pasionara. She is a figure in the Communist movement, and Joaquín admires her.
the five men: When Pablo comes back after leaving the camp, he tells them he has thrown the dynamite and detonator in the river, but brings five men. Later, it is made clear that he was using them, and shot them when he did not need them anymore, and this embitters Agustín greatly.
bridge: Robert Jordan is sent as an explosives expert to demolish the bridge. It is made of steel. The enemy sends trucks and troops over the bridge. After the bridge is demolished, the guerrillas will attack the enemy, then repair the bridge and retreat.
Madrid: Madrid is the capital of Spain.
La Granja: La Granja is a city in Spain. The road on either side of the bridge leads there in one direction, and the guerrillas are constantly looking for reports of what is happening there.
Segovia: Segovia is a city in Spain. The guerillas hope to go as far as Segovia and perhaps take the city when they finish with the attack and the bridge. They see many enemy planes coming to and from Segovia.
Vicente Rojo: Vicente Rojo is the man who made the plan for the attack and demolition of the bridge.
partizan: partizan is a Russian word used to refer to the guerrilla work that Robert Jordan is doing. He says he likes partizan work for the open air.
Camarada: Spanish for comrade. People in the war refer to each other as comrade. At one point, Robert Jordan says he does not like it when they call him Don, colloquial for Mr., and insists that they call him Camarada. Pilar tells him he takes his politics very seriously, and that she, on the other hand, can joke about anything.
guardia civil: Spanish for civil guard. These are the Fascist police soldiers. Pablo kills four of them with a shotgun.
Valladolid: Valladolid is a city in Spain. Finito has his last bullfight there.
bullfighter: Bullfighting is an old tradition in Spain. A bullfighter is a well-trained expert, who wears a traditional costume referred to as a 'suit of lights' made up of sequined tight three-quarter pants, a short jacket, and a specific kind of black hat, and performs various maneuvers to tease and dodge the bull. It is a difficult and dangerous sport. Eventually, if he is successful, he kills the bull with a single thrust between the shoulder blades. The men are otherwise known as matadors, matadores, toreadores, matadores de toros. Finito, Pilar's lover before Pablo, was a bullfighter before he died, and Joaquín was training to be a bullfighter.
máquina: Spanish for machine, it refers to the automatic rifles. The guerrillas received rifles by porter, and did not know how to use them until the experimented and took them apart. Robert Jordan shows them how to aim, and how to find positions from which to shoot the enemy.
Moscas: Moscas are a Spanish fighter plane, actually a Boeing P32. Anselmo thinks he sees them in the sky, but Robert Jordan recognizes them as enemy planes. Moscas literally means flies, as in the animal.
absinthe: Absinthe is extremely strong liquor made with wormwood. Robert Jordan likes it very much, and it calms him. At the end, when he is waiting with his broken leg to shoot the officer, he reaches for it and is very disappointed to find it is not there.
Fascist: Fascists are members of the Fascist party. Fascism is an anti-democratic political party with its origins in Italy. They believe that one powerful leader should govern the people. The Fascists won the Spanish Civil War, led by General Francisco Franco, who ruled a repressive dictatorship in Spain from the time of the end of the Civil War in 1939, to his death in 1975.
gored: To be gored is to be stabbed, even killed, by the horns of a bull while bullfighting.
Republic: The Republicans are pro-democracy, and fight against the Fascists, who are anti-democracy. The guerrillas in For Whom the Bell Tolls are Republicans. They lost the Spanish Civil War.
Government post: Andrés and Gomez must pass several government posts to deliver the dispatch from Robert Jordan to Golz.
Valencia: Valencia is a city in Spain. Pilar and Finito, the bullfighter, spent time there as lovers.
Feria: Spanish for festival, or fair.
Ayuntamiento: The Ayuntamiento, or city hall, is where Pablo keeps the fascists until they come out into the plaza and are beaten by the two lines of men with clubs.
Inglés: The guerrillas call Robert Jordan Inglés, which means English. He tries to correct them, saying that he is American, but they do not really mind the difference, and the nickname sticks.
Gredos: They are planning to escape to Gredos after the demolition and attack on the bridge. Pablo is making their escape plan. Robert Jordan suggests that there they can work against the main line of the railway, and go south into Estremadura.
Estremadura: Estremadura is a region in the west of Spain. Robert Jordan spent most of his time there before fighting in the war, and he has an Estremadura accent when he speaks Spanish.
tortillera: Spanish colloquialism for lesbian. Literally means 'tortilla maker.' Pilar says that although she wants Maria to be happy, she still is jealous of Robert Jordan, but is not a tortillera.
anarchists: The anarchists wear red and black scarves. One of them, a drunkard, tries to set the body of Don García on fire the day of Pablo's fascist massacre. When they dump the bodies of the fascists over the cliff, Pilar says she would have rather they dropped thirty of the red and black scarved drunks. When Andrés approaches the post on his way to Golz, anarchists on the other side of the fence seem paranoid and threaten to bomb him, thinking that he is a fascist because he brings a message from behind fascist lines. Realizing he is dealing with the anarchists, the crazies in the red and black scarves, Andres pretends to align with them by yelling 'long live us!' Recognizing a familiar slogan, they welcome him and try to start up conversation.
Gallegos: Agustín can tell that the men in the enemy post he is watching are Gallegos, or natives of the northwest region of Galicia, because they are speaking the Gallego dialect. He wonders what they of the green country think of the snowstorm.
cojones: Spanish, colloquial for balls. Used many times in reference to Pablo having lost his, that is, having lost his courage. Pablo, ignorant of nationality, assumes Robert Jordan is Scottish, though he corrects him several times, and when he asks him what he wears under his skirt (Scottish traditional dress for men is a kilt, a pleated skirt), Robert Jordan replies that he wears his balls under his skirt.
negro, blanco, rojo: Spanish for black, red, and white. Pablo calls Agustín black because of his dark skin, and Agustín gets angry. Pablo calls him white, and Agustín gets angry and says he is red, like the red stars of the Republic.
camp: The guerrillas have their camp inside a cave. They live, sleep, and eat there. It is in the mountains, with a pine forest around them, and it is behind fascist lines. They leave the camp when they advance on their attack.
horses: Pablo is very proud of his horses. They lack enough horses for all to escape, though. The gypsy goes to get more, and the enemy is able to find him from the tracks in the snow and massacre him and his men. When Agustín, furious, tells Pablo that Pablo rapes horses in order to provoke him, Pablo is unfazed and tells Agustín that the horses are smarter than people. Robert Jordan kills a man on horseback, and they acquire a big grey horse, which eventually falls on Robert Jordan's leg, breaking it, when he is escaping with the others.
Gaylord's: Gaylord's is a hotel in Madrid that has been taken over by the Russians. At Gaylord's, Robert Jordan talks to Karkov, who is a very intelligent and politically savvy man. Robert Jordan did not like it at first, and was afraid of being corrupted by the hotel's luxury; the food is too good for a besieged city, but he grew to enjoy it. He likes it because he learns a lot there.
the dispatch: The dispatch is from Robert Jordan to Golz, who gave him the orders about the bridge and the following attack. Robert Jordan realizes that the enemy anticipates their attack, and wants Golz to cancel it. He sends Andrés with the dispatch. Andrés finally reaches the government post, where André Marty, a crazy and embittered ex-war-hero confiscates it and imprisons him. Karkov shows up and is able to get it and give it to Duval, one of Robert Jordan's intended recipients, who gets in contact with Golz, who tells them they are screwed, that there is nothing they can do.
Custer: Custer was a fairly famous general in the American Civil War. After the war, he was sent to kill Native Americans in the west. His last stand was at Little Big Horn, where he and his men were outnumbered and massacred-this is well-known as Custer's Last Stand. Robert Jordan's grandfather, in telling Robert Jordan about warfare, tells him that Custer was simply a man who was very good at getting himself into trouble and out of it.
Falangists: Falangists were a group of young, conservative, violent, extremely radical leaders. They believed in authoritarianism and nationalism. It was the nearest Spain came to having a fascist party. General Francisco Franco, dictator from 1939-1975, fused their party with the right-wing Catholic party, the Carlists, in 1937. They are the ones that shaved Maria's head and raped her, and when telling Robert Jordan about it, she says she would like to kill many Falangists.
safe-conduct pass: Andrés and Gomez receive a safe-conduct pass at one of the posts they pass through. Marty confiscates it, but Karkov gets it back to them along with the dispatch meant for Golz.
Bullbaiting: Bullbaiting is a sport in which the men hold onto the bull while it tries to throw them off. Andrés has excelled at this particularly in his town of Villaconejos. Once he gripped the bull's ear in his teeth, and it becomes his trademark and earns him the name 'bulldog.'
Judas Iscariot: Judas is a figure in the New Testament. He was one of the twelve apostles. He betrayed the Lord Jesus for the price of thirty pieces of silver. When Pablo returns after leaving and taking the dynamite and detonator, Pilar welcomes him but is cold, saying that Judas Iscariot is his predecessor.
Spanish Civil War: The Spanish Civil War took place from 1936 to 1939 resulting in the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, which lasted until his death in 1975. The Republicans were pro-democracy and the Nationalists were anti-democracy.
Quote 1: "I would always rather not know. Then, no matter what can happen, it was not me that talked." Robert Jordan, Chapter 1, pg. 7
Quote 2: "'I don't like that sadness,' he thought. That sadness is bad. That's the sadness they bet before they quit or betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out." Robert Jordan, Chapter 1, pg. 12
Quote 3: "But with our without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo." Anselmo, Chapter 3, pg. 41
Quote 4: "One cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafés, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of book shops, of kiosques, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of the Guarangy Trust Company and the Ile de la Cité, of Foyot's old hotel, and of being able to read and relax in the evening; of all things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy." Chapter 4, pg. 51
Quote 5: "'Thy mother,' Agustín replied.
'Thou never had one,' Pilar told him, the insults having reached the ultimate formalism in Spanish in which the acts are never stated but only implied." Chapter 9, pg. 93
Quote 6: "To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material." Agustín, Chapter 9, pg. 95
Quote 7: "Look at the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind yourself. Then, one day, for no reason, he sees you as ugly as you really are and he is not blind anymore and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling... After a while, when you are as ugly as I am, as ugly as women can be, then, as I say after a while the feeling, the idiotic feeling that you are beautiful, grows slowly in one again. It grows like a cabbage. And then, when the feeling is grown, another man sees you and thinks you are beautiful and it is all to do over." Pilar, Chapter 10, pg. 98
Quote 8: "You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some courtyard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night, in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights of the car from down the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies." Robert Jordan, Chapter 11, pg. 134
Quote 9: "Then just shut up about what we are going to do afterwards, will you, Inglés? You go back to the Republic and you take your piece with you and leave us others alone here to decide what part of these hills we'll die in." Pilar, Chapter 11, pg. 150
Quote 10: "For her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color." Chapter 13, pg. 159
Quote11: "Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?" Robert Jordan, Chapter 13, pg. 163
Quote 12: "Maria can tell them about how some of the blue-shirted crusaders for the true faith sat on her head while others twisted her arms and pulled her skirts up and stuffed them in her mouth." Robert Jordan, Chapter 13, pg. 165
Quote 13: "It was like the excitement of the battle except it was clean... In a snowstorm it always seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies. In a snowstorm the wind could blow a gale; but it blew a white cleanness and the air was full of a driving whiteness and all things were changed and when the wind stopped there would be the stillness. This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but he might as well enjoy it." Robert Jordan, Chapter 14, pg. 182
Quote 14: "Here it is the shift from deadliness to normal family life that is the strangest." Robert Jordan, Chapter 18, pg. 228
Quote 15: "You learned the dry-mouthed, fear-purged purging ecstasy of battle and you fought that summer and that fall for all the poor in the world against all tyranny, for all the things you believed in and for the new world you had been educated into." Chapter 18, pg. 236
Quote 16: "In the night he awoke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken away from him." Chapter 21, pg. 264
Quote 17: "If he were not of great ability he would have died last night. It seems to me you do not understand politics, Inglés, nor guerilla warfare. In politics and this other the first thing is to continue to exist. Look how he continued to exist last night." Agustín, Chapter 23, pg. 284
Quote 18: "In war cannot say what one feels." Pilar, Chapter 25, pg. 301
Quote 19: "It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn't believe in killing, he told himself. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you believe in it the whole thing is wrong." Chapter 26, pg. 304
Quote 20: "[El Sordo] was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being on this hill which was only utilizable as a place to die... Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it or fear of it in his mind." Chapter 27, pg. 312
Quote 21: "Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond." Chapter 27, pg. 313
Quote 22: "There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion." Chapter 27, pg. 318
Quote 23: "I guess really good soldiers are really good at very little else." Chapter 30, pg. 339
Quote 24: "There is no finer and no worse people in the world. No kinder people and no crueler." Chapter 31, pg. 355
Quote 25: "It was easier to live under a regime than fight it." Chapter 34, pg. 367
Quote 26: "His rage began to thin as he exaggerated more and more and spread his scorn and contempt so widely and unjustly that he could no longer believe in it himself." Chapter 35, pg. 370
Quote 27: "That isn't much of a wedding present. But is not a good night's sleep supposed to be priceless? You had a good night's sleep. See if you can wear that like a ring on your finger." Chapter 35, pg. 371
Quote 28: "There isn't any need to deny everything there's been just because you are going to lose it." Chapter 38, pg. 386
Quote 29: "This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived." Chapter 39, pg. 393
Quote 30: "His gray face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion." Chapter 42, pg. 417
Quote 31: "In his mind he was commanding troops; he had the right to interfere and this he believed to constitute command." Chapter 42, pg. 423
Chapter 1
Bravery 1: Though Pablo was once a fearless and merciless fighter, they all know that he has lost much of his bravery, and is very afraid of dying. He says that the horses are strong, but he will be hunted down and killed. Robert Jordan notices his sullen demeanor right away upon meeting him, and is afraid that Pablo's cowardice will lead to betrayal.
