For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 34 Summary & Analysis

The fascists hold the crests of the hills, but there is a valley that no one holds, save for a fascist post in a farmhouse. Andrés, on his way to deliver Robert Jordan’s message to Golz, circles around this post in the dark. He notices four haycocks in a meadow that have been there since the fighting began in July, and he thinks that all of the untouched hay is a waste—though the Republicans would have to carry the hay up the slopes beyond the meadow to use it, and the fascists do not need the hay, since they have “all the hay they need and all the grain.” He is confident, though, that they will give the fascists “a blow” the next morning.

When Robert Jordan spoke to Andrés about delivering the message, Andrés felt the way he used to feel when he was a boy and woke up in the morning of his village’s festival to hear it raining: he knew that the bullbaiting in the town square would be canceled. However, Andrés loved bullbaiting, and he vividly remembers the bull in the pen, “his nostrils wide,” his ears twitching,” “the sharp tips” of his horns “uptilted so that to see them did something to your heart.” He always looked forward to seeing the moment when the bull decided who in the square to attack.

Andrés had always been brave in the village capeas, able to wait until the bull charged and to jump aside only at the last moment. He was always the first to throw himself at the bull, and he remembers the feeling of holding the bull still beneath him, driving his knife into its body. People called him “the bulldog of Villaconejos” and looked forward to seeing him kill the bulls. After, he would feel “ashamed, empty-feeling, proud and happy.” Still, he knows that there is no better feeling that the one given by the sound of the rain, which meant that the bullfight wouldn’t happen.

Tomorrow, Andrés thinks, will be a day of “valid action,” of “concrete acts.” He sees a partridge fly up from under his feet, and he wonders how they are able to move their wings so quickly. If there was no war, he would go with his brother Eladio to get crayfish from the stream back near the fascist post. He hopes that the group will move to Gredos after the bridge, and he reflects that if his father had not been a Republican, Andrés and Eladio would be soldiers with the fascists. However, Andrés believes “truly” in the cause and does not worry, but he feels that he has born into a “time of great difficulty” and “difficult decisions.” Andrés has no house and no family except a brother, and he owns nothing “but the wind and the sun and an empty belly.” He tells himself that he is a “phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.”