User:KWatson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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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.

Hemingway’s Soviet Russian characters play important parts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and they are problematic in a number of ways and on a number of levels. First, the names of General Golz and the journalist Karkov look as though they are real Russian names, but they are not. This is my own (virtual native speaker’s) reaction to these surnames that I have confirmed with actual native speakers of Russian. Kashkin, however, could be a genuine Russian family name. He is a double to Jordan, as they are both explosives experts. Kashkin’s lack of resolve reflects the side of Robert Jordan that is sometimes subject to indecisiveness. The link between the fates of these two is made explicit when we learn that Robert Jordan killed the wounded Kashkin in an act of mercy so that Kashkin would not be tortured by the fascists. Kashkin’s demise is also a foreshadowing of Jordan’s who, as he lies with a broken left thigh, fights off the temptation to take his own life in order to avoid the sort of torture by the fascists he has spared Kashkin.

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	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.		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.

			Hemingway’s Soviet Russian characters play important parts in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' and they are problematic in a number of ways and on a number of levels. First, the names of General Golz and the journalist Karkov look as though they are real Russian names, but they are not. This is my own (virtual native speaker’s) reaction to these surnames that I have confirmed with actual native speakers of Russian. Kashkin, however, could be a genuine Russian family name. He is a double to Jordan, as they are both explosives experts. Kashkin’s lack of resolve reflects the side of Robert Jordan that is sometimes subject to indecisiveness. The link between the fates of these two is made explicit when we learn that Robert Jordan killed the wounded Kashkin in an act of mercy so that Kashkin would not be tortured by the fascists. Kashkin’s demise is also a foreshadowing of Jordan’s who, as he lies with a broken left thigh, fights off the temptation to take his own life in order to avoid the sort of torture by the fascists he has spared Kashkin.