Chapter 2
Bravery 2: The guerillas compare Robert Jordan to the other foreigner, Kashkin, who they considered odd, but brave. Kashkin was the demolition expert before Robert Jordan arrived, and he helped blow up the train, which they all consider a great victory.
Chapter 3
Bravery 3: Anselmo has never been in a battle, and he does not trust himself to be brave and not run, so he tells Robert Jordan that his orders must be specific so that he does not end up not knowing what to do, getting scared, and running away.
Chapter 4
Bravery 4: Again, Pablo's men make disparaging comments about his cowardice. He says that it is not cowardly to know what is foolish. Anselmo replies that it is not foolish to know what is cowardly. Even Pablo's woman stands up to him and calls him a coward.
Chapter 9
Bravery 5: Pablo lies awake at night and tells Pilar that he is afraid to die. She is ashamed of his cowardice and has no patience for it, for she is a very brave woman and has lived with bullfighters, and she knows how brave he once was before he became a coward.
Chapter 10
Bravery 6: At the event where Pablo arranges to have the fascists and sympathizers killed, Don Ricardo Montcalvo shows bravery in the face of death, standing up for his beliefs and insulting the republic before he is flailed to death. His bravery and pride arouse the already extreme rage and hysteria of the mob.
Chapter 14
Bravery 7: Pilar talks of how the bullfighter Finito was not afraid of death, and compares him to Pablo. Despite his bravery as a bullfighter, outside of the bullring, Finito was a petrified coward.
Chapter 15
Bravery 8: On the way back from Anselmo's guard post to the camp, Anselmo and Robert Jordan make fun of Pablo's cowardice, calling the cave the Cave of Lost Eggs, a reference to how they think Pablo has "lost his balls." Anselmo has known Pablo a long time, but disparages him and continually calls him a coward and a fool.
Chapter 21
Bravery 9: They notice how being on the big grey horse all of a sudden makes Pablo seemed more dignified and brave. Robert Jordan tells Pablo that the danger makes him feel brave.
Chapter 22
Bravery 10: Robert Jordan is focused and brave, instructing them exactly what to do and how to use the gun. He does not let his fear interfere with his work. He also does not let his nervousness show when he is around the others, especially Maria, though he is often conflicted and scared inside.
Chapter 23
Bravery 11: Agustín has much bravado, and talks a lot about how much he wants to have killed the four cavalry, but Robert Jordan knows Agustin felt fear because he felt his muscles twitch while they were hiding.
Chapter 24
Bravery 12: Although Agustín has condemned Pablo as a traitor, he knows that he has the ability to be brave and survive in times of great necessity, for he has worked with him for a long time, even before Pablo lost his bravery and began to fear death.
Chapter 27
Bravery 13: El Sordo has been shot and has retreated to the hill with his men and knows he is dying. However, he shows great dignity and bravery in his death. "[El Sordo] was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being on this hill which was only utilizable as a place to die... Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it or fear of it in his mind." Chapter 27, pg. 312
Chapter 28
Bravery 14: Anselmo again hopes that Robert Jordan's instructions before the battle will be exact, so he will not feel confused and get the urge to run away from the battle.
Chapter 29
Bravery 15: On their way to the attack, Pablo tells Robert Jordan that he is confident in the plan and admires his bravery. Robert Jordan wishes he were confident in the plan too.
Chapter 30
Bravery 16: Robert Jordan epitomizes Grandfather, who fought in the American Civil War, as the ultimate in bravery and wisdom. He wishes he had his advice, and knows he could have learned more from him. He sees himself as having inherited more of his bravery from Grandfather than from his father, who shot himself, and whom he thinks is a coward.
Chapter 31
Bravery 17: Maria tells Robert Jordan about the day that her town was taken and her parents were shot. She wishes the Falangists had shot her too, so that she could have shouted as bravely as her father and mother did before they were shot. Her father shouted long live the Republic, her mother shouted long live the Republic and my husband the mayor, and Maria wanted to shout long live the Republic and my parents. Instead, they shaved her head and raped her. She wishes she could have shouted bravely instead of being shamed by the men who raped her. She tells the story to Robert Jordan with much bravery and confidence, and he is filled with hatred for her rapists.
Chapter 34
Bravery 18: Andrés is relieved when he is sent to deliver the dispatch from Robert Jordan to Golz, and compares it to when it rained and he could not do the bullbaiting, in which he hung on for dear life to a bull. It is not that he would have been a coward in battle, but he feels relieved that outside forces have exempted him from fighting for the time being. Still, though he is relieved, he retains his loyalty to his comrades and brother and knows he must return to help them in battle if he can.
Chapter 36
Bravery 19: Andrés keeps his cool in the face of danger, as the guards threaten to bomb him. He does not panic and thinks very quickly on his feet, and when he recognizes the anarchists, he tells them he is one too, so that they will welcome him. He knows the importance of his mission to deliver the dispatch from Robert Jordan to Golz confirming the orders, and persists despite the danger.
Chapter 38
Bravery 20: They are all shocked that Pablo returns to the camp after sneaking away and stealing the dynamite and detonator. Pilar tells Pablo that when a man has bravery, it will never leave him permanently, but that his was indeed a long way gone.
Chapter 41
Bravery 21: Anselmo has expressed before to Robert Jordan that Robert Jordan's instructions before the battle must be exact, so he will not feel confused and get the urge to run away from the battle. When Robert Jordan tells him what to do, he makes it an order, and knows to make his orders exact, so that Anselmo will not be confused and get the urge to run.
Chapter 43
Bravery 22: Robert Jordan is brave and calm up until the bridge blows; he then feels angry and alone. Anselmo follows orders and shoots the sentry, but tears run down his face when he tells Robert Jordan that he killed the man.
Bravery 23: Robert Jordan tries to escape with the others, but his horse gets shot and falls on his leg. He shows no fear when he tells them they must leave him behind. He knows that to continue would slow them down and he sacrifices his own life so that they can continue safely.
Chapter 1
Foreigners 1: Pablo is upset that a foreigner, Robert Jordan, is putting them in danger by following his orders to blow the bridge. Robert Jordan does not feel like a foreigner because he has lived in Spain for ten years, and tells Pablo that he wishes he had been born in Spain, and that his orders are his orders.
Chapter 3
Foreigners 2: Anselmo makes several ethnic slurs against gypsies. He says that in the war they become bad as in old times, and implies that they are savages because they think that killing someone outside of the tribe is not murder.
Chapter 5
Foreigners 3: Even the gypsy, often the target of ethnic slurs, makes fun of other races and cultures. He sings a song at the campfire disparaging the Cataláns, a people in the northeast of Spain, and the Negroes.
Chapter 10
Foreigners 4: Pablo's immense pride, both for Spain and himself, combined with his disdain for foreigners, led him to believe that the priest should have died with more dignity; he should not have feared the angry mob because he was of the Spanish nationality, and Spaniards should have more dignity.
Chapter 11
Foreigners 5: When Robert Jordan hears about Joaquin's loss, he thinks about his role as a foreigner in the war. He does not often feel like a foreigner, for he has lived in Spain for ten years and speaks the language very well. He does feel like a foreigner, though, in that he was not involved with the start of the movement, and does not have the stories or experiences of losing family members, like Joaquín and Maria. He only hears of such loss secondhand.
Foreigners 6: Robert Jordan suggests that they go to Gredos instead of the Republic after they blow the bridge. This suggestion invokes the wrath of Pilar. She gets extremely defensive that a foreigner would think he knows the country better than she. She knows that as a foreigner, he has no obligation to the country and can leave whenever he wants, and that they, the poor Spaniards, will be left in the hills with the consequences.
"Then just shut up about what we are going to do afterwards, will you, Inglés? You go back to the Republic and you take your piece with you and leave us others alone here to decide what part of these hills we'll die in." Chapter 11, pg. 150
Chapter 13
Foreigners 7: Robert Jordan is conflicted by his status as a foreigner and a man under orders. He wonders whether or not he is somehow betraying the people he works with by putting them in danger. He must carry out his orders, but they live in this territory and must face the consequences.
Foreigners 8: Pilar pries into Robert Jordan and Maria's sex life, telling Maria that the earth only moves three times for a woman during her lifetime; because it moved that afternoon with Robert Jordan, it will move only twice more. Robert Jordan does not believe in any of Pilar's gypsy sayings and mocks her. He is angry that Pilar has taken his lovemaking and applied her own gypsy superstitions to it.
Chapter 15
Foreigners 9: Anselmo thinks of his own religious beliefs and his vulnerability, and wonders how Robert Jordan can be so detached and unafraid of death. He wonders if it is because he is without religion, or that he is a foreigner.
Chapter 16
Foreigners 10: At the campfire one night, Pablo is very drunk. He is ignorant about nationalities, and insists that Robert Jordan knows about Scottish customs even though Robert Jordan reminds him again and again that he is American. He insists that Robert Jordan wears a kilt skirt like the Scottish and insists on knowing what they wear underneath their skirts.
Chapter 19
Foreigners 11: There is much talk of gypsies throughout the book. When the gypsy says that gypsy women are ugly as they age, Pilar reminds him that they age quickly because their husbands are always getting them pregnant.
Chapter 22
Foreigners 12: Robert Jordan is very angry that the gypsy left his post to hunt rabbits. He does not express his rage, but thinks to himself how gypsies are worthless, physically and mentally unfit for the war.
Chapter 23
Foreigners 13: Robert Jordan often romanticizes the Spanish. He thinks of how the Spanish kill as an act of faith, and not without passion or for no reason.
Chapter 25
Foreigners 14: Pilar makes a racist comment against the gypsy, saying that he exaggerated the report of the cavalry (gypsies are prone to exaggeration). Pilar has gypsy blood.
Chapter 31
Foreigners 15: Robert Jordan thinks with wonder about Spaniards, and how the same nationality of people who took him in and treated him well at their camp could also be the nationality of people who gang-raped the woman he loves. He looks from a foreigner's view at Spanish history, through the lines of warriors and conquistadors who performed many violent acts and were, and still are, glorified: "There is no finer and no worse people in the world. No kinder people and no crueler." Chapter 31, pg. 355
Chapter 35
Foreigners 16: Robert Jordan is so angry about having to leave Maria, that his rage exaggerates itself and extends to the entirety of the Spanish people, who he pities for having leaders that always screw them. Eventually, he realizes the craziness of such an all-encompassing anger. "His rage began to thin as he exaggerated more and more and spread his scorn and contempt so widely and unjustly that he could no longer believe in it himself." Chapter 35, pg. 370
Chapter 1
Loyalty 1: Both Robert Jordan and Anselmo notice that Pablo is sullen and sly. Robert Jordan worries about Pablo's loyalty, for he says that men get sullen before they quit or betray:
Chapter 2
Loyalty 2: Even Pablo's woman does not trust him anymore, and she even tells this to the foreigner, Robert Jordan. She recognizes that he is weakened and afraid and fears that he will not be able to act with quickness and loyalty.
Chapter 3
Loyalty 3: Anselmo tells Robert Jordan that El Sordo and Agustín are both good and loyal men. He also tells him that while he does not trust Pablo, they must proceed with caution because the mountains are Pablo's territory.
Chapter 4
Loyalty 4: The people who Pablo is supposed to be the leader of stand up to him outright, even his woman. He is not pleased with this, and threatens Anselmo's life when the man calls him a fool.
Chapter 5
Loyalty 5: Even Pablo's own men are planning to kill him, for they think he has become dangerous and might betray them. The gypsy tells Robert Jordan that he wants him to kill Pablo, but Robert Jordan does not like the idea, for he knows it is dangerous to kill where you must then work. He also worries that the woman may have a bad reaction.
Chapter 6
Loyalty 6: Maria tells Robert that her father was shot for his political beliefs; he was loyal to the Spanish Republican party to the last moment.
Chapter 11
Loyalty 7: El Sordo tells Robert Jordan that he knows that they need more men, but the problem is that those in the hills are mostly unreliable, and more become so every day. He says that out of the hundred, maybe four are reliable and trustworthy.
Chapter 13
Loyalty 8: Robert Jordan is conflicted and worries about his loyalty to the other guerillas. He wonders whether or not he is somehow betraying the people he works with by putting them in danger, exposing them to the orders that he must carry out (blowing up the bridge) in their territory where they must face the consequences of the offensive action.
Chapter 15
Loyalty 9: Robert Jordan has faith that Anselmo will be loyal, as confirmed by the fact that Anselmo did not leave his post, which would have endangered them all. Anselmo is his closest friend among the men in Pablo's band.
Chapter 16
Loyalty 10: Pablo's group of guerillas feels that because he has lost his nerve and capability for action and therefore is a danger to them all. They are no longer loyal to him, and try to provoke him so they can kill him.
Chapter 17
Loyalty 11: Agustín is repulsed when Pablo comes back inside the cave after their fight when they tried to provoke him, and announces he is with them again. Agustín does not believe Pablo, and thinks that the others are insane to take Pablo back when he has proved his disloyalty and attacked them.
Chapter 18
Loyalty 12: Robert Jordan felt guilty at first for enjoying the good food at Gaylord's in Madrid when the city was under siege, as if he had betrayed those people who were fighting in poor conditions.
Chapter 19
Loyalty 13: Robert Jordan shot Kashkin because if he had been found and interrogated, he might have had to give secrets to the enemy. Kashkin was a good and loyal comrade and Robert Jordan shot him out of loyalty to the others. Robert Jordan is more than loyal; he is loyal to the point of fearlessness. He does not let his emotions interfere with his work, and for that reason was able to shoot his friend Kashkin for the good and safety of the others.
Chapter 23
Loyalty 14: Although Agustín has condemned Pablo as a traitor before, he still knows that he has a great ability to be brave and survive in times of great necessity. When Robert Jordan expresses doubt about this, Agustín corrects him, saying that it takes great ability to survive. Robert Jordan is embarassed about midjudging Pablo.
Chapter 24
Loyalty 15: Agustín is loyal to Maria, having helped to rescue her from the train where she was a prisoner, and having seen the results of the suffering she endured as an effect of her rape by the Falangists. He tells Robert Jordan that he had better take good care of her, for she suffered, for he too cares for her deeply. He reassures him, though, of his loyalty; that the matter of Maria is separate and that he will follow Robert Jordan's command on the day of the attack no matter what the situation with Maria.
