User:KWatson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Line 43:

Pablo is someone whose beliefs, if any, are most mercurial and murky, but at one point he invokes God and the Virgen(sic). This prompts Pilar, acting in her role as law giver, to rebuke him for talking that way. In moments of crisis, as when Joaquín prays to the Virgin Mary at death, and when Maria prays for Robert Jordan’s safety, Republicans of various degrees of redness tend to revert back to their traditional cultural practices.

The case of Robert Jordan is special for a number of reasons, primarily of course because he is an American who is taking orders from a Soviet general, but also because he is a fascinating combination of stubborn commitment to what he sees as his duty and his far ranging and sensitive introspection and contemplation. In the early passages of the novel Jordan might be easily mistaken for a hero straight out of Soviet Socialist Realism—not just because he agrees to the highly questionable orders of Soviet General Golz, but because his virtues are so strong, and his motives are so pure. Over the course of the novel, however, Robert Jordan grows ever richer, more complex and

Page break

elusive as a character. In this sense, ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a concentrated case of a ''Bildungsroman'' that covers not an extended period of maturation but only about seventy hours, the last hours of Jordan’s life. In the end, Jordan, for all of his attachment to the Republican cause, tells himself that he is “not a red Marxist” and not to “kid yourself with too many dialectics". It is here that he undergoes the revelation that his love for Maria is the most important thing in his life and that such love is indeed the most important part of life. I would claim also (allowing for the fact that there were indeed genuine American communists such as Jorvis Ivens) that Jordan’s “non-party” commitment to the Red/Republican cause is characteristically American in his lack of interest in the specifics of its ideology.

@@ Line 43: / Line 43: @@
 Pablo is someone whose beliefs, if any, are most mercurial and murky, but at one point he invokes God and the Virgen(sic). This prompts Pilar, acting in her role as law giver, to rebuke him for talking that way. In moments of crisis, as when Joaquín prays to the Virgin Mary at death, and when Maria prays for Robert Jordan’s safety, Republicans of various degrees of redness tend to revert back to their traditional cultural practices.
+The case of Robert Jordan is special for a number of reasons, primarily of course because he is an American who is taking orders from a Soviet general, but also because he is a fascinating combination of stubborn commitment to what he sees as his duty and his far ranging and sensitive introspection and contemplation. In the early passages of the novel Jordan might be easily mistaken for a hero straight out of Soviet Socialist Realism—not just because he agrees to the highly questionable orders of Soviet General Golz, but because his virtues are so strong, and his motives are so pure. Over the course of the novel, however, Robert Jordan grows ever richer, more complex and
+Page break
+elusive as a character. In this sense, ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a concentrated case of a ''Bildungsroman'' that covers not an extended period of maturation but only about seventy hours, the last hours of Jordan’s life. In the end, Jordan, for all of his attachment to the Republican cause, tells himself that he is “not a red Marxist” and not to “kid yourself with too many dialectics". It is here that he undergoes the revelation that his love for Maria is the most important thing in his life and that such love is indeed the most important part of life. I would claim also (allowing for the fact that there were indeed genuine American communists such as Jorvis Ivens) that Jordan’s “non-party” commitment to the Red/Republican cause is characteristically American in his lack of interest in the specifics of its ideology.