Robert Jordan as a typical Hemingway hero.
Name: Drashti Joshi
Batch: M.A. Sem.2 (2022-2024)
Enrollment N/o.: 4069206420220016
Roll N/o.: 05
Subject code & Paper N/o.: 22401 Paper: 108
Paper Name:- The American Literature
E-mail Address: drashtijoshi582@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English M.K.B.U.
Date of submission: 31 March 2023
This Blog is an Assignment of paper no.:108 The American Literature
In this assignment I am dealing with the topic of Robert Jordan as a typical Hemingway hero.
About Hemingway:
Born: in Oak Park, Illinois, The United States, July 21, 1899
Died: July 02, 1961
Genre: Fiction
Influences: Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Anton Chekhov, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Ivan Turgenev, Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature.
Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two plane crashes that left him in pain and ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.
Robert Jordan as a typical Hemingway hero.
Robert Jordan As A Typical Hemingway Hero In ” For Whom The Bell Tolls”. Hemingway’s heroes have their own brand of uniqueness in their characterization. They are not less than Shakespeare heroes in their unique traits of heroism. His heroes are successful in their presentation of action and adopt themselves as the action follows or proceeds. That’s why, most of the critics dub Hemingway as a successful writer of tragic heroes. The element of pessimism is very much evident in it. He creates his own fiction style in his writing.
Hemingway’ writings because his heroes often fail in their struggle and get nothing in the end. Santiago in The Old man and the Sea, Romero in The Sun also Rises and Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls can be best quoted in this regard.
A tragic hero in the play or novel is that person who achieves greatness at the cost of himself. As it is known that the tragic death of a hero turns a play or novel into a tragedy and it is the death of the hero which mounts the appeal of the tragedy. The hero intentionally does everything for the good of the public and it is his death for the fulfilment of his mission which fills the hearts of the readers, with sympathy and respect. The greatness of the tragedy depends on the bigness of the goal of the hero. In other words, it means to say that the bigger the goal of the hero the higher the tragedy.
Robert Jordan is a left-wing radical, or was modelled after several of them. He palled around with terrorists, or at least people whom many Americans, of his era and beyond, thought so. His specialty is blowing things up for a cause. He is at minimum a socialist, someone so eager to spread wealth around that he'd lose his life to do it.
Robert Jordan is also honourable, steadfast, selfless, determined, stoic, generous, tolerant, courageous, conscientious, forgiving, altruistic, tender, wise, loyal, independent, taciturn, disciplined, dutiful, patient, exacting, empathetic, idealistic, introspective, charismatic and handsome. No wonder the beautiful Maria falls for him the first time she sees him, and the earth moves beneath the two the first time they make love.
Robert Jordan is the hero of Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," an American fighting Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. And despite his radical roots, he's a literary sensation during this election season. Senator Barack Obama told Rolling Stone that Hemingway's novel, published in 1940, is one of the three books that most inspired him. As for Senator John McCain, few men, real or fictional, have influenced him as much as Jordan.
Hemingway never revealed on whom he based Jordan, who taught Spanish at the University of Montana before heading to Spain. Cecil Eby of the University of Michigan proposed to Robert Merriman, who, like Jordan, was a Westerner and a teacher (he had studied economics in Moscow). But Merriman, who was killed in 1938, was never a guerrilla behind enemy lines, as Jordan was. Three others whom veterans speculate could have been models — Michael Jimenez, William Aalto, and Irving Goff — were, in fact, guerrillas; Goff, a New Yorker who died in 1989, actually blew up bridges, but unlike Merriman, he never met Hemingway. (He once joked that he never met Ingrid Bergman, either; if he had, he said, "I might still be there.") Large swaths of Jordan, including his "red, black, blinding" temper and his father's suicide, clearly come from Hemingway himself.
In For Whom the Bell Tolls, we see that Robert Jordan plays a role of such a character who fights for an ideal in a foreign land. He has a firm belief in the Republican cause because he loves Spain. He is of the view that if there establishes a government of fascists in Spain then the future of this country will be in danger and the country might be spoiled. Moreover, he thinks that in spite of all its flaws a republican form of Govt. It is better than a totalitarian state because an individual feels cramped and suffocated under fascism.
This novel has been written in order to test the quality of Jordan’s idealism and the chain of obstacles in his path forms the basic structure of the novel. As the action of the novel proceeds, Jordan’s task gets more and more complicated. Pablo is absolutely against Jordan’s plan. He takes it impossible to put into practice because it means the destruction of the land. Hemingway’s heroes are always brave in their acts. Jordan is brave enough that he does not even feel fear in his great risky task of blowing up the bridge.
The reason being, Hemingway’s heroes always like to face risks like Santiago in The Old man and the Sea, Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms and Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Jordan is such a character who does not give any importance to what happens to himself. He accepts the risky task of blowing up the bridge with an open heart and never shows any sign of cowardice. Though General Golz warns him about the difficulty of the assignment yet he gives a promise to complete it within the limit of time. In spite of creating obstacles by Pablo, he balances Pablo’s hostility by Pilar’s support. It was being assumed by some critics that Jordan’s falling in love with Maria might become a threat or obstacle in fulfilling his mission. In spite of this, he does not care and we see with the passage of time that it is his love for Maria which enhances his zest. He keeps the two roles that of lover and that of a dynamiter apart, though towards the end of the play, they merge into one another.
