For Whom The Bell Tolls

The first thing I do when I finish a book is mark it as finished on my goodreads account. No special reason, just a good way to keep everything organized and dated correctly. When you finish a book, the app will ask you for a rating, and will take you to the book’s page so you can see the reviews. For Whom the Bell Tolls’ breakdown of star ratings makes sense to me for the most part: most 5 and 4 star reviews. For a book about guerrillas during the Spanish Civil War, that’s pretty good.

This book took me a while to read. It was tough to get through, with a lot of nothing going on for most of the book. It is boring for most of it: a lot of set-up with no climax for a while. Not my favorite read, but it’s the type of book that I can respect and appreciate without necessarily liking it. So when I looked at the top three upvoted reviews on goodreads, I was shocked at how much I was defending it!

For context, the top three were negative: two 1-star reviews and a 3-star review. Of course, people can all have their opinion, but this discrepancy between average rating and top rating is something I haven’t really seen. So I looked into the top reasons why these people didn’t like the novel. because it seemed like a lot of people at least agreed with the issues these reviewers presented, and this is what I found:

1) The writing is boring

2) The book has no rhythm

3) The protagonist is boring and spends most of his time thinking about breasts

4) The feminine foil of Maria is a non-character

5) The climax isn’t even worth getting to.

I won’t go point by point, but I agree with some of these.

The book is boring, as I said above, but I think complaining about that is like complaining about Catch-22 being confusing. That’s kinda the point. War isn’t the beach storming scene in Saving Private Ryan 24/7. It’s inches of action separated by miles on inaction.

Maria isn’t the best foil for Robert Jordan. She doesn’t do much in the whole book except fall in love with Roberto. But I don’t think she is the foil to Robert - Pilar is. She runs the guerrillas by the time Jordan gets there. Everyone respects her as the leader. I think the dynamic between those to is way more interesting and worth appreciating then Robert and Maria.

So yes, I agree, but with some cop-outs.

As for the book having no rhythm, I could pick from 50 different passages that I think were rhythmically beautiful. If there’s one thing this book didn’t lack in my mind, it’s writing that I liked to read.

As for Robert Jordan being a walking-talking buzzcut with an affinity for breasts, I think that reviewer was just looking for a roast and did the best he could considering he’s a goodreads reviewer. (yeah nice one. totally gottem, guy who writes on his website instead.) Robert Jordan is the 1940 American audience’s “in” to this book. It gives them something understandable to grasp onto - a professor from Montanta, who is now fighting in Spain. Sevilla or even Madrid might fly over their heads, but Montana… Americans know Montana.

As for the climax: whoever thinks it is bad or not worth it are just wrong. The last fourth of this book is some damn good writing, with high emotions and brilliant language. I would recommend this book on those 150 pages alone.

Of course, I think this book can be criticized in many ways: it’s probably too long, Maria is basically nothing, the dialogue is interesting (although this can be attributed to having to censor curses and I believe directly translating Spanish), and the tangents are tiresome.

This book is definitely not for everyone, but I don’t think you can call it a bad book by any stretch of the imagination.