Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in For Whom the Bell Tolls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love in War
Cultural Connections
Violence, Cowardice, and Death
The Eternality of the Present
Summary
Analysis
Robert Jordan lies in his robe outside and waits for Maria to come to him. Earlier in the night, he cut down a spruce tree to make a bed for himself. Pilar says that she will take care of the explosives for him that night. Jordan thinks about the smell of the pine boughs beneath him, which he loves. He thinks of different odors that he can remember: “sweet grass,” “smoked leather,” “the wind from the land” coming in toward Cuba, “frying bacon,” “coffee in the morning.”
As Robert Jordan waits for Maria, feeling contented with his love for her, he reflects on the smells of certain things he loves—memories from his past—and relishes the life he has led up until the present.
Themes
Maria comes out from the cave, running toward Robert Jordan. She is wearing her “wedding shirt,” and she tells him that she loves him again; he says that his heart is her heart, and that they have become “one.” He holds her in the night, feeling that “she was all of life there was.”
Maria and Jordan feel that their love unites them, making them “one” instead of two and allowing them to look past their differences and individual traumas to find comfort in each other, even during the challenges of warfare.
Themes