Some critics raise objections by saying that sometimes, Jordan appears like a dummy but Hemingway makes him a convincing and imitable personality by his superb art of characterization. So, their objection does not remain for a long time when we see that it is Jordan who fights against many abstractions: liberty, equality, rights of the people, democracy and atrocities of the fascists.
In fact, he is a religious zealot who fights for a secular ideal. A prominent critic has very rightly said, “He dies for the American dream”. He sacrifices for all the poor people in the world. There is no doubt in saying the fact that his ideals are worth imitating for the people of the rest of the world. He fights for those ideals which are practicable for most sensible persons.
Some critics might term it as a flaw in his character that his love for Maria is a weakness in his character. But it is very convincing because of his weakness as a human being. His love for Maria is pure and genuine because he loves her by the cores of his heart unlike a boozer or a womaniser. He wants to remain in her heart forever. He tells his philosophy of love to Pilar that he loves the good things of life and he will die only if it is a necessity. It is his love for Maria which makes him more zealous and enthusiastic in his mission. He is well aware of the sufferings of the Spanish people in a civil war. It is Maria’s rape by fascists which compels him to ‘teach a lesson to fascists by blowing up the important bridge. He takes Elsardo’s death as a serious one which reminds him of all other such deaths. By thinking so, he deeply becomes sad and gloomy.
It is worthy to note here that the influence of his father’s profession is very much in his life. His father was a guerrilla in the American civil war, as he is in the Spanish. Just like an ordinary human being, he is totally dominated by Maria’s love. Here we should not forget that he is an ordinary human being and not a supernatural creature or perfect human being. He has a lot of weak points like ordinary and commonplace human beings. He is an American volunteer who fights for the genuine cause of humanity and feels this crusade in his blood and soul. Being dutiful, he loves Spain. He remained there when the civil war broke up. He joined the war in order to contribute his service for the welfare of the country.
There is no doubt in saying that he becomes a new man after the arrival of Maria in his love and he starts living only for Maria’s sake but it does not mean that his sense of Dutifulness eclipses at any cost. His love for Maria and his risky mission of blowing up the bridge becomes one because fascists have now become his personal revenge for him as they rape his sweetheart. This very thinking of him leads him further to his fight for Republicans and Republic Spain and Maria becomes one for him.
Summing up the above mentioned discussion of the characteristics of Jordan as a tragic hero, we can say in the concluding remarks that at the end; his loyalty becomes personal loyalty and he is just a husband covering the retreat of his wife whom he loves by the cores of his heart. He sacrifices his life for Maria and her people i.e., Pablo and his land. He is justified in his act of sacrifice because his idealism is worth imitating and practicable for many others.
The Hemingway Code Hero
Hemingway created another recurring figure, who has come to be known as the ‘code hero’. This was a necessary outcome of Hemingway’s need for a figure to bind the wounds of the Hemingway hero. This figure, referred to as the code hero, is in sharp contrast from the Hemingway hero. His function is to balance the deficiencies in the hero and if the position or stance that he has taken is wrong, to correct them. He has been given the term code hero’ because he represents that code according to which the hero should live. If the hero adheres to this code then he will be able to live in the world of violence, misery, and disorder without discomfort and with success. He can tackle the problems of the world that he has been introduced to and live in it with success. The code hero is therefore an exemplification of certain principles that the hero has to follow. He offers the following code of honour, courage, endurance, etc. that shall serve man in a positive manner in his struggle for life. It enables him to bear the tensions and pain that life imposes on man. These qualities make him a man, stand him in good stead in his battle against life which is usually a losing battle. It enables him to live life as Hemingway prefers “with grace under pressure”. The Hemingway code is therefore of great significance in the study of the Hemingway hero.
Conclusion:
The style that Hemingway follows is a curt, unemotional, and factual style. This style tries to present experience objectively though Hemingway is a stylist of narrow limits. Hemingway’s style is a report style that includes reporting of external actions in a boring, dispassionate way and as a rule, this is all that he ever attempts in presenting his characters and especially in depicting events and accidents. The central character in his novel, the “I” who also functions as a narrator is typical of most of his novels and short stories. However, this T is almost all the time generally described as bare consciousness stripped to the human minimum. The “I” narrates the story but the style is akin to an impassive recording of the objective data of experience. The “I” is at best a de-personalized being and this is made clear by the absence of ideas and apparent emotion in him compounded by the fact that he has no memory of the past and no thought for the future. Apart from the typical Hemingway hero, he is an accomplished man from a number of angles. He is in the modern sense macho and a potent, red-blooded male. He is a sophisticated and extensive world traveller. He spends his time in the pursuit of women and sex, drinks hard, plays just as hard, and in the face of danger is cool and self-assured. In much the same ways as Hemingway lived life on the fast lane with wine and women, courting death in various ways, so does the Hemingway hero.
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