Chapter 25
Loyalty 16: The others wait at their post and hear the heavy firing in the direction of El Sordo's hill. They know he is being massacred. Though they are all loyal to El Sordo, they know that they cannot help him now, and to leave would be a suicide mission for themselves.
Chapter 28
Loyalty 17: The others wait at their post and hear the heavy firing in the direction of El Sordo's hill. They know he is being massacred. They all feel terribly about El Sordo when they realize it is all over, for they know that he was a very loyal man and in any other situation, would have saved him. Fernando is very zealous and wants revenge.
Chapter 31
Loyalty 18: Maria tells Robert Jordan about her parents were shot as they proclaimed their loyalty for the Republic. She also tells him about her rape, and is ashamed and fears that he will not want to marry her if she cannot have children. Robert Jordan remains loyal and devoted to her and he says he is proud of her family.
Chapter 38
Loyalty 19: They are shocked to see Pablo has returned to the camp, for he proved himself a traitor when he snuck away and stole the dynamite and detonator. He tells them he returned not because he approves of the mission, but because he became lonely and because he knows they must all finish together.
Chapter 41
Loyalty 20: Robert Jordan shakes Pablo's hand as they separate to take their respective posts, and is surprised that it feels strong and honest. From the beginning, he has doubted Pablo's honesty, and was angry with himself for trusting him when he discovered that he had stolen the dynamite and detonator.
Chapter 43
Loyalty 21: Robert Jordan is brave and calm before the bridge blows, but when he sees Anselmo dead, killed by flying steel from the bridge, he curses Pablo for his treachery-if he had not taken the detonator, and they had not had to use a grenade setup, Anselmo would still be alive.
Loyalty 22: When Pablo returns without the five men who he brought to fight with him, they all know that he shot them, and he will not come out and say it outright. Agustín is furious with Pablo for betraying the five men, using them then shooting them for the valuable commodity of the horses. Agustín has always mistrusted Pablo, and was one of the men most adamant about the need to kill Pablo and who provoked him the most.
Loyalty 23: Robert Jordan tries to escape on horseback with the others, but the horse is shot and falls on his leg, breaking it. He will stay behind because he knows that he will slow down their escape if he goes with them. This is extremely loyal of him, to sacrifice himself so that they can escape faster. He stays behind to shoot an enemy officer so he can delay their pursuit of the escapees.
Chapter 2
Women 1: We meet the two major female characters of the book at the camp. Maria is beautiful, quiet, and submissive; she and Robert Jordan fall in love at first sight. In contrast, Pilar is a rough and large peasant woman who uses obscenities frequently and always stands up for herself aggressively.
Chapter 4
Women 2: Pilar has a dual role. She can stand up to Pablo and take a leadership role amongst the men, but Pablo still treats her like a socially conventional woman. She teaches Maria skills like cooking and cleaning. He tells her that since she is a woman as well as a commander, to get the food, and she obeys.
Chapter 6
Women 3: The contrast is further seen between Pilar and Maria at the camp. Pilar is outspoken, loud, and tells Robert Jordan that he is very serious about his politics, while she can joke about anything. Maria is not confident, thinks she is ugly, and the longing she feels for Robert Jordan is yet unspoken.
Chapter 7
Women 4: Maria comes to Robert Jordan's bed. Maria is not very confident and relies on Robert Jordan to teach her to kiss and is ashamed, afraid that he will reject her because she has been raped. He understands that she has suffered. He loves her and does not reject her.
Chapter 8
Women 5: Pilar is a woman who stands up for herself very vocally. She tells the people at the camp of her lover, Finito, a bullfighter who was extremely brave in the ring. She agrees that Pablo is more of a man than Finito, but that he is not romantic and passionate like him.
Chapter 9
Women 6: Pilar is a woman who can stand up for herself and bicker with the men. She and Agustín insult each other playfully. She has no patience for Pablo's cowardice. She tells Pablo there is not room for both her and his fear of death in their bed.
Chapter 10
Women 7: Again, there is a great difference between Pilar and Maria. On the way back from El Sordo's, there is another example of this. Pilar is confident with her sexuality and says she was born ugly but is beautiful on the inside, and knows that she is able to engage men this way. Maria feels ugly because of what happened to her, and because of her hair, and is not confident in herself as a lover or wife.
Women 8: When the Moors come up in conversation, Maria makes a reference to the fact that Moors raped her, and Pilar tells her it is unhealthy to talk about it. Pilar has been Maria's guardian since they found the girl on the train that Pablo blew up. She knows about her rape, but thinks it would be best for her to forget about it and move on with her life with Robert Jordan. Maria makes occasional references to it, and Pilar tells her not to talk about it, and that it is unhealthy to do so.
Chapter 11
Women 9: Pilar jokes about kissing Joaquín, saying it has been a long time since she kissed a bullfighter, and he is not amused by her teasing. This makes her feel very ugly and old.
Chapter 12
Women 10: Pilar feels ugly because when she joked about kissing Joaquín, she thinks she saw revulsion in his eyes. She tells Robert Jordan and Maria that she does not want Maria, but that she is jealous of their love and Maria's beauty and youth, though she will not be young forever.
Chapter 13
Women 11: Robert Jordan cannot fall asleep and fantasizes about what the future with Maria could hold. It is disappointing, to say the least. Robert Jordan and Maria's love affair is seems so perfect that it is almost another world, a fantasy. Robert Jordan's fantasy of Maria coming back to Montana with him as his wife becomes harshly cynical as he realizes how idealistic and unrealistic it is. He realizes that even if he takes her away from Spain, he can never take away the horrible trauma of the rape or the death of her parents.
Women 12: Maria tells Robert Jordan she wants to serve him and take care of him like a good wife. She wants to be a socially conventional, dutiful housewife, rolling Robert Jordan's cigarettes and washing his socks. Pilar is less conventional, and talks about sex openly. Robert Jordan and Maria are embarrassed when she pries into their sex life.
Chapter 16
Women 13: Pilar is angry that Robert Jordan lets Maria serve him so blindly as the girl bustles around taking care of his wet clothes like a servant. Pilar makes a reference to how Robert Jordan is acting like a Lord and Master. Pilar herself serves Pablo in many wife-specific ways, such as cooking and cleaning, but she also stands up to him frequently and they bicker.
Chapter 18
Women 14: There is a contrast between Karkov's obviously confident and self-sufficient women, who come to Gaylord's regularly, and Maria, who serves Robert Jordan and cannot even come into Gaylord's without prior introduction.
Chapter 19
Women 15: When the gypsy says that gypsy women are ugly when they age, Pilar retorts that they age fast because their husbands are always getting them pregnant. Pilar is a woman who stands up for herself and for women when men try to take advantage of them.
Chapter 20
Women 16: Robert is intensely sad that he will be separated from Maria, for he has never cared so deeply for a woman before, and knows that their connection is unique: "In the night he awoke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken away from him." Chapter 21, pg. 264
Chapter 21
Women 17: Robert Jordan is cold to Maria when they say goodbye, for he does not know how to love Maria and focus on his work at the same time. She is intensely emotional, and stands with her fists clenched.
Chapter 24
Women 18: Agustín tells Robert Jordan that he better take care of Maria, for he has strong feelings for her too. He wants to make sure that Robert Jordan truly cares for her, and is not just having sex with her, something that any of the men could have done. He does not understand why Pilar saved Maria for Robert Jordan. Agustín says he cares about Maria, but he still talks about her like an object to be given and taken, and not someone who makes her own decisions (which, in the novel, she does not). When he confirms that Robert Jordan really does care for her, and that their love is solid, he pretends not to be disappointed and says that he will go to whores instead.
Chapter 25
Women 19: Pilar and Primitivo bicker as the group knows El Sordo is being massacred. They insult each other with low blows at their respective femininity and masculinity. He calls her stupid and brutal, and she retorts that women who are stupid and brutal serve as aids to men poorly equipped for procreation.
Chapter 28
Women 20: Maria wants to be a conventional, dutiful housewife and serve Robert Jordan. She tells him Pilar is giving Maria instructions on how to be a good wife. Pilar knows what to do, and she does do some of these things for Pablo, like cooking, but she also stands up to her man and has the courage to tell her husband what she thinks of him.
Chapter 31
Women 21: Maria tells Robert Jordan of her rape one night when they are in bed. Robert Jordan is understanding, but like Pilar, he tells her that perhaps she should not be talking about it anymore, for it would be better and healthier not to. He tells her he loves her, that of course he will still marry her even if she cannot have children, and feels a great hatred toward those who did her wrong.
Chapter 37
Women 22: Robert Jordan thinks about Maria with great intensity. He knows, and he has had the feeling all along, that he will be leaving Maria and feels a great tenderness toward her.
Chapter 39
Women 23: Maria wants to go with Robert Jordan, but she will obey him and stay with the horses. She always obeys him, and wants to serve him and be a good wife.
Chapter 41
Women 24: Robert Jordan's goodbye with Maria is awkward, as he still does not know how to reconcile his love for her with his focus on work. She reacts more intensely, for he never talks to her about his work and she does not understand it.
Chapter 43
Women 25: Robert Jordan tells Maria that she must go, but she does not want to. He tells her she must obey, and she eventually does, though she is very emotional. He tells her that wherever he goes, she goes with him, for they are one now. He tells himself after she leaves, he must make himself believe what he told her. It is apparent that he too is emotional and is not as detached as he would have her think.
It is the late 1930's in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Robert Jordan lies in the forest. He sees a mill in the distance. An old man, Anselmo, points out the bridge, and says that the mill and the roadmender's hut hold enemy posts. Robert Jordan is tall and thin, in peasant clothes, with fair hair. They take a steep climb. Anselmo is an experienced climber and guide, and Robert Jordan knows this is important when traveling behind enemy lines. He has been sent to blow up the bridge. General Golz explained that the explosion must occur only when the attack has begun, so that the enemy cannot repair it; the date and time is subject to change due to forces out of his control. The enemy moves trucks, tanks, and artillery via the bridge. An aerial bombardment will precede the attack. After the bridge is blown, Golz' troops will storm the pass, repair the bridge, and advance on the city of La Granja. The plan is by Vicente Rojo. Eventually, they plan to take Segovia. Robert Jordan does not want to hear any more. "I would always rather not know. Then, no matter what can happen, it was not me that talked." Chapter 1, pg. 7 Golz asks him how he likes partizan work, guerrilla work behind enemy lines, and Robert Jordan says he likes the open air. They drink Spanish brandy, and Golz tries to joke with him. Robert Jordan remembers his pale face, hawk eyes, and thin lips.
Anselmo returns with Pablo, a large peasant. Robert Jordan shows him his identity papers and sees he cannot read. He tries to flatter Pablo by saying that he has heard he is an excellent guerrilla. Pablo objects to blowing up the bridge, for creating a disturbance puts them in danger. Robert Jordan worries about his sullen demeanor, for it is how men get before they betray or quit. "'I don't like that sadness,' he thought. That sadness is bad. That's the sadness they bet before they quit or betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out." Chapter 1, pg. 12 Robert Jordan admires his horses (he knows that Pablo wants him to), but also tells of their defects. Pablo shows them saddles from guardia civil, enemy soldiers that he killed. He is sullen and speaks of how the horses are strong. Pablo thinks he will be hunted and eventually killed, and challenges what right a foreigner has to ask him for help. Robert Jordan replies that he is only here on orders, that he has not asked for help, and that he would rather have been born in Spain. Anselmo says that Pablo has become self-serving since getting his horses. Anselmo says that he is afraid of no one, not even (in reference to Pablo's slyness) foxes or wolves. Robert cannot decide if Pablo is gloomy or dangerous. He pities him, remembering how he too had been gloomy when Golz wanted him to be happy. He tells himself to stop, for he is a bridge-blower and not a thinker.
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 1
Topic Tracking: Bravery 1
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 1
They arrive at the camp, which is in a cave and cannot be spotted from the air. A gypsy, Rafael, is whittling a trap. Anselmo jokes that if he caught a fox he would say it was an elephant, and if he caught an elephant, he would claim a tank. He asks the gypsy what he does in the war, and he says he keeps being a gypsy. They tell him that the last bomb expert Kashkin was captured, and killed himself. They considered him crazy, yet brave. Robert Jordan bristles when they ask him if he would be willing to be left behind, saying that if he needs a favor he will ask for it.
A girl, Maria, brings them rabbit stew. She is beautiful and Robert Jordan stares. Her head was shaved in prison in Valladolid. She was on the train that Pablo blew up, and they carried her on their backs. He asks her if she is Pablo's or the gypsy's woman, and she laughs. The gypsy says, in a manner that is neither serious nor joking, that she is no one's woman, and not his (Robert Jordan's). Anselmo tells him that there are seven men and two women, including Pablo's brave and ugly woman, Pilar. He says that Pablo has killed but now is afraid to die and wants to retire as a bullfighter. He says that they have a máquina (machine gun), and much ammunition.
They go to the woman to have their palms read. She takes care of Maria, who could not talk when they found her. Anselmo describes the explosion at the train. The woman enters with obscenities. She is a large and heavy peasant with nice hands and a big smile, and she knows that she and Robert Jordan will understand each other. She warns him to be careful with Maria. She will not tell him what she sees in his palm, saying that she sees nothing. She tells him she does not trust Pablo. She tells him that El Sordo is coming with his band. She gives him a carbine, which he says he will not use. She will guard his equipment.
