![]() ![]() His war correspondence did not bother to feign neutrality. The wartime film he helped create, The Spanish Earth, is unapologetic propaganda. He never in his life felt as passionately about politics or government as he did the cause of the left-leaning Republic. It was a brutal war between the legitimate, democratically-elected government of the Second Spanish Republic, which