Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Introduction
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Plot Summary
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Detailed Summary & Analysis
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Themes
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Quotes
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Characters
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Symbols
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Literary Devices
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of Ernest Hemingway
Historical Context of For Whom the Bell Tolls
Other Books Related to For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Full Title: For Whom the Bell Tolls
- When Written: Late 1930s
- Where Written: Idaho, Cuba, Wyoming
- When Published: 1940
- Literary Period: Late Modernism
- Genre: War novel
- Setting: Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains, Segovia, and Madrid, Spain
- Climax: Robert Jordan, Anselmo, and the guerillas detonate the explosives to blow up the bridge.
- Antagonist: Francoist Fascists
- Point of View: Third-person omniscient
Extra Credit for For Whom the Bell Tolls
Movie Adaptation. A film adaptation of For Whom the Bell Tolls was released in 1943, with Gary Cooper as Robert Jordan and Ingrid Bergman as Maria. Though few in the cast were Spanish, the movie was critically acclaimed (and mostly true to the original plot).
Pulitzer Prize Controversy. For Whom the Bell Tolls was slated to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1941, but committee member Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, voted against the selection, citing the novel’s “obscenity”—likely a response to mildly explicit sex scenes in the novel and Spanish curse words. Hemingway won the Pulitzer for The Old Man and the Sea in 1953.