Hemingway's hero as the isolated individual must struggle desperately to learn how to hold on in a hostile or indifferent universe in his for whom the bell tolls

In Hemingway's first three novels, each of his heroes incorporates the same theme: the isolated individual must struggle desperately to learn how to hold on in a hostile or indifferent universe. That hero appears in For Whom the Bell Tolls as Robert Jordan, but in a different place and with a different purpose. In a sense he has been displaced, for Hemingway's focal range here extends beyond Jordan's apprenticeship and beyond the complexities of the war in which he has volunteered to serve as a guerrilla for the Spanish Loyalists. Hemingway's novel is Tolstoyan in scope but rarely in achievement. But it has many merits, and even its defects are generally interesting. To reach this awareness constitutes the bulk of Robert Jordan's education: to communicate it through his thoughts and actions becomes Hemingway's purpose.