In For Whom The Bell Tolles Ernst Hemingway gives the reader an account of what it is like to work in a gorilla band behind enemy lines. The setting is the 1930s civil war, and you have to blow a bridge while figuring out who to trust in a band that has seen much and has much yet to see.

The novel is crafted in first person and much of it is stream of consciousness. Hemingway does stream of consciousness well and can put you inside the head of several characters creating a vivid empathy.

The book itself centers on themes of the problems with communism, and the uselessness of war. Like The Old Man And the Sea Hemingway’s novel is realistic, and ends with the theme that a man can only find peace when he has neither victories nor defeats to defend, and is alone in the enormity of nature.

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Post Script
Hemingway, something of a notorious drinker, talks much of drinking, and wine in the book. Namely: wine, whiskey, and absinth. It reminded me of when I was in Spain too, in Barcelona. You would order a meal and there would be wine, cold, and drawn from a big barrel in the back of the restaurant. Almost all the wines would be house wines. No wine lists exist there. Sure you could be particular if you wanted to, but the house wine was good, very good. Sometimes it would be in a small half liter decanter, or sometimes the restaurant would fill half a wine bottle full and put a cork in it. Every place was a whole in the wall place, with just a husband, wife, and child. Or sometimes a big burley woman that you could tell could be the boss of anyone. The price was all the same, 3 euros, no matter how much you drank. What a country, what a country indeed. The food would be fried potatoes and fried fish, or gazpacho with lentils. It was very good. Otherwise you could go for tapas, which would be little cubes of fried potato, or some rectangular omelet, or some such thing.
I did try the absinth once, but I think it was too commercial, or too hyped, I don’t know. In my mind I remember it tasting very good, but I really can’t remember. There were these Japanese there, painted with makeup, their hair cropped high, and with colorful unorthodox fashion. They sat quietly and looked down a lot, and said things from time to time. They knew what I didn’t know. That just sharing a drink in a place is what matters, it doesn’t matter what is said, or how you act, as long as you don’t act too much, just that you are there, and in some kind of humble dignity.

The Old Man and The Sea is one of those books that tells a simple story, draws in your emotions, and leaves you to reflect on a thousand metaphors. The novella centers around an old man's battle against a fish that is larger than his simple boat. For four days the man is alone at sea and reflects on his age, his loneliness, his determination, and his resolution.

To me the main theme of the book is how all our battles end the same, whether they are victories or defeats...in the end, both are fated not to last. The old man does catch the fish after days of pain and struggle, only to find it impossible to defend its carcass against the sharks. Only once the carcass has been completely eaten does the old man find peace. No sins to justify, no pains to reason with, no future to hope for, just peace in a world of beauty, and as Hemingway puts it so well: "He dreams of lions on a white sand beach".

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