Topic Tracking: Women 1
Topic Tracking: Bravery 2
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 2
Robert Jordan sketches the bridge and plans two blasts on opposite sides at the same time. Anselmo points out the sentries, one at the far end, the other in a hut built into the rock. There are eight men. On the way back, they see planes above which Anselmo thinks are theirs, Moscas, but Robert Jordan recognizes them as enemy planes. Anselmo hunts, and he has a bear paw of which he is proud. He says that the muscles of the bear and of man are very similar; gypsies believe that they are brothers. They discuss how gypsies believe it is not a sin to kill outside the tribe, and that during war they turn bad, as in old times. Anselmo tells Robert Jordan that he has killed, yet he is against killing, even Fascists, for he believes that the gypsies are wrong; there is indeed a great difference between animals and men. "But with or without God, I think it is a sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo." Chapter 3, pg. 41 Though he was brought up with religion, he no longer believes in God because of what he has seen. He believes that to kill does not terminate hatred, and that prison creates hatred. He has been shot at with machine guns while carrying only a shotgun, and hopes that Robert Jordan will tell him what there is to do, for has never seen a battle without running. Robert Jordan resents Golz' orders, but then he reminds himself that worrying will do nothing and thinks instead of Maria's beauty.
Back at camp they find Agustín, who tells them that he is bored of the mountains and that it is good that they are exploding the bridge. He reminds them to guard the explosives. He speaks with many obscenities, for which Hemingway substitutes the word obscenity. Anselmo tells Robert Jordan that Agustín speaks filthy but is reliable and serious, and that El Sordo is also good. He thinks Pablo is bad, but knows that the mountains are Pablo's territory and that they must move carefully.
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 2
Topic Tracking: Bravery 3
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 3
Pablo, the woman, María, the gypsy Rafael, Anselmo, and three other men are back at the cave. Pablo has no pity when he hears of Agustín. Robert Jordan drinks absinthe, an extremely strong alcohol. It relaxes him, taking the place "of all things he had enjoyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy." Chapter 4, pg. 51 Robert Jordan looks at the men: one has a large flat face, and the other two are brothers, both heavy and dark. Pablo says he does not want to explode the bridge. Anselmo calls him a coward. Pablo's wife says that she is for the bridge and against him. They fight, and he says that it is not cowardly to know what is foolish. Anselmo replies that it is not foolish to know what is cowardly. Pablo threatens his life. Pablo talks of bullfighters, who take no chances and are safe. His wife says that is what bullfighters say before they are gored, for she lived nine years with bullfighters. She tells him to take the wax out of his hairy ears. He tells her that since she is a woman as well as commander, to serve supper. Robert Jordan shows sketches to the flat-faced man, Primitivo and the scarred brother, Andrés. Pablo seems disinterested.
Topic Tracking: Bravery 4
Topic Tracking: Women 2
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 4
Robert Jordan inhales the clear mountain air contrasting with the heavy tobacco and cooking smells inside, where the gypsy sings, making fun of Cataláns (northeasterners). He asks Robert Jordan why he did not kill Pablo; they were expecting it. Robert Jordan finds the idea repugnant. He tells him to do it before it becomes too difficult: to take advantage of the quiet, or to provoke him. Pablo enters, and tells Robert Jordan to disregard his woman; she is good and loyal to the Republic. Robert Jordan trusts the woman, but does not know how she would react. He knows it is bad for a stranger to kill where he must work. He sees Pablo talking to the horses and he decides not to kill him.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 5
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 3
María tells Robert Jordan to drink wine so that she will seem beautiful, and he says she is already. He objects to them calling him Don (colloquial, Mr.), and says that in the seriousness of war, they should all call each other Camarada, or comrade. The woman remarks on how serious he is and how she can joke about anything. They are Republicans (this means, in the context of the Spanish Civil War, they are against fascists). María's father was a Republican all his life, and was shot. Robert Jordan says that his father and grandfather were Republicans, and María replies that in the U.S. they do not shoot you for it. Robert Jordan tells her that his grandfather shot himself to avoid being tortured. She looks at him with longing and says he and she are the same. He touches her neck. Later, the woman says his judgment in not killing Pablo was good.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 6
Topic Tracking: Women 3
Robert Jordan welcomes a trembling María into his sleeping bag, calling her "little rabbit." They confess their love. She tells him she does not know how to kiss, and insists that she must learn. He holds her with a tight-chested loneliness. He asks her if she has loved others, and she says that things were done to her by others, and is ashamed. He tells her that if they make love, it will be as if the others had never been. He tells her she is his woman. He asks her if she wants to make the others disappear; she fiercely says yes.
Robert Jordan wakes in the cold night, happy to feel her body. She is gone when he wakes again. He sees Pablo and goes back to sleep. He wakes again to the sound of enemy planes. They have never seen this many, and take it as a bad sign. Robert Jordan thinks they are flying to bomb an airfield, but does not think they know about the attack on the bridge. He tells Anselmo, who is illiterate, to watch the road, and to make marks indicating the presence of tanks, trucks, guns, troops, etc. He tells the gypsy to watch the guard posts, and to take things more seriously; the gypsy responds that he (Robert Jordan) was not very serious last night.
Fernando tells them that the movement in La Granja last night was not unusual. He has heard a rumor that the Republic is planning to blow up guarded bridges. They are alarmed at the coincidence, but he obviously does not know that it is more than a rumor. When Pilar, Pablo's woman, asks him if he likes the food, he says yes, it is the same as usual, and she says he could be a monument to "as usual." She asks Robert Jordan if there are people like this in other countries and he says no other country is like Spain. Fernando says he did not likeValencia, a city in Spain, and the woman tells him the best time of her life was spent there, during a festival, or feria, with the bullfighter Finito. She remembers the cafes with seafood and the famous melon. Fernando objects, insisting the melon of Castile is superior; she tells him to eat melon from Castile is self-abuse. She and Finito made love to smells of fireworks and flowers. She says Pablo is more man than Finito, but they never lay together in Valencia. He replies that Finito did not blow up a train. She tells him that many speak against the train, but none against Valencia. They hear planes.
Robert Jordan thinks planes are mechanized doom. Maria says they look like death. The woman says they look like planes. They come so close that they can see the pilots. The woman asks if he and Maria made love, and since neither of them will say, she assumes they have. He says he cannot take a woman where she goes, and the woman jokes that he may take two where he is going, meaning he and Maria will go to their deaths. She says she is no coward, but knows some may not live to see another Sunday. She knows that she has hurt Pablo with her talk of Valencia, and will curse and want to kill him, but she will never wound him. She sees the success he was and the failure that he has become. In bed he cries about how the people no longer follow him, and how he fears death. She tells him that there isn't room in bed for him and her and his fear. She tells Robert Jordan that she has felt sadness, but it did not crush her as it did Pablo; she believes in the Republic as others believe religion.
The woman thinks Robert Jordan is cold because he does not fear death, but he says he is only preoccupied with work. He tells her that he cares for Maria very deeply. She says she will leave her with him, for there is not much time, and denies this is something she read in his palm. She and Agustín bicker, "the insults having reached the ultimate formalism in Spanish in which the acts are never stated but only implied." Chapter 9, pg. 93 She laughs and says he has no variety in his obscenities, only force. He talks of Pablo's cowardice, but also of his wiliness and understanding, amidst the unbounded idiocy in the war. He says that she is loyal and intuitive, but not smart. She argues that Pablo is rendered useless by his fear, but Agustín still has confidence in him. He says that Pablo resists blowing the bridges because he wants to stay, out of his own weakness. He says that they are both intelligent, but Pablo has the talent. "To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material." Chapter 9, pg. 95
Topic Tracking: Bravery 5
Topic Tracking: Women 6
They are on their way to El Sordo, a leader of a band of guerrillas. Robert Jordan is in a hurry. Maria likes the smell and feel of the pine trees, and Pilar says that she likes anything, and would be a gift to a man if only she could cook. Robert Jordan likes the pines also. Pilar says she is ugly. Maria and Robert disagree. She asks María how she would like to be ugly. She says that she is not ugly, only born ugly; inside she is beautiful, and would have made a good man, but she is all woman and all ugly. Yet she has had many loves:
"Look at the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind yourself. Then, one day, for no reason, he sees you as ugly as you really are and he is not blind anymore and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling... After a while, when you are as ugly as I am, as ugly as women can be, then, as I say after a while the feeling, the idiotic feeling that you are beautiful, grows slowly in one again. It grows like a cabbage. And then, when the feeling is grown, another man sees you and thinks you are beautiful and it is all to do over." Chapter 10, pg. 98
María insists that she is not ugly, but that she (María) is. Robert Jordan asks the woman to tell him about Pablo before the movement. The woman replies that even his glorious acts were ugly, and she does not want María to hear. María says that she will not have bad dreams after all that has happened to her. The woman says that if one did not see the start of the movement in a small town, one has seen nothing.
Pablo assaulted the enemy barracks, and the guardia civil, or Civil Guard, surrendered early in the morning. Pablo had four of them. One told him that he had never killed, and another wore corporal's stripes. He made them kneel and shot them in the heads with their own pistol, which one of them had to show him how to use. There were more than twenty other fascist sympathizers. Pablo organized it like a bullfight, with the fascists held in the Ayuntamiento (city hall), the streets blocked to form a plaza, and everybody watching. He arranged two lines of men with flails, clubs, pitchforks, sickles, and reaping hooks. One of the men said he had never killed, another said he will learn. He added that he did not think that his club will kill in one blow, and a third said that the beauty of it is that there would be many blows. Pilar explained to one man that they were proceeding in this way to save bullets, and also so that each man will share in the responsibility.
Mayor Don Benito García was the first to come out. Nothing happened, and then finally, one blow fell, then many followed. After him, no one would come out. The drunkards shouted. Don Federico González, owner of the mill and feed store, was too scared to walk, and reached to the sky, not speaking a word the entire time. Don Ricardo Montcalvo volunteered to go, saying that to die is not a bad thing, only to die at the hands of these men. He insulted the Republic, and was killed quickly. He aroused such anger in the men that they wanted to flail the priest. Don Faustino Rivero, known as a girl-chaser and a coward, having faked sickness to avoid a bullfight, came out next. They yelled insults, and he tried to turn back, but was pushed out again by Pablo. Rivero lost his cool, and was thrown off the cliff without a beating. Pilar knew that the lines had become cruel. Don Guillermo Martín, from whose store they got the weapons, came out, and Pilar thought that if it had not been for the other events, he may have been set free.
Robert Jordan tells of a time when he saw a black man lynched in Oklahoma. Maria says she has never seen a Negro, except in the circus, unless the Moors count as Negroes. Pilar says she can talk of Moors, and Maria tells her not to, making reference to her rape, and Pilar tells her not to bring that up - it is unhealthy.
Pilar continues her story. They teased Don Guillermo, who was not a rich man, and who accepted fascism due to the religiousness of his wife. She cried out to him, and he was beaten. Pilar felt intense shame, and began to walk away. She told two men that had left the lines that she had a belly-full. They spoke of how such killing will bring bad luck. She went to speak with Pablo and heard some shouting "long live liberty," and one man said with disgust that they should have been shouting "long live drunkenness." Pilar returned in time to see the fat Don Anastacio Rivas being beaten by a drunken mob. A drunk wearing a red and black scarf set the body of Don Anastacio, who was too heavy to throw off the cliff, on fire.
The guards locked the doors when the mob broke out, and the priest was inside with the remaining men. Finally, Pablo simply unlocked the door and let the mob in. Pilar wanted to see, so she hit a drunkard in the groin so that he would get out of her way. She saw the priest being hacked with hooks and sickles. They finally threw the bodies over the cliff with a wheelbarrow, and Pilar would have preferred they threw twenty or thirty of the drunkards over the cliff with the bodies. The next day, Pablo criticized the priest's lack of dignity. Pilar asked how he could have dignity while being chased by a mob. Pablo insisted that he felt disillusioned, for he had expected the priest's death to be a culmination of his violent acts. Pablo was also a priest, and more importantly, he was Spanish. He would not have sex after the killing, and she understood, as she lived with bullfighters. She looked out during the night and saw Don Guillermo's wife crying by the fountain and decided that it was the worst day of her life-until the fascists took the town three days later.
Maria begs her to stop. Robert Jordan wants to hear, but Pilar says it will be bad for Maria. She will tell him everything that happened to Maria sometime, and Maria wants to be there when she tells, but Pilar says that she will never hear it.
They meet a guard, Joaquin, who agrees that the planes are a bad sign. He tells Maria that she is pretty and tells her how he carried her from the train on his shoulders. Teasing, he offers to carry her, and says that he is glad she was hanging down his back when the shots were coming from behind. She calls him a swine. Pilar reminds her that he could have dropped her to dodge bullets, and he says that Pilar would have shot him, or scared him to death with her mouth. He says that he shined shoes before the war, but Pilar can tell from his pigtail and his quickness that he was training to be a bullfighter. In his town, Valladolid, his parents were shot, and Robert Jordan is saddened to hear of another time this occurred.
"You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some courtyard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night, in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights of the car from down the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies." Chapter 11, pg. 134
He wants to take down Pilar's story, for she cannot write, even though she is an incredible storyteller. He wants to have known the people, for the partizans take action and the peasants remain to take the punishment. He is learning a lot from the war, and he is lucky to have lived in Spain for ten years before the war. He speaks the language and does not feel like a foreigner most of the time, except when the Spanish turn on him, as they turn on themselves. He stops himself, and thinks he wants to win the war first, and then after that, think and judge. He sees Pilar and the two younger ones as a mountain and two fresh trees, untouched despite all that has happened. He remembers a Belgian boy who enlisted with five others from his village, and how after they all died, the boy was given an orderly job and could do nothing but cry. He thinks Maria seems sound and normal enough. He idolizes her like a movie star and wishes she could wake and find out that the bad things were just a dream.
They are approaching El Sordo's cave. Joaquín tells the woman how the fascists shot his parents and imprisoned his sister. He apologizes for burdening them when he knows they have the same troubles, and Maria says that her troubles are such a big bucket that his falling in will not fill it. She kisses him, she says as his sister, and says that they are all family. He asks if even Robert Jordan is family, and then is embarrassed. Pilar jokes that it has been a long time since she kissed a bullfighter, and he does not like her teasing. She says he is very tender for a bullfighter. She feels old and ugly, having seen panic in Joaquin's face when she joked about kissing him, though he denies it.
