Banned Books: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

By -
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway


Robert Jordan fell in love in the mountains of Spain. As part of the International Brigades he was sent to an antifascist guerilla unit to blow up a bridge. Maria was with the guerillas after being rescued from the fascist. The emotions were real and wholly unexpected between the two. Their days together were few and filled with mission planning, fear, scouting and a thirst to know one another. We live through their days together and learn of the plight of the guerillas and the International Brigades in their fight against the fascist.
                There is no denying that Hemingway is a great writer, who is able to add passion and beautiful details to any scene. In For Whom the Bell Tolls we see Hemingway at his best. The story of love in the middle of the battlefield isn’t completely unexpected from Hemingway but the situation provides one fraught with danger, where love is the last thing anyone was hoping to find. Death is too near in these situations. Jordan was a well-developed interesting character that was both controversial and influential in the lives of all the characters. I was willing to follow Jordan on his mission and in this new love that he found in Maria. I was not particularly drawn to other parts of the story. In all honesty, I wanted more from his relationship with Maria. I wanted the love between the two of them to happen almost as much as they did. It was a depressing version of a love story almost too full of realism in a weary situation.
                I enjoy Hemingway’s novel because I enjoy his writing style. I love reading his descriptions of the scenery and the movements of everything around him. I don’t know if I am a huge fan of the subjects he chooses to describe. I can only imagine how different and yet amazing the novel would have been if it just focused on Jordan and his movements with the guerillas. As much as I enjoyed reading about Jordan and Maria’s love, I doubted the possibility of there being a happily ever after, which made me very apprehensive when it came to certain moments in the book. The U.S. Post Office decided the novel was non-mailable in the 1940’s according to the American Library Association. Turkish publishers were put on trial by the Istanbul government for spreading unfavorable propaganda in regards to For Whom the Bell Tolls. This novel does go against fascist ideal and speak very bluntly about death and murder but it was a time of war. I’m sure most people reading this novel in the mid 1900’s saw worse on the news. But banning books is all about control and seeing how far that control extends. The banning of this novel about two people in love in a time of crisis is a great example of that.

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics/reasons    Retrieved 2/2/2014 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson

By -
Image
Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steve Johnson Bringing to life the story of a notorious pirate to a modern audience isn’t an easy task. We’re too used to the comfort of easy travel, the mythos of pirates and the commercialized imagery produced by movies and television. Images of Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver have been part of entertainment for so long that the idea of true piracy and all it’s ruthlessness has almost been washed away. It isn’t until you’re able to wash away the false images and submerge yourself into the actual history that you can see piracy for it’s truly brutal nature. It also brings up many questions about governments, laws, corporations, scandal, colonization and other factors that allowed piracy to flourish and exist in the manner that it did for so long. Piracy didn’t exist in a bubble. Enemy of All Mankind takes the story of one pirate, who helped usher in the Golden Age of Piracy, and exa
Read more

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack

By -
Image
Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack          In my case it is always the image of Odetta that comes to mind when I hear her name. The tall, undeniably Black woman, hair in an afro, guitar in hand. It must be that I simply did not know enough about her life, her struggle, and even her music to convey more than that image. But her image is memorable and her presence something not easily described. This book fills in the gaps in the story of Odetta that I didn’t know. Looking back at my childhood, her most memorable songs are the ones I’ve known most of my life, singing in my school’s chapel along with hundreds of other Black students, the words having meaning that I can only truly comprehend decades later as a Black woman.          Zack takes his time with this biography, letting the readers learn as much about Odetta as we do the time from whence she came. Her migration from Alabama to California, her feelings of coming from a loveless, forced marriage,
Read more

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

By -
Image
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood I’m going to cut right to the chase. This book is well written but we didn’t need it. I expected more. I wanted more and this fell flat. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale , more than once, and I genuinely enjoyed it. The single narrative of Offred lent itself to the story well and it was genuinely a terrifying society. I watched the first two series of the show and though I have my reservations about it, I still thought it was a good show. It does a great job answering questions that the book could not because of its singular narrative. It filled out the world. This book revolves around three narratives: Aunt Lydia, who we know had a helping hand in stripping women of their sense of self and molded them to be controlled by the men of Gilead; Agnes, raised in Gilead with a Commander as father, privileged and set to marry well; and Daisy, a teenager raised in Canada hating Gilead and the abuses women endured that she’s learned about since she
Read more