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 is outside, sleeping in his robe and turning over on his pistol, which he keeps fastened to his wrist. He wakes up suddenly and is about to settle back into sleep when he feels Maria’s hand on his shoulder. He greets her and pulls her down, and she gets into his robe. He tells her not to be afraid—that what she feels is only his pistol—and she tells him that she is ashamed. Jordan tells Maria that he loves her, and he feels her crying as she lies in his arms.
Robert Jordan and Maria’s relationship is depicted as pure, noble, and romantic from the start. They declare their love for each other before they have sex (with Robert Jordan assuring her that his pistol isn’t an erection), allowing Hemingway to draw a distinction between Robert Jordan and the Falangists who (it’s later revealed) brutally raped Maria. Unlike those men, Jordan is shown to be honorable—suggesting that the valor he shows in war is valor he also shows in love, and implicitly positioning the Republicans as morally superior to the fascists (though the novel also undoes this conclusion in other ways).
Themes
Maria tells him that she does not know how to kiss, but Jordan tells her that there is no need to kiss. She removes some of her clothes with his help and asks if she can “go” with him, as Pilar said—though not to a home. Jordan feels the smoothness of their bodies together, “happy-making, young and loving and now all warmly smooth.”
Robert Jordan’s love also symbolizes opportunity and the start of a new life for Maria, since by going with him after the war, she will escape the life of poverty and marginalization that single, orphaned women often face (especially in this time period).
Themes
Jordan asks Maria if she has loved others, and she tells him that she never has, though things were “done” to her by “various” people. She believes that this means he will not love her, but he tells her that he does; she insists that she does not know how to kiss, and that when “things were done” to her, she fought back instead of submitting. Jordan says that no one has ever touched her, calling her a “little rabbit,” and asks her to kiss him. She kisses him on the cheek and then on the mouth, and he feels happier than he has ever been.
Maria reveals to Robert Jordan that she was attacked by “various” people—later telling him that these people were Falangists, members of a militant fascist splinter group. Jordan’s comments to her suggest that he hopes to help her overcome this trauma, and that their love will be a restorative force in the midst of the violence and injustice of war.
Themes
Robert Jordan and Maria lie together, and he feels her heart beating. He notices that she came barefooted, as if she knew that she was coming to bed, and that she came without fear. The sundial shows that it is one in the morning. Maria says that she likes Jordan’s beard, and he asks her if she “wishes.” She says that she does, and that she wants to do everything together—so that “the other maybe never will have been.”
Robert Jordan is tentative about asking Maria if she wants to have sex—likely because of the sexual traumas she has experienced—but Maria “wishes” to do so, since she believes that by making love with Jordan, she can make the memory of “the other” (her assault) disappear.
Themes
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Maria says that Pilar said to tell Robert Jordan that she is not sick, and that she has already told Pilar that she loves him. Maria also admits that she wanted to die soon after the train, and that Pilar told her that loving someone would take away all of her pain. She asks to be Robert Jordan’s woman, and he accepts. Holding herself to him, she says “frightenedly,” “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone.” Robert Jordan asks Maria if she “wants to” (have sex), and she says, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Again, Robert Jordan and Maria’s love proves to be a healing, regenerative force: something that has the potential to take away Maria’s pain, caused by the war and its violence, and restore her hope in the future.
Themes