They greet El Sordo, whose real name is Santiago. He is short and heavy with a thin, hooked nose like an Indian, gray hair, and yellow-brown eyes. He offers them food and drink. He tells Maria and Joaquín to go, and they drink and discuss the war. There has been much movement of troops in Segovia, and on the Valladolid road. El Sordo wants to blow the bridge, but Robert Jordan tells him he must wait for orders. He wants El Sordo's men to cut the telephone and attack the roadmender's post. Pablo will cut the telephone below and attack the other post. Robert Jordan tells him they need horses for the retreat and he says it is impossible to have eight by the next day. They review their stock of guns and ammunition. Robert Jordan wants more men, but El Sordo says that among the hundred, only four are not "undependables," and every day, more become bad.
El Sordo speaks a simpler Spanish to Robert Jordan because he is a foreigner. El Sordo suggests they retreat to Gredos after the bombing, but Pilar wants to go to the Republic. Robert Jordan suggests Gredos because there they could operate against the main line of the railway. He realizes he has made a mistake, telling Spaniards that foreigners can do better than they can. Still, he recognizes that they have not done anything major since they lost the foreigner Kashkin at the train explosion. Kashkin was very nervous. He was shot in the back, and was unwilling to be left behind, so Robert Jordan shot him. He suggests Gredos again and the woman explodes into obscenities and gets extremely defensive, saying he will return to the Republic which she loved when he was just a child, and leave them in the hills to die, and to take his crop-headed whore with him. Maria hears her and says that she could become a whore if the woman wishes, and that she should calm down. The woman calms and takes a drink. Robert Jordan tells Maria to go again. He thinks they should blow the bridge at daylight, but escape in daylight is problematic, and they cannot return to the camp afterward and stay until dark. El Sordo tells him that to make it to Gredos would be a miracle, not a plan. Robert Jordan says he appreciates El Sordo's help and loyalty, and that on paper, the plan is not as complicated, nor does paper bleed. The woman says again that she wants to go to the Republic. El Sordo says that when they win, it will all be Republic.
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 6
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 7
They leave El Sordo's. Pilar (the woman) is breathing heavily, and they rest. She tells Maria to lay her head in her lap. She tells Robert Jordan that he can have her soon, and that she has never wanted her, but is jealous. Maria tells her not to talk like that. Pilar says that she wants Maria to be happy, but is not a tortillera (colloquial Spanish for lesbian). Maria says she loves her and Pilar says to lift her head because the silliness is over. Maria does not accept her making it all into a joke. Pilar embarrasses Robert Jordan, saying that his nickname, "little rabbit" is good, and that when she was young, she could have taken Maria. She apologizes again and tells them she does not feel like herself; perhaps the bridge has given her a headache. Robert Jordan jokes that he will drop the bridge like a banana out of its peel. Pilar tells them that she will leave them so they can do what they want to do, and Maria tells her not to speak grossly. Pilar explains that she was jealous because she feels ugly and old, but that Maria will not be nineteen forever. Robert Jordan wants to go back with her, but Maria says to let her go.
Robert Jordan and Maria walk hand in hand. Her beauty and the intensity of their touch awe him. She trembles when he kisses her. They make love. "For her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color." Chapter 13, pg. 159 He feels that he is being borne through nowhere; time stands still, and the earth moves. Later, walking by the stream, she tells him that she dies each time they make love, as the earth moves. He tells her that he has loved many others, but the earth had never moved. She says she hopes that her hair grows back soon, so that she will not be ugly, and that her body is too young and thin. He says her body is lovely, and she tells him her body is for him.
His mind wanders. He knows that that he must use people he likes as troops, and tries to convince himself that he has no responsibility for them; he is only obeying Golz's orders. He thinks of another commander, the swine Gomez in Estremadura. He believes that the partizans bring bad luck and danger, but make the country a good place in which to live. He feels conflicted and worries about betraying the people. He fights because he loves Spain. He fights with the communists only for the duration of the war, for it is the only group he can respect. He knows he cannot tell anyone that he has no politics. He wonders about Pablo's politics, and decides he probably moved from left to right, having only faith in ultimate victory: the politics of horse thieves. "Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this one?" Chapter 13, pg. 163 He has become bigoted from politics, and his mind too easily uses clichés like "enemy of the people."
Robert Jordan does not want to be a hero or a martyr, and just wants to spend a long time with Maria. The marriage fantasy he sets up becomes cynical as his guilt takes over, for he knows that he can take her with him, but he cannot change what happened to her. His students will come smoke pipes with him in the evening, and "Maria can tell them about how some of the blue-shirted crusaders for the true faith sat on her head while others twisted her arms and pulled her skirts up and stuffed them in her mouth." Chapter 13, pg. 165 He wonders if he is blacklisted in his hometown of Missoula, and if he will still be able to teach. He knows that his life is simply today, tonight, and tomorrow, and he believes that it is possible to live as full of a life in seventy hours as it is in seventy years. He has had casual sex, but he loves Maria so much that he feels as though he could die. He knows that he came upon her late, but their connection is so strong that they would have come together even if Pilar had not intervened. However, her intervention saved precious time. He berates himself for the impossible fantasy of having a long life with Maria, and knows the urgency of the time they have. He wonders if Golz felt this rush too during his service, but as for Maria, he believes that their love goes beyond the intense circumstances under which they met.
Topic Tracking: Women 11
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 7
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 8
He returns from his thoughts, and tells Maria that he loves her. She is telling him she wants to do the things that a wife does, like washing his socks and rolling his cigarettes. She wants to know how to use his pistol so they could shoot each other should they be captured. Pilar showed her how to make a fatal cut with a blade she carries. He tells her that she cannot help with his work, for it is cold and in his head.
Pilar returns and teases them persistently, but he sees nothing predatory. Maria finally tells her that the earth moved, and Pilar tells her it only moves three times in a lifetime, and that she (Pilar) has had two, and will never have another. Robert Jordan resents how Pilar turns it into a gypsy thing, for he does not believe in the mysterious, and says that he wants less mysteries and more work, and that god damn it, the earth did move. She laughs at him, and says it will snow. He says it cannot in June, then sees she is right.
Topic Tracking: Women 12
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 8
It is snowing. Robert Jordan is cranky. He wants to go to the upper post, where Anselmo waits, and Pablo tells him that he will not be able to find it in the snow. Pablo acts strange, asking if he will sleep outside, and Robert Jordan curses him in his mind. Robert Jordan takes wine. Pablo tells him that there are two different kinds of storms, depending on where they come from, and that this is a great one. Robert Jordan looks at the snow and is over his rage: "It was like the excitement of the battle except it was clean... In a snowstorm it always seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies." Chapter 14, pg. 182
Pablo tells them that he worked for a leftist movement and met Pilar when she was with the bullfighter Finito de Palencia, who was not much of a bullfighter. Pilar remembers differently. She can see Finito in his glory, victorious as the bright sword plunges into the bull. She says that Finito was one of the bravest men in the ring and did not fear death, as Pablo does. Out of the ring, though, he was one of the most fearful men Pilar had ever known. The bulls often struck him in the chest because he was so short. One night after a fight, there was a banquet in his honor. He drank a lot. Pilar was taken in with the festivities and did not notice he was in bad shape. When they presented him with the head of the bull, it stared at him as if alive, and he was horrified and said "no" again and again, bleeding from the mouth. He died that winter of the chest wounds. Primitivo says that if he was so short, he should not have fought bulls. Pilar is enraged with his simpleness. She can still see his body, his deep scars, and remembers how she would rub his sore muscles and he would tell her she was much woman. Bull force and courage do not last, but she has lasted, and wonders for what.
The gypsy brings a report on the enemy posts and the road: nothing unusual. Fernando will lead Robert Jordan to where Anselmo is posted.
Anselmo is crouched in the trunk of a tree. He is freezing, and wonders when Robert Jordan will come. He sees a camouflaged motorcar on the road and marks it in his notebook, unaware it isn't an enemy vehicle. He has seen ten cars, which is not unusual, but he cannot distinguish them and recognize the four enemy cars that went up. He decides he must go soon, with or without the Inglés. He sees smoke and thinks it is curious that the fascists are warm when tomorrow night they will kill them. It is only orders that come between them; they are all just poor men who should not be fighting each other. He knows that they are Gallegos (from the northwest region, Galicia), because he heard them speaking the dialect. He wonders what they, from their green country, think of the snow. He thinks of Otero, where he first killed, and Pablo throwing bombs into all of the windows; at that point he was still aggressive, though now he has become a neutered boar. Anselmo wishes to win so that he can return to his house and have done all he can as an old man in the war.
Inside, the enemy soldiers talk about the weather and disagree upon the month. They say that the guard is easy and without too much violence. They wish it could be that way through the whole war. They too fear planes.
Anselmo hopes that there will be a penance for the killing - if not religious, then civic, like working for the State. He knows the killing is necessary in the context of war, but wonders how Robert Jordan can be so detached; perhaps foreigners, or those without religion, do not feel the same need to repent. He feels lonely, but does not say his prayers because he does not want to ask for different treatment. No one can take away the Republic for which he has worked so hard.
Robert Jordan and Fernando arrive. Robert Jordan and Anselmo joke, calling the cave the palace of Pablo, the Palace of Fear, and the Cave of the Lost Eggs (slang, Pablo has lost his balls). Anselmo says he was about to leave, but Robert Jordan knows that he would not have and is impressed with his loyalty. They joke like old friends and Anselmo no longer feels lonely. Robert Jordan wonders about Fernando's loyalty. He asks what he is thinking and the man replies he is thinking of supper.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 9
Topic Tracking: Bravery 8
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 9
Back at the camp, Pilar tells them that El Sordo left to look for horses. Maria bustles about to take Robert Jordan's wet clothes. Pilar is not pleased at the way she serves him as if he is a child, especially when Robert Jordan jokes that Maria should dry his feet with her hair. This is a New Testament reference to how Mary Magdalen, a reformed whore, dried the feet of Jesus with her hair. Robert Jordan says he is joking because he is happy. He drinks whiskey and thinks about how thoughtful it was of El Sordo to get it for him when he could have been thinking about himself-this is a truly Spanish quality. He warns himself not to romanticize; there are all kinds of Spanish.
He invites Maria to eat with them, as women do in the U.S. Pablo is very drunk and asks him if the men wear skirts like the women. Robert Jordan says that is Scottish, and Pablo ignores him and insistently continues, asking him what he wears under his skirt. Robert Jordan makes everyone laugh when he replies that he wears cojones (balls).
To change the topic, Robert Jordan talks of the beauty of his state, Montana. They are surprised to hear that the farmers own the land. He explains about land, income, and inheritance taxes, and Primitivo says that when they feel threatened by the government, they will fight, as in Spain. Robert Jordan says that they educate the people to recognize fascism so they can combat it. Andrés grins, saying that there are no fascists in Pablo's town, and Pablo says that Robert Jordan has not heard the whole story, but will not tell it, for he was very barbaric in those days. Pilar says she liked him better barbaric than drunk. Pablo says that he would be a happy drunk if not for all those he had killed, and would like to either restore them to life, or have killed every one.
Agustín and Pilar are disgusted at his lack of manhood. They change the subject, asking Robert Jordan how he came to Spain. He tells them he was a professor of Spanish, and Pablo says he is a false professor since he has no beard. Fernando thinks it is presumptuous that a foreigner teaches Spanish. Agustín is disgusted about fighting for foreigners, and Pilar tells him that they fight so that everyone will be comrades. Pablo makes several sharp comments toward Robert Jordan, who all of a sudden doubts Pablo is that drunk, and is ready to kill him, so he provokes him by calling him a coward. Pablo plays the situation, telling Pilar that she will not get rid of him thus, and toasts to Robert Jordan, who tells him he is learning much from him. Agustín is disgusted by the companionship. Pablo first calls Agustín negro (black, dark) and when he objects, he calls him blanco (white). Agustín tells him that he is rojo, red, for the star of the army and the Republic. When Pablo mocks Agustín, the man hits him, but Pablo is still not provoked. The situation is tense, but Pablo remains calm even when Agustín claims he rapes horses. Pablo replies that they are smarter than the people, and says he has been thinking all day about the bridge, since they are led by a woman with her brains between her thighs and a foreigner who will destroy them. Pilar is enraged and tells him to leave.
Topic Tracking: Women 13
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 10
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 10
All, even Pilar and Agustín, are for killing Pablo now. They cannot keep him as a prisoner, for that would take two men, and when the gypsy says they should sell him to the fascists, Agustín says that one filthiness does not justify another. Pilar says that Anselmo and Robert Jordan are not involved, because he is not their leader. The gypsy Rafael suggests that they blind him, and Pilar is embarrassed that he talks of blinding in front of the foreigner. Fernando says he is a threat to the Republic, and Pilar tells him to fill his mouth with stew and talk no more. Robert Jordan says he will do it that night. Maria objects and Pilar tells her to stay out.
Pablo comes back in and knows they have been speaking of him. He tells Maria to get him wine. Robert Jordan knows that Pablo knows there will be no shooting with the dynamite around, and takes Agustín outside to remind him. Robert Jordan sees that Pablo's way is to push to the breaking point and then to drop it and start again.
Pablo announces that he is back with them, and they cannot believe it. Pilar accuses him of eavesdropping, but he says he just sobered up. Fernando asks if he is with them and Pablo says yes, and that he has confidence in the plan. Agustín says he is leaving the madhouse for criminal lunatics before he becomes crazy too.
Robert Jordan compares the situation to a merry-go-round; they keep turning, twice now, get nowhere, and win no prizes. He is working on his sketches when Maria stands over him, and he smells her skin. He resents being dragged into the business with Pablo. When he talks to Pablo, who is working on the retreat, it is very tense and barely stays civil, and Agustín is the same way. Pilar watches the men play cards. He observes, "Here it is the shift from deadliness to normal family life that is the strangest." Chapter 18, pg. 228
Two days ago, his world was simpler. Now that Maria is in his life, the plan must change, and she will wait for him while he is there. He expected to get time off after the bridge and go to Madrid, the capital, where he will stay at a hotel and get a hot bath and absinthe. He planned to talk to Karkov about the war at Gaylord's, a hotel the Russians took over. He is embarrassed that there he enjoys food too good for a besieged city. He knows that he could not take Maria there without first telling Karkov about her. At first he was repelled by the air of luxury and corruption, but then enjoyed it. At Gaylord's one met famous Spanish commanders. They were once peasants and workers who spoke Russian, having fled to Spain when the 1934 revolution failed. He learned that a leader known as El Campesino, or The Peasant, was really an ex-sergeant who had deserted the Spanish Foreign Legion. One must have peasant leaders, Robert Jordan thinks. Gaylord's is the place where he needs to complete his education, and someday he will tell the truth to everyone. It is a long way from Gaylord's to the cave, longer from the cave to Gaylord's.
