John Paul Thompson

Oct 29, 2010

ANTH 34823

The Ethnographic Fiction of For Whom The Bell Tolls

“All ethnography is fiction” (Leach 44). So wrote Sir Edmund Leach, 20 th century

British social anthropologist, in “Tribal Ethnography: Past, Present, Future”. Writing about

the attempts by anthropological writers and film makers to “reinvent tribal societies that

have long ago ceased to exist”, Leach claims that constructed tribal narratives are proof

that “most ethnographic monographs are fiction even if the author intended otherwise”

(Leach 42). However, Leach does not speak to the opposite condition in which the author

who intends to write fiction writes instead an ethnography. I argue that Ernest Hemingway

did just that in For Whom The Bell Tolls, although not so accidently, and that in so doing he

create authenticity that the historical context of his novel fails to create.

Allen Josephs writes that, although aspects of the story of For Whom The Bell Tolls

contain nuggets of truth, the guerilla actions of the characters fighting for the Republic in

the Guadarrama Mountains during the Spanish Civil War are “Hemingway’s invention”

(Josephs 53). This is of course Hemingway’s right, since he is writing a fiction novel, not a

biography or historical piece. However, by infusing essentializations that capture the

Spanish countryside and the nature of Spanish people and their culture at that time,

Hemingway creates an authenticity that transcends history. This authenticity imparts

potency to Hemingway’s novel, a particular potency that was reserved for Hemingway by

critics, who stated that due to his experience in the region he was “obviously the person

who can write the great book about the Spanish war” (Josephs 12). Josephs concludes that

although Hemingway’s characters are more mythic than they are real, and that the setting
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is more “Homeric than historic”, the “higher order of truth is the art of the storyteller”,

where the story Hemingway tells is about Spain during the Spanish Civil War (Josephs 60).

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, ethnography requires “direct fieldwork

and requires the complete immersion of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life

of the people who are the subject of his study” (Britannica). Documentation of

Hemingway’s “direct fieldwork” and cultural immersion is abundant. Amongst the

documentarians, Carlos Baker writes that Hemingway was involved in Spain from early on,

both in his travels and in his politics. “Hemingway had followed political developments in

Spain from the beginning of his career” (Baker 224). Baker continues that Hemingway, who

had first journeyed to Spain in 1922 and who spent concentrated amounts of time in the

country before and during the Spanish Civil War, the period in which For Whom The Bell

Tolls is set, sublimates his experiences in Spain for those of the characters. During his time

in Spain, Hemingway spent “a hard ten days visiting four central fronts, including all high

positions, hours on horseback, and climbing to important positions 4,800-feet high in the

Guadarrama Mountains” (Josephs 50). Clearly this experience influenced and guided his

construction of Robert Jordan’s experience in the same area. By sublimating his

experiences for those of the characters, we can consider their observations and accounts to

represent his own, in a way making them anthropologists embedded within the novel.

The Encyclopedia Britannica further defines ethnography as being a “descriptive

study of a particular human society” (Britannica). In For Whom The Bell Tolls, there are

moments of explicit and implicit description that will be considered here as ethnography.

Hemingway embeds ethnography in the narrative, and while he often takes times to offer
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extended passages on the people, places, or conditions of Spanish culture that weave

themselves into the significance of the story, Hemingway likewise places telling snippets

within brief conversations or asides that have little bearing upon the overarching plot. As

mentioned before, these two passage types fall into two further categories of explicit or

implicit reference.

The explicit ethnographic passages make known their intention to capture the

nature of Spanish culture. For example, in an exchange between Pilar and Agustín, Agustín

says “Thy mother”, after which is written, "'Thou never had one,' Pilar told him, the insults

having reached the ultimate formalism in Spanish in which the acts are never stated but

only implied" (98). Hemingway’s explanation to the reader of the practiced linguistic

structure of Spanish insults and arguments is a passing comment that does not move the

story forward in any manner. Instead, it demonstrates the author’s intimate knowledge of

the language and the language’s speakers; it tints the conversation with a hue of

authenticity. Hemingway does this intentionally, explicitly, rather than implying the

aforementioned intimacy through subtle description.

