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donkoboza 's review for:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
In case you need an explanation as to what makes Hemingway great, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a perfect showcase novel for his talent as one really has to have it in him to make a reader sit through a 500 pages long war novel where virtually nothing happens until the last 20-30 pages. All the characters do is talk: they talk when they eat, make love and go on patrols; they talk about the war, the country, the violence on both sides, their lives before, during and hopefully after the war. And somehow Hemingway manages to keep the reader involved in the conversations, while simultaneously waiting impatiently for the action to commence. It seems to be the main point he is trying to make: war is as far away from herioc images people usually have of it as possible, it consists of gruelling waiting, incessant preparations and never-ending conversations; the actual combat comes and goes as if in a nightmare leaving nothing but burned ground for more waiting, more preparations and conversations.
The most challenging thing about the novel is its language, which in a way imitates old English, which, in turn, is used to render the differnce between formal and informal registers in Spanish (it is presumed the majority of the dialogues are held in Spanish). It doesn't take much time, though, to get used to it, and the combination of old English pronouns with different Spanish words left untranslated creates an absolutely unique flavour. For Whom the Bell Tolls a mesmerizing novel, yet having finished it, you can't be sure whether you've been hypnotized by it for better or for worse.
The most challenging thing about the novel is its language, which in a way imitates old English, which, in turn, is used to render the differnce between formal and informal registers in Spanish (it is presumed the majority of the dialogues are held in Spanish). It doesn't take much time, though, to get used to it, and the combination of old English pronouns with different Spanish words left untranslated creates an absolutely unique flavour. For Whom the Bell Tolls a mesmerizing novel, yet having finished it, you can't be sure whether you've been hypnotized by it for better or for worse.