At Gaylord's, Kashkin introduced him to Karkov, who was the most intelligent man he had ever met. Kashkin is not well liked there, and was in Spain to work something out, what, Robert Jordan does not know. Karkov has good taste in women: a wife who is incredibly thin, dark, loving and nervous, and a mistress who is more sensual, gossipy, with reddish hair. Golz will make fun of him about Maria, after he told him that he had no time for women. He looks over at Pablo and wonders what kind of a guerrilla leader he would have been during the American Civil War. He sees that there are no big heroes and no military geniuses. All of the leaders follow dual controls, using a great deal of what they learned from the Russians, but soon they will have to fly solo. He wonders what the Russian stand is on the whole thing, and hopes to learn at Gaylord's. He compares being there to being in a crusade, a feeling of achieving a duty toward the oppressed, a brotherhood, as inspiring as being in a cathedral, a pure feeling which disappeared after six months of fighting. He has seen discipline enforced: men who ran as cowards were shot and their valuables stolen. He remembers how it feels to fight: "You learned the dry-mouthed, fear-purged purging ecstasy of battle and you fought that summer and that fall for all the poor in the world against all tyranny, for all the things you believed in and for the new world you had been educated into." Chapter 18, pg. 236
He knows that with his initial naiveté and selfless pride, he would have been a bore at Gaylord's. He and Karkov have talked about the days before Gaylord's, where everyone felt so lost that even the government abandoned the city. Karkov was responsible for hiding three wounded Russian soldiers so that the fascists would not find out about Russian intervention. If the city were to be abandoned, Karkov would poison the soldiers and eliminate their existence. He even has cyanide for himself. Robert Jordan wonders how people keep their chastity of mind in the war, and considers Karkov. There was a British economist, Mitchell, who Karkov liked very much, telling him about how everybody trusts the man; because he looks impressive, people do not see he is a fool. He gets money from the government of one nation by falsely claiming his connections to a larger, more threatening nation. Robert Jordan does not like it and Karkov says it is only important that he understands it. Karkov is for political assassination when the leader is unfaithful to his trust, and tells him that the Spanish will live to regret that they did not shoot certain generals. Karkov knows he is reliable in his work, and wants to speak seriously about politics, but Robert Jordan tells him that his mind is suspended until after the war. They discuss how even reading twenty newspapers does not give a full picture of the war.
Karkov knows they are building a dangerous army, one with many unreliable people, without true army discipline. Robert Jordan says he likes it better behind the enemy lines than in the cities, where the "fine people" live. Karkov tells him that the fascists have fine people behind their lines as well. He then leaves to go upstairs and continue talking. Robert Jordan knows he learns a lot at Gaylord's. Karkov wrote a two thousand-page novel which was not a success, and he tells things to Robert Jordan because he knows that the man writes honestly. Robert Jordan thinks to himself that the things he has come to know in the war are not simple.
Topic Tracking: Women 14
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 12
They discuss the Russians, and Maria says that Kashkin was brave and beautiful. Pilar thinks he was ugly. Robert Jordan says that he was a good friend and comrade. They are silent when he confirms that he shot him, and he wishes he had not told them. Robert Jordan does not think he saw ahead to his own death, and dismisses this as superstition, but says that fear produces evil visions, and Kashkin's fear became an obsession. Pilar tells him Kashkin smelled of death, and Robert Jordan says that maybe it was fear. Pilar insists she is right, and refers to Robert's inability to sense this as deafness; she cites a bullfighter who smelled of death before being gored. The man who smelled it, Blanquet, did not even have gypsy blood. No one believed him. Pablo and even Anselmo believe in Pilar's abilities. She says that all the gypsies smelled death on another bullfighter. Robert Jordan says that after death such things can be invented, but Pilar insists they knew before. She describes the odor proudly: it is the smell of a brass handle of a screwed-tight porthole on a ship swaying nauseatingly in a storm, the kiss of an old woman with facial hair (the gypsy comments on how this sickens him, and Pilar retorts that gypsy women age fast because they are always pregnant); a sewage pail with flowers in it, and a refuse pail from a whorehouse. Pilar tells him that he must put a sack full of this all over his head and try to breathe through it, and Robert Jordan tells her that if this is what Kashkin smelled like, it is a good thing he shot him. They laugh. Naïve Fernando asks Pilar if he really expects a man of Robert Jordan's education to do such a thing, and she tells him he is a fool.
Robert Jordan goes outside and sees that the snow has stopped; this means that El Sordo will leave tracks if he tries to steal horses. He reports that the storm is over.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 13
Topic Tracking: Women 15
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 11
Robert Jordan makes a rough bed with spruce wood. Pilar will guard his bags with the dynamite. He lies in bed and remembers a mixture of Montana odors like raked leaves, spring, bacon, and fresh bread. He is worried that Maria might not come, and they have so little time left. She comes, apologizing for her cold feet and asks him to say he loves her. He says it, and she says she loves him and is his wife. She says they are one, and she will be him when he is not there. They make love, and she does not climax as she had in the afternoon. One does not need to die (this is the term she used earlier for her climax). Robert Jordan sees a double meaning and says he hopes not. He says he loves her name, though she thinks it is common. He feels her body against his and is not lonely but wakes in the night and cannot fall back to sleep, thinking how she is all of life and is being taken from him. He keeps his pistol nearby.
Jordan wakes and feels the warm air, and knows the snow will be gone soon. A man on a horse comes very close, and he shoots him from his bed. He tells Primitivo to catch the big horse. He knows that the cavalry will miss the man and follow tracks to look for him.
He will go to the gypsy, and tells Pablo to lead the horse out so that the tracks will lead away. Pablo remarks on how quick he thinks. They are amazed at the modernity of the dead man's gun. Pilar and Maria prepare the camp for leaving. Pilar remarks on how having a horse has made Pablo seem brave. Pablo tells Robert Jordan that danger is his horse.
Maria wants to come with him but he says she cannot. She wants him to say he loves her but he does not want to feel love and war all at the same moment. He is cold to her, for work has taken over his thinking. The goodbye is intense, and in his last glimpse of her, she has tears in her eyes. Primitivo asks how she is in bed, and Robert Jordan tells him to watch his mouth.
Anselmo and Robert Jordan prepare. The automatic gun was brought by porters without instruction, and Anselmo and the others had to experiment to learn to use it. Robert Jordan builds a holder, and a cover for two men who will use it. He fears there are not enough horses to escape, and fears what will happen to El Sordo if they pick up the horse trails. He knows they are not ready to fight that day, but if they move they leave tracks. He hopes the aerial offensive gets up on time, and he knows Pablo can take care of himself but does not trust him. He does not know how they will escape if there is no one to cover them.
The gypsy arrives, having caught two fat hares who were making love in the snow. He is embarrassed to have been away from his post, distracted by the hares, and did not see the cavalry man. He is surprised that Robert Jordan is not angry. Robert Jordan thinks to himself that he is undisciplined, and gypsies in general are physically and mentally unfit for war.
He gives them advice on aim and technique and tells them to avoid combat. He tells Agustín to aim low, because the gun jumps. Agustín says that if not for the bridge they could make a massacre and escape, but Robert Jordan says that with it, they could perhaps take Segovia, the provincial capital. Robert Jordan says he can massacre the enemy posts tomorrow, and Agustín is glad, for Pablo has rotted them with inaction. They see another observation plane, probably headed for Segovia, where the feared attack brews.
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 12
Topic Tracking: Bravery 10
They see four cavalry very close and hide. Robert Jordan watches them over the barrel of his gun, where they look twice as big, and thinks about how usually he sees them running. They leave, and all are relieved. Agustín says they could have killed them, but Robert Jordan is unsure of who what might have come if they had. They see from a distance twenty more mounted men like the others, and they know that they would have had to fight them too. He feels very talkative, and knows it is because he is still nervous. He tells Anselmo to go watch the road, but not until the snow is gone, to avoid tracks. Anselmo wants to go to La Granja and ask around.
Robert Jordan asks what the chances are that Pablo will be caught, and Agustín tells him: "If he were not of great ability he would have died last night. It seems to me you do not understand politics, Inglés, nor guerrilla warfare. In politics and this other the first thing is to continue to exist. Look how he continued to exist last night." Chapter 23, pg. 284 Robert Jordan regrets his remark.
They all carry dual identity papers, and know they would have to eat the wrong ones quickly if found. The government is moving toward fascism each day, and Robert Jordan says that if they do not win the war, there will be no revolution, no Republic, and only hell. Agustín says they should shoot everyone but the Republicans, and Anselmo wants only to teach the others. Agustín says they should teach them to jump from planes without parachutes. Anselmo says that with that kind of talk there will never be a Republic. Agustín says that he felt an urgency strong as a cat in heat to kill the four. Robert Jordan thinks about how the Spanish kill as an act of faith. He tells himself he too must admit that he has enjoyed killing at some time. He contemplates Anselmo, how he is an exception, a hunter and not a soldier. He knows that Agustín had fear as well as heat, for he felt the man's muscles twitch in hiding. He stops thinking and orders for food.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 14
Topic Tracking: Bravery 11
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 13
They eat onions, meat, and cheese, and Agustín says their breath will alert the fascists. He says the difference between Robert Jordan and Kashkin, is that Kashkin suffered greatly. Robert Jordan says he is of those who suffer little, and Agustín agrees, adding that he suffers for others, and Robert Jordan says all good men should. Agustín says Pilar guarded Maria like a nun, and does not understand why she saved her for Robert Jordan, when any of them could have sexually serviced her. Robert Jordan tells him to stop, that he cares for her seriously, and Agustín says he has too, and that Robert Jordan must take care, since she has suffered. Robert Jordan reassures him that that he will marry her. Agustín tells him that the matter of Maria is separate and will follow him in battle, and reassures him about the others. He mumbles how he still has the whores. Robert Jordan hears rifle fire, from El Sordo's direction. Agustín wants to go help, but they will stay.
Topic Tracking: Bravery 12
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 15
Topic Tracking: Women 18
Robert Jordan tells Agustín not to fire prematurely, and tells Anselmo to help with the gun. He tells them they can do nothing to help El Sordo. He has known they were a lost cause since last night. Primitivo is persistent, extremely upset that they cannot help their comrades. Robert Jordan keeps telling him it is useless. Pilar arrives and commiserates. She says the gypsy exaggerated the four cavalrymen, and attributes this to his gypsy race.
They are very tense and sad, listening to the gunfire that they know is the massacre of Sordo. Pilar too tells Primitivo that it would be suicidal to go help. He says that there are women who are stupid and brutal, and she retorts that they are aids to those men poorly equipped for procreation. They see another observation plane, which she fears greatly. She apologizes to Primitivo because she knows they are all in the same situation, and he accepts, but tells her to watch her mouth, for he was close to Sordo. She says that she is too, but that "in war cannot say what one feels." Chapter 25, pg. 301
Topic Tracking: Women 19
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 16
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 14
Robert Jordan reads the letters of the dead man, one from the man's sister with a list of boys from his town that had been killed; Robert Jordan thinks it is too many for a small town. There is another from the man's fiancé, hysterical for his safety. He is incredibly conflicted inside.
"It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn't believe in killing, he told himself. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you believe in it the whole thing is wrong." Chapter 26, pg. 304
He tries to rationalize but ends up interrogating himself, wondering how many of those he killed were real fascists. He tells himself he has no business being in his position if he is not right in the head. He tells himself that he has a right to not keep count, then berates himself that he has no right to close his eyes. He asks himself if it is right for him to love Maria. He knows he is lucky to love, even if he dies tomorrow, then tells himself not to talk about dying. He wonders how it is at Sordo's, and knows he got him into a mess by asking him for horses. He wishes they were in the type of war where if they were surrounded, they could surrender, but he knows that Sordo will be killed. He sees planes.
El Sordo climbs a hill with his men. He does not like the hill, but has no other choice, and he has to kill his dying horse. He has only stolen three horses. Three of the five men are wounded, including himself (injured in the calf and arm), and he is nauseated and in pain. They build dirt mounds for cover. Joaquin, who is eighteen years old, says inspirational communist slogans, which the others tell him are shit. One says that if he believes so much in the Communists, tell them to get them off the hill. Another jokes that the fascists will get them off the hill (they will kill them). Joaquín tells him not to speak such, and they tell him to wipe his mother's breast milk off his chin. El Sordo compares the hill to a sore, and them to the pus, but knows that there is no way for the fascists to approach it. They have killed many fascists, who are brave but stupid. He has not seen any planes, but knows they are lost if the fascists bring a mortar. He feels very vulnerable. One of the men calls Pilar a whore, saying she knows they are dying there, but Sordo tells him there is nothing she could do. They mock Joaquín and say the communist leader Pasionaria hides her son in Russia, and he does not believe them. They curse those who have gone to study in Russia and do not aid them.
Sordo is in much pain and knows this is the last time he will see the sky. He does not fear death, for he has no picture of it, but he is angry that it must be on that hill, and thinks of the alternative.
"Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond." Chapter 27, pg. 313
They hear a voice telling them to surrender, and Sordo pulls himself behind the gun. He shoots into the body of the dead horse, diverting the enemy, and grins when they yell insults. They see a sniper, one more man, and then there is no more movement on the slopes. Below, a captain and lieutenant talk about how the bandits have nothing to expect but to die, and how they are wasting their men and power laying siege to dead men. Captain Mora is very agitated and steps out and challenges the Red swine who shot his mother and sister to shoot him, and fires at the dead horse. Lieutenant Paco Berrendo, whose best friend lies dead on the slope, tells the sniper to go see if there is anyone alive on the hill and is enraged when he says he does not want to. Captain Mora thinks this is ridiculous and once again challenges the bandits to shoot him, again with no result, and shouts obscenities. "There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion." Chapter 27, pg. 318 El Sordo laughs at them above. Mora calls them cowards and strides up the slope, and El Sordo says that this one is for him, his company for the Voyage (or death), shoots him, and shouts mockingly laughing, imitating Mora calling for the bandits to shoot him. El Sordo is planning on getting the other man when Joaquín, ashen-faced, points out the planes. Sordo orders them into position with the automatic rifles. Joaquín begins a Communist slogan, but shifts into a Hail Mary as the explosions start and all he can remember is "at the hour of our death. Amen." There is a huge explosion and Ignacio falls onto him. The planes bomb three times and then leave in the direction of Segovia.
Lt. Berrendo arrives. Joaquín is the only one alive. Berrendo shoots him in the back of the head and orders the bodies brought to La Granja, heads removed. He remarks on the evils of war, crosses himself, and leaves, not wanting to see his orders carried out.
The others watch the planes fly away and Robert Jordan tries to tell himself that they probably bombed their own cavalry and did not touch Sordo. There is firing and Primitivo says the fighting continues. The gunfire stops suddenly, and one pistol shot, which is Lt. Berrendo's, rings. The quiet gives Robert Jordan a hollow feeling in his chest. Maria brings the stew. She asks about the planes and he tells them it is over. Primitivo loses his appetite. Robert Jordan says that Maria can stay, but she says she has to go to Pilar for instruction, and blushes. Primitivo, his voice breaking, again brings up that they did not go to help, and Robert Jordan again silences him. Robert Jordan sees the cavalry leaving with ponchos wrapped around bulges, and sees they have Sordo's rifle.
Lt. Berrendo does not feel arrogant, but hollow. He knows taking the heads is barbaric, but necessary for identification. He thinks of his best friend dead on the hill and prays for him. They proceed onto La Granja and pass Anselmo, who recognizes the rifle and realizes what the ponchos contain. He prays for their souls. He prays that the Inglés' instructions will be exact, for he thinks that otherwise he will run if faced with danger. He sees Fernando. Fernando says what undignified barbarians the fascists are; that they must do away with them. Anselmo grins at his overzealousness and agrees.
Topic Tracking: Women 20
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 17
Topic Tracking: Bravery 14
Anselmo arrives and tells them what they already know. Pablo sits without expression. Anselmo drinks much whiskey. He has seen much movement on the road: anti-tank guns, and four trucks with six men each. Robert Jordan will send Andrés with an urgent message for General Golz. Anselmo is anxious that he will not make it, or will not understand the orders, and is frustrated that he himself does not understand. Robert Jordan explains more clearly. He does not know where the General is, but it will probably be close to the lines, underground. Andrés must ask. Pablo, still sullen, says even without Sordo, they have enough men, and admires Robert Jordan's bravery. Robert Jordan is concentrating on writing and barely listens. He wants to send two copies but there are not enough men. He wonders why the attack is made - perhaps they are trying to draw troops from somewhere else, or planes out of the North. Pablo, still looking down, says that he has confidence. Robert Jordan wishes that he did too.
All the orders have been given. Everybody knows what to do. Andrés left three hours ago. Golz does not have the power to stop the attack, and will not be able to get in contact with the proper authorities in Madrid for clearance. Robert Jordan wishes he had sent word to them sooner, but knows he could not have. He is confused by the fascists' recent actions, and thinks reports of other offensives are a bluff. He knows that he must not show fear or it will affect the others. He is impressed with Sordo's stand, and jokes to himself that he does okay for a professor. He looks forward to seeing his friend Durán, also a good general with no training, after the war. He is conflicted and tells himself not to kid himself.
He compares himself to Grandfather who spent four years in the American Civil War; he has only spent one year fighting, and tries to minimize his situation to comfort himself by being concrete and practical. He thinks of Grandfather's gun with which Grandfather said he had killed men, but did not elaborate. Robert Jordan's father shot himself with that gun. After the funeral, the coroner returned it, saying that it was a hell of a good gun. Robert Jordan dropped the gun into a deep lake. He thinks how Grandfather would have known what to do, and wishes he were here instead. He wonders if Grandfather sent his military instincts to him through his father, and remembers how it made him sick to realize his father was a coward. Robert Jordan wants to tell Golz about Grandfather.
Karkov has invited Robert Jordan to the military academy in Moscow, and he wonders what Grandfather would think, but does not want to be a soldier. "I guess really good soldiers are really good at very little else." Chapter 30, pg. 339 He thinks again about his father and is ashamed of him. He tells himself soon he will have Maria and won't have to think. He knows he has to blow the bridge whether or not Andrés returns, that the festival will not be called off, and this is comforting, knowing that matters are out of his hands for a few hours.
Maria is ashamed that she has pain and cannot make love. He understands. She says she is so afraid for him that she does not think of herself. She wants to learn about his work but he will not tell her about it. He knows it is only a dream, but talks to her about how they will go to Madrid and he will get her papers and buy her clothes. She says she will serve him well, and is ashamed of her soreness and her cropped hair. He reassures her that she is beautiful, and that he will marry her.
They talk about how in Madrid she can get a new hairdo like the movie star Greta Garbo, and he tells her of a beautiful apartment they will get. He says that before they met, all he thought of was winning the war. She tells him Pilar has started teaching her to be a good wife, and that she can tell him what happened to her and he will understand. She tells him so he will know that she never submitted to any of them. Before the guardia civil shot her father, he said long live the Republic, and before her mother was shot, she said long live my husband the Mayor. Maria hoped that they would shoot her so she could say long live the Republic and my parents, but instead they tied all the women up and led them to the square. She was identified as the Mayor's daughter, and two men made her sit in a barber's chair and shaved her head and wrote on her forehead. Her heart was frozen with grief for her parents and knew what was happening to her was nothing. One man said "next," and they dragged her outside, where she saw her best friend being taken in. They took her to her father's office and raped her many times.
Robert Jordan holds her close and is filled with hate, and tells her he cannot bear to hear more. She says she would like to kill many Falangists. She fears he will not marry her, but she must tell him that it is possible that she will not be able to carry children. Robert Jordan says he does not wish to bring a son or daughter into the world, the way it is now. She wants to have children so they can fight fascists. He calls her little rabbit and tells her he loves her and she is his wife. He cannot fall asleep. He knows that they have done dreadful things to the fascists because they did not know better, but what those men did to Maria they did deliberately. They come from a long line of Spanish chivalry, sons of bitches, and he cites the conquistadors and others, up through Pablo. Forgiveness is a Christian idea, he thinks, and Spain never was a Christian country. The Church is in the government, which was always rotten, so people grew away from the Church. If they blow the bridge tomorrow, it does not matter if they die. If he has truly lived life in three days, he would have spent this last night differently, but last moves are never good. He thinks, though, of the last words of Maria's mother, and thinks that they were good. He kisses her and says that he will marry her, and that he is proud of her family.
Topic Tracking: Women 21
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 18
Topic Tracking: Foreigners 15
Topic Tracking: Bravery 17
Police frisk people as they enter Gaylord's, but not Karkov; they know him. Everyone, even his mistress, knows about the attack. A journalist tells him excitedly that Dolores, La Pasionaria, said the fascists have been fighting amongst themselves in Segovia all day, and she is a saint of the people. Karkov tells a General he is very concerned, for Robert Jordan is in the middle of all the action. Karkov goes to his bedroom but stays dressed, for he will leave at two a.m. for the front where Golz attacks in the morning.
Pilar wakes him to say that Pablo left with some dynamite and equipment from the packs she was guarding. She feels terribly guilty. He does not want to quarrel, and says they will improvise. He says he will guard the packs, not against her, but so that he can sleep.
Andrés is on his way. He thinks about how they will avenge Sordo. When he was sent, he felt as when he was a boy and the bullbaiting was rained out, though he looked forward to it all year. Once, to save a fallen man, he held onto the bull and gripped its ear in his teeth, and acquired the nickname "bulldog." He knows he must go back for his comrades and brother and will enjoy killing fascists. If his father had not been a Republican, he and Eladio would have fought with the fascists, and it would have been simpler: "It was easier to live under a regime than fight it." Chapter 34, pg. 367 He does not worry, for he believes in the cause, but it is a time of great difficulty and a life of responsibility. He wishes he could do small, regular things like raising animals. Everything he has - a message, a carbine, some grenades - he can give away.
Robert Jordan lies with Maria and berates himself for not following his instincts about the smart bastard Pablo, and regrets leaving the dynamite with Pilar. He tries to reassure himself, and says to stop lamenting for what is gone. He curses everything, including his grandfather, and Spanish treachery, egotism, and conceit. He says God pity them, for their leaders always screw them. His anger dies down. He whispers to the sleeping Maria that they will be killed, but they will blow the bridge. "That isn't much of a wedding present. But is not a good night's sleep supposed to be priceless? You had a good night's sleep. See if you can wear that like a ring on your finger." Chapter 35, pg. 371
Andrés shouts up to the government post that he is alone and unarmed. They say he is a fascist and he repeats that he is a guerrilla with a message for the General Staff. One says they should throw a bomb at him. They demand he walks with his hands up, even when he gets stuck in the wire, and they joke it would have been easier to bomb him. He tells them they are unfriendly and they remind him it is war. He tells them he is of no importance but the affair is serious. They shout about liberty and he realizes that he is dealing with the crazies with the black and red scarves, anarchists. He shouts "long live us," and they embrace him and welcome him as a comrade. He shows his papers and they ask details about his village to authenticate. He is in a hurry, but the officer insists on talking, saying they should stop the guerrilla nonsense and join the Republic. The officer is suspicious because has not heard of the attack and says he will accompany him. The suspicious officer insists on carrying his gun.
Robert Jordan lies awake, looking at his watch. He does not want to wake Maria, but he does not want to leave her alone this last time. She wakes and wants to make love. He asks about the pain and she tells him not to speak. They make love and she tells him she reached glory again. They say they have good luck, and he tells her he is not worried. He thinks about how much he has learned about life in the past four days and tells her she taught him much. She says he is the educated one, and he tells himself that if he dies it will be a waste, for he knows a few things now. The days on the hill were his life, Anselmo his oldest friend; Maria is his love, wife, sister, daughter. He tells her he cannot be with her at the start, but will hurry back. It is ten of three, a.m. when she rolls the blanket and he enters the cave.
Agustín is loaded with ammunition, but he says he will climb like a goat. Eladio is very nervous for his brother Andrés, and defensive when Agustín mocks him. Robert Jordan asks about the reliability of their bombs, holding up examples. At one point Pilar mentions Pablo, and Agustín spews obscenities. Tension is very high in the cave.
Robert Jordan thinks they are as sunk as Sordo; they can only take one post with what they have. If there is no miracle and Golz does not get the message, the others, including Maria, will be killed and he will not even get his bridge. He thinks instead of sleeping with her, he should have searched for more people. But he knows that he could not have risked losing men. He calms himself: "There isn't any need to deny everything there's been just because you are going to lose it." Chapter 38, pg. 386 Pilar also knows there are too few. She says the palm reading was nonsense. He tells her he did not believe and was not worried. She tells him she cares for him very much and he says that he does not want to hear that now. She tells him again that they will be well. With a forced smile he agrees. Pilar makes a witty joke about death and Agustín says she speaks like a black cat.
Pablo enters, and they are shocked. He brings five men. He threw the detonator he stole in the river but has figured out a way to explode it with a grenade (as has Robert Jordan). Pablo tells them that at the bottom he is not a coward. He tells Robert Jordan that he does not come back to help him, that he hates him for bringing this upon them, but that he became lonely and knows they must finish together. He will be the leader because this is what he has told the five men. Pilar welcomes him but with an edge. She says that his predecessor Judas Iscariot hanged himself, making reference to the man in the New Testament who betrayed Jesus. She tells him that there are good men and stupid men, all ready to die, the way he likes them. He looks her in the eye and says he is ready for what the day brings. She tells him that if a man has something once, it does not leave, but adds that he was indeed a long way gone.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 19
Topic Tracking: Bravery 20
They are climbing the hill heavily loaded, with horses and material to make camp. Pablo tells Robert Jordan that the men he brought think the mission will be successful, and asks him not to disillusion them. Robert Jordan says they should make it successful. Pablo reiterates the plan, and he wonders why. He has felt better since Pablo came back with the men and feels confident: the happiness before action.
"This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived." Chapter 39, pg. 393
He greets Maria, who tells him she is not worried, and that she would rather stay with him, but will stay with the horses and the gypsy. Pablo introduces him to the men and leads them to where they will leave the horses.
Andrés and the suspicious man at the post go to battalion headquarters and meet commander Gomez, who is chummy with Andrés because he wanted to be a guerrilla. They go to brigade headquarters, where Gomez bickers about politics with the officer. Gomez says conservative professionals like him make the army rotten. Lt. Col. Miranda asks Andrés about life in the hills and is surprised to hear that there is an American in the war. He gives a message for Golz and offers them liquor. He has met Andrés before and asks about Anselmo. They leave and he says he is glad it is Golz and not him.
The guerrillas proceed softly. Robert Jordan reminds them tediously of the plan, angering Pilar. Pablo worries that Agustín will shoot him "accidentally." He says they still lack horses but subtly implying death, says they will all "leave on horses." Robert Jordan wonders if he is planning a suicide mission and is glad not to know the five men. He shakes Pablo's hand and expects it to be like touching a reptile or leper, but it is honest and strong. Pablo apologizes again for taking the material and says he foresees success. Pilar asks if they are faggots and tells Robert Jordan to go before Pablo steals the rest of their explosives. Pablo says Robert Jordan understands him and she replies neither God nor his mother could understand him. They bicker cheerfully.
Robert Jordan and Maria's goodbye is awkward, and he feels like a schoolboy not knowing whether or not to kiss a girl goodnight. He feels young, as when he left for school for the first time, embarrassed by his father's sentimentality. He tells himself all of them feel too young for what they are about to do, but this is no time for a second childhood.
