For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

When they reach the camp, it is snowing. Pablo predicts that they will have “much snow,” and he tells Robert Jordan that neither Rafael nor Anselmo have come back to the camp yet. Pablo says that Jordan won’t want to sleep outside, and Jordan becomes enraged, cursing at Pablo in his head: his sleeping robe, which cost sixty-five dollars, will protect him in any kind of weather. Jordan makes an offhand comment in English, and Pilar asks him to speak in Spanish. Jordan reflects that sometimes, he gets “tired of it”—negotiating with the Spaniards has become tiring, and the snow isn’t helping.

Jordan predicts that there will be a great storm, and he reflects that he often gets excited by storms. The snowstorms he has observed in the past were disorienting (“it blew a white cleanness and the air was full of a driving whiteness and all things were changed”); still, “this was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it.” Pablo tells Jordan that he was an arroyero (mule driver) for many years, and he learned the weather on the road. Before the movement, he worked as a horse contractor in Zaragoza, where he met Pilar, when she was with Finito.

Pilar pictures Finito facing a bull, preparing to fight it, imagining their battle in slow motion: in her vision, he slays the bull with his sword, and he walks away, “tired and unsmiling.” Pablo says that Finito was “handicapped by his short stature,” and Primitivo adds that he was “tubercular.” Pilar says that it is natural for him to have been “tubercular,” since in Spain, “no poor man can ever hope to make money unless he is a criminal […] or a bull-fighter, or a tenor in the opera.” Poverty and income inequality in Spain has made for difficult living conditions: as a young man, Finito had to travel under the seats in third-class carriages to get to the fairs where he would learn how to fight. Though Finito was fearful before the bullfight, Pilar says that she never saw a man “with less fear in the ring.”

One of the brothers (not yet named) recalls Finito’s slaying of a bull “of over thirty arrobas” (a measure of weight). After, Pilar recalls, he received a banquet celebration at the Café Colon, and the head of the bull was mounted on the wall. Finito had received a palotaxo, a blow from the bull’s horn, and while he was eating during the banquet, he would often stop to throw up blood. Pilar says that Finito was “essentially solemn,” though he decided to stay at the banquet and began to drink. The banquet became progressively rowdier, and when Finito was asked to make a speech, he refused, blood streaming out of his mouth. He died in the winter after the dinner, since he never recovered from the palotaxo.

Bending over the fire, thinking, Pilar imagines Finito’s “gnarled,” scarred body. Pilar remembers tending to Finito and lying next to him at night: “he was often frightened in his sleep.” Rafael enters the cave to report back about the fascist command at the bridge. He says that there has been no unusual movement on the road, and Robert Jordan says that they should go to retrieve Anselmo from his post.