For Whom the Bell Tolls: Chapter 38 Summary & Analysis

Maria and Jordan go into the cave, where the group is tense and arguing. Jordan asks Eladio where he got his grenades, and Eladio says that Anselmo brought them from the Republic; Pilar says that Pablo used them at the attack on Otero. Eladio says that they always explode, but that they are “all flash and no fragments,” and thus not useful for the bridge. Jordan thinks that the mission is impossible, since they were “as sunk when [the fascists] attacked Sordo as Sordo was sunk when the snow stopped.” He realizes that they will not be able to take both fascist posts on either side of the bridge, and that Pablo probably knew this all the time; he probably always intended to “muck off,” especially after Sordo was attacked.

Jordan frets about accidentally killing the other members of the group during the offensive, and he tells himself not to get angry, which is “as bad as getting scared.” Instead of sleeping with Maria, he should have ridden through the hills with Pilar to try to gather more people to help: his plan as it is “stinks.” He remembers how he thought last night that he and his grandfather were “so terrific,” while his father was a “coward”; he needs to be as confident now as he was then. Jordan grins at Maria: she thinks that he is wonderful, but he thinks that he stinks, though again, he tells himself not to get into a rage.

Pilar says that she feels “good,” though there are only a few of them left to launch the attack. She also tells Robert Jordan not to worry about the “thing of the hand,” which was only “gypsy nonsense”: she doesn’t want him to be worried “in the day of battle.” She says that she cares for him very much, and that she feels they will “all do very well.” Jordan agrees with her.

Suddenly, Pablo reenters the cave, and Jordan reaches for his pistol. Pablo tells Jordan that he has “five from the bands of Elias and Alejandro,” and that he threw the exploder and the detonators from Jordan’s pack down the gorge, into the river. He believes that they can detonate the bridge using a grenade, though, and he tells the group that his leaving was only a “moment of weakness”—that he is “not a coward.” Pablo also says that he thought that if he left, Robert Jordan would give up on the plan with the bridge, but as soon as he threw the explosives away, he saw it all “in another manner,” since he found himself “too lonely” to continue on by himself.

Pilar tells Pablo that he is “welcome” back, though she mocks him, too; she also asks him how the people he has recruited are, and he says that they are “good ones and stupids,” “ready to die and all.” He says that he is “ready for what the day brings.”