He leaves with Agustín and Anselmo and they and Fernando wish each other good luck. Agustín comments on Fernando's naive lack of fear. They climb down through the pines to the point where Anselmo and Robert watched the first day, and see where the bridge joins the road, and decide where to put the machine gun. Agustín will stay with the gun, where he can see the road and the bridge, and Anselmo and Robert Jordan will kill the sentries. If they cannot, then Agustin must shoot the sentries. After the explosion, when Pablo and the men come, he must fire above them so the enemy cannot follow. He asks if Agustín understands and the man says that it is the same as he has explained before. Agustín seems to have faith that they will make it, asking for cigarettes for afterward.
Robert Jordan asks if Anselmo is sure about the location of the sentry, and when Anselmo tells him yes, he has a feeling of deja vu, having asked a question after already knowing the answer. Anselmo asks him to repeat it once more. Robert Jordan tells him again, and advises him to look at the soldiers as if they were only targets, and not human. As a hunter, he should have no problem. Robert Jordan remembers what Anselmo said about killing-how it must be an order, and battle must be described exactly, so that he has no urge to run. He thinks again of his father and remains unsentimental. He prepares the gun, lying on the pine-needle floor, waiting for daylight.
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 20
Topic Tracking: Bravery 21
Topic Tracking: Women 24
Andrés and Gomez reach the control on the road to Navacerrada, on which trucks go back and forth from the mountains. They show the safe-conduct pass from Lt.-Col. Miranda and he and Gomez are told to continue, but to turn off their lights. They reach another control, where there has been an accident and an officer frantically tells trucks to back up so that they can clear it, but more keep arriving. Gomez finally gets their safe-conduct pass back, and they proceed quickly, passing more troops. Andrés sees their tense faces. Gomez does not notice, and feels pride for this army of the Republic. Andrés is excited, having never been on a motorcycle before, and the army impresses him too.
They stop to ask where headquarters is. André Marty, who Gomez recognizes as one of France's great modern revolutionary figures, arrives. "His gray face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were modeled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion." Chapter 42, pg. 417 Gomez does not know that the man has become embittered, and that to question him is dangerous. He tells him that they have a message from behind fascist lines. He gives Marty the dispatch and the man orders them arrested. The guard tells them Marty may be a great leader, but he is crazy, with a mania for shooting people whose politics he does not like. He tells them Golz' location two miles away, but Marty would have his head if he let them go. They are brought to him and have a strong drink. Andrés knows that he will not make it back in time, but must get the dispatch back and deliver it. Gomez tries to tell him that the dispatch is urgent and the man replies that everything is and interrogates him, suspicious that the dispatch came from behind fascist lines. Gomez wonders with horror if Golz is a fascist too. Marty orders them taken away and Andrés is in disbelief that he will not deliver the dispatch. They both shout curses, that he is a crazy murderer. Marty is unfazed. He knows that he and Golz are of different politics, and Golz disapproves of his military maneuvers. He looks at the map. "In his mind he was commanding troops; he had the right to interfere and this he believed to constitute command." Chapter 42, pg. 423 Hemingway writes that it is doubtful that things would have gone any differently even without Marty, for the events were already in motion, and it is as hard to stop military movement as to initiate it.
Karkov enters and they talk; Marty is nervous, for Karkov always seems to have the upper hand. Karkov asks contemptuously about the message for Golz and Marty realizes maybe he was wrong and asks innocently what dispatch. Karkov tells him to give it up, for it has been delayed long enough, and says he will find out how untouchable Marty is. Andrés and Gomez give the dispatch to a man who gives it to Duval, who Robert Jordan said to give it to. Duval knows the enemy anticipates the surprise attack, and tries to cancel the bombardment. He wonders if it is just a holding attack and will take responsibility if he is wrong. He finally reaches Golz, who says it is too late, it is a shame, and they are screwed. He knows that if all goes as planned, the bombs will fall and the tanks will proceed and those guerrillas on the two ridges will fight along with his brigades. He is nauseated to know from the dispatch that there is no one on the ridges. He thinks of how things could be and how they have become and tells Duval they must do the little that is possible. Duval cannot hear over the roar of the planes, and thinks desperately that maybe something will happen in their favor.
Robert Jordan lies in the forest at dawn. Even the steel bridge looks spidery in the mist. He can see the sentry. He wonders if Andrés made it. He asks himself why he never thinks of how it would be to win; he has been on the defensive so long. He is conflicted with optimism and pessimism. He sees two men relieve the sentry. One spits, and Robert Jordan wonders if it is a superstition. Robert Jordan can see the details of the new sentry's face and does not want to look anymore. He sees a squirrel and wishes he had something he could touch. All he wants is for Rabbit (Maria) to make it. He watches the road. He hears the beginning of the bombs. The sentry man stands up. There is no more mist and Robert Jordan takes a clear shot. He hears Anselmo shoot twice and then the automatic fire of Pablo's cavalry. Agustín yells "nice hunting," and thinks, like hell it was hunting. When Anselmo tells him he killed the man, tears are running down his cheeks.
Robert Jordan quickly begins to set up the explosives with Anselmo's help. He hears a grenade and more firing at the upper post and wonders what is going on. It is cool and clean under the bridge and he hopes no one comes over it. He sees that Anselmo's face is composed again, and knows the man is in a bad position on the bridge. He curses Pablo again for throwing the detonator in the river. His thoughts spin from Anselmo, to football, to Israelites; nothing seems to make much sense. He hooks up the grenades, which will explode the dynamite, and tells Anselmo to pull hard when the time comes.
The remainder of Pilar's band arrives. Primitivo and Rafael the gypsy are holding up Fernando, who has been shot in the groin. Robert Jordan tells him to blow the bridge only if tanks or armored cars come onto it. Robert Jordan runs across the bridge and out of sight. Fernando is in much pain and wants to be left, but the two who hold him want to take him up the hill. They leave him with a gun.
Anselmo calls for Robert Jordan and says that all is going well. Soon they will blow the bridge; he feels brave again and wants to atone for killing the sentry. Anselmo knows he has achieved all he could as an old man in the war and it will be all right if he dies today. He is not excited but calm, and does not feel lonely with the wire in his hand. Up the hill, Pilar asks Primitivo if the gypsy is dead, and he says not yet, and she says if they had more men, it would not have happened. The gypsy asks if the fragments will reach him when the bridge blows and Pilar reassures him that Agustín is even closer to it. He remembers the blowing of the train. Pilar is impatient and asks Anselmo with much obscenity if Robert Jordan is blowing up a bridge or building one, that it is the speed and not the skill that counts. Suddenly Robert Jordan hears a different sound from Pablo's automatic rifle. He feels nauseated. He looks at the road and it is clear, then sees the truck and tells Anselmo to blow the bridge, which he does, and there is a cracking explosion as the bridge rises like a wave. He shields his head with his hands and when it is done, he realizes he is still alive. Robert Jordan sees the center of the bridge is gone and there is jagged steel on the road. He sees that Fernando is still alive but Anselmo is dead, impaled by steel from the bridge.
He tells Pilar to tell Maria that he is all right. She tells him they lost two at the sawmill, and when he asks her if she did something stupid she tells him to screw himself, that Fernando and Eladio were men too. He changes his mind about going to cover Pablo, telling Pilar that Pablo can cover himself in shit. She stands up for Pablo, reminding him that he came back, and that he is fighting now. Robert Jordan is angry and she tells him to calm down. He says that if Pablo had not thrown the detonator, Anselmo would still be alive. Now that the bridge is blown, he is angry and lonely and hates everyone he sees. Pilar repeats if, if, if and the anger slowly drains from him and he begins to accept things. He tells the gypsy to go farther down so he can see the road, and to help him aim for trucks and men. Pilar tells him to stop lecturing - they are fine.
Topic Tracking: Bravery 22
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 21
Not even the horses comfort Maria. They are nervous too. She wants to stop worrying but the firing scares her. She hears Pilar and wishes she would not jinx them with obscenities. She prays for Robert Jordan, almost breaking down when she hears the bridge blow, thinking the Republic is one thing, but her love is another. She hears Pilar yell that he is all right and yells back thanking her, choked with emotion.
They see the planes coming from Segovia, and Robert Jordan reassures Pilar that they will not bother with them in the hills. He gets to Agustín, who is angry and wonders what Pablo is doing. They listen to the heavy machine gun fire which Robert Jordan heard even before blowing the bridge and wonder what it is. The planes are now bombing at the pass and more are coming. They are new, not the ones from the other morning, and he feels as if they threw a stone, which came back as a tidal wave. He is glad not to be with Golz at the pass. It feels unreal to be alive, and he tells himself to be calm, he is just coming down off the high of the responsibility.
They see Pablo running around the bend of the road, firing his gun. He reaches the bridge and disappears. They know that the wall below the bend is too steep to climb, but someone could circle above. Suddenly they see a tank and fire on it. Agustín wants to fire more, but Robert Jordan does not want him to know where they are. It is the strange noise they had heard before. Agustín mocks the tank. Pablo finds them and reports that his men are dead; now they have plenty of horses. Robert Jordan thinks he is a murdering bastard, for he used the men then got rid of them when he was done. He tells him of the loss of Fernando, Eladio, and Anselmo. Pablo escaped when the tank was distracted. Agustín asks him bluntly what he was shooting at from around the bend, and Robert Jordan tells himself not to judge, that he knew he was a murderer. Agustín asks why he does not just admit he shot the five men, and Pablo tells him to shut up, for he has fought hard. Pablo says he has a plan, and Agustín, still bitter, says that if the plan is to shoot any of them, he will kill him now. Pablo tells them of all he and the men shot. Agustín continues to hound him about the men and Pablo continues to tell him to shut up.
Maria arrives and Robert Jordan holds her tight, never having thought before that love and battle could coexist. He pats her bottom and tells her to get on the horse. Primitivo wants to cut some of the loads from the horses, but Pilar says they will build a life with it. They must cross the road, but high enough so that they are out of firing range. Maria will go second and he tells her he will go suddenly. Pablo goes quickly, with the others behind him, and shells fall nearby. Robert Jordan sends the packhorse ahead, and hits it with a branch so it will hurry. He rides the big gray horse Pablo was so proud of. He makes it across, but the tank shoots and the gray horse falls on his left leg, breaking it. Primitivo and Agustín drag him up the last of the slope. Pilar says they can bind it, but he tells them to go on and motions for Pablo. He tells Pablo it does not hurt much, for the nerve is crushed, but he is screwed.
He asks to talk to Maria, and tells Pablo she will want to stay, but to make her go. He tells Pablo again to go to the Republic instead of Gredos. Maria comes with her face twisted like a child's before it cries. Pilar looks the same way. He begins, telling her they will not be going to Madrid, and she starts to cry. He is calling her rabbit, and says they will not go to Madrid, but he will go with her wherever she goes. She says she will stay with him, and he says what he does he must do alone. She insists she will stay, for it is worse for her to go. He agrees, but says he has become part of her. He tells her she must not be selfish, that she must do her duty. He tells her again that she is he. She is silent. He tells her to put her hand in his; she understands and is obeying; now they both go when she goes. He tells her to stand, repeating now she is both of them, but she will not. He tells her there is no goodbye, for they do not part. He tells her not to turn around. She gets on the saddle with Pablo. She turns and shouts that she wants to stay, and he shouts that he is with her, and to go. Agustín asks if he wants him to shoot him. He says it is no problem to do it, but he is crying. He tells Robert Jordan that his gun is clean, and the gypsy caught the packhorse. They have an intense goodbye during which Agustín clenches his fist, waving it as if to curse the situation as he leaves.
He is exhausted after they leave. He reassures himself that Pilar will take care of Maria and he must believe what he told her. He tells himself it could be worse. He hates to leave life, and hopes he has done some good with the talent he had. He has fought for what he believed in for a year. He had as good of a life as Grandfather. He would like to talk to Karkov, and to pass on what he has learned. He thinks back to how Pilar would not tell him what she read in his palm and reconsiders whether there is really something to the gypsy ESP. He reaches for his absinthe and even that is gone. He pulls himself and his leg. The bone has not punctured the skin and is into the muscle; the nerve is crushed so he cannot feel the great pain and he feels lucky. He reaches for his gun and hopes they come soon before he gets delirious. He wonders if those with religion have an easier time of dying. He thinks that dying is only bad when it is humiliating and takes a long time, and he is lucky that is not the case for him. He is glad the others were able to go. The attack was not a success, but he was lucky that he was able to make Maria leave him. He wishes he could tell Grandfather about it, and wonders if he did fifty attacks like it. He knows they were screwed as soon as Golz gave the orders, and this is probably what Pilar sensed. Next time they must plan better, with short wave transmitters. He grins and thinks that next time he ought to have a spare leg too. His leg starts to hurt and he hopes the enemy comes soon. He knows he must act soon, for if he passes out, they will ask him questions and make him give away secrets and plans.
His thoughts get more and more frantic and fast. He tells himself to think of the others being away, crossing through forest, creek, and up the slope, and then he cannot think of them any farther. He is conflicted, talking back to himself: he tells himself to think of Montana, Madrid, a cool drink of water - but he replies to himself that he cannot, that he is a liar. He tells himself to go ahead, that it will be nothing, to let go and die, but then tells himself that he must wait to make a move and that to shoot even an officer will make all the difference in saving the others. He is slipping away from himself as snow slips on a mountain slope. He sees the cavalry come up the slope and find the dead cavalry man that he killed the morning before. He looks at the sky and touches the ground. He rests on his elbows with the muzzle of the gun against the tree. He plans to shoot the officer when he comes on the trail of the horses. The officer, as it happens, is Lt. Berrendo, who led the offensive against El Sordo and his band, a man with a thin and serious face. Robert Jordan holds onto himself carefully to keep his gun steady. He is waiting to shoot until the officer reaches the sunlit place where the forest meets the meadow. He feels his heart beating against the pine needle-covered ground.
Topic Tracking: Women 25
Topic Tracking: Bravery 23
Topic Tracking: Loyalty 23