In certain passages Hemingway, instead of stating that something is or is not an

essentialization of a Spanish trait, implies an essentialization. One such example is the

description of the massacre in Pablo’s village. Hemingway composes a Durkheimian re-

telling of an event in which Pablo orchestrates the communal execution of all the politically

unwanted members of Pablo’s village. This description is based upon the true events that

happened in Ronda at the beginning of the war (Buckley). It extends over nearly thirty

pages (108-135), punctuated with first hand reactions and analysis by Pilar and by
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comments and questions by Robert Jordan, but sustained by observation and description.

To draw further the comparison to Durkheim, Hemingway’s description of the execution

ritual in Pablo’s village demonstrates the same “effervescence” that Durkheim describes in

the funeral rituals or Urpmilchima or the Arunta (Durkheim 397-399), resultant of the

potency of collective thought, the power of which “determine[s] man’s conduct with the

same necessity as physical forces” (Durkheim 229). While Hemingway does not offer so

overt an analysis of the social processes at work in the novel, he does imply them in his

descriptions and in the reactions of the characters.

Along with character’s reactions, Hemingway also offers comparisons between the

explicit Spanish cultural commentary and other cultures, both implied and explicitly

referenced. Robert Jordan compares American political class and agrarian systems with the

Spanish systems when speaking with Agustín, Andrés, Primitivo, and the others in the cave

(215-216). Robert Jordan also compares the Spanish acts of hospitality to French acts of

hospitality when considering the bottle of whiskey El Sordo brought for him (212).

Furthermore, he considers differences between Spanish (“the language of bureaucracy”)

and French (“the language of diplomacy”) (228). In a compelling passage illustrating this

comparison, Hemingway offers two different subtle descriptions of smells that illuminate

Spanish and American culture. Pilar presents three thought/experience experiments to

Robert Jordan in an attempt to describe the smell of death that illustrate viscerally the

everyday-life of three contexts – a seaside fishing and trading vessel in the northwest of

Spain, a matadero in the early morning in Toledo, and a whorehouse outside of which is a

pile of refuse and compost (263-265). This sharply contrasts with the brief smell

description that Robert Jordan makes to himself later, when considering Pilar’s three
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smells. Robert Jordan, rather than dwelling on the smells of death instead prefers the smell

of sweet grass that the “Indians used in their baskets”, the smell of smoked leather, the

smell of “frying bacon in the morning […] coffee in the morning […] a Jonathan apple as you

bit into it […] a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven” (269-270). These

stark comparisons offer an ethnology of sorts, a comparison of the experience of one

culture to another. Although the smells are in no way analogous, Robert Jordan’s position

as arbiter between the two ties them in a way that offers an analytical tool to the reader.

Robert Jordan chooses the smells of his former life over the foreign smells of death – so to

the reader is forced to consider both conditions. This is just one instance where

Hemingway embeds analytical tools for understanding the ethnographically documented

cultures presented within the narrative.

In considering For Whom the Bell Tolls, and by understanding Hemingway’s

experience in Spain, it is clear to see instances in which Hemingway embeds ethnographies

of Spain in his text. Hemingway accomplishes this by presenting both explicit and implicit

descriptions within the narrative form, functioning both as coloration and as plot stimulus.

In all cases, the effect of the inclusion of such passages is a perceived authenticity within

the fiction that enables Hemingway to make a more cogent political statement than would

otherwise be possible with purely historical facts. By offering both observational and

analytical prose, Hemingway is able to essentialize Spain during La Guerra Civil, and in so

doing offers not only a critically acclaimed novel but also an ethnographic account that is

worthy to occupy the same shelf space as Argonauts of the Western Pacific and the like.
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Works Cited

Baker, Carlos. Hemingway; the Writer as Artist. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1952. Print.

Buckley, Ramó n.  "For Whom the Bell Tolls: Revolution in Ronda: The Facts in Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls." Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 14.
Detroit: Gale, 1998. Print

Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free, 1995. Print.

"Ethnography." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 26 Oct.

2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/194292/ethnography>.

Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls. London: Vintage, 2005. Print.

Josephs, Allen. For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway's Undiscovered Country. New
York: Twayne, 1994. Print.

Leach, Edmund “Tribal Ethnography: Past, Present, Future”. History and Ethnicity. Ed.
Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald, Malcolm Chapman. London: Routledge, 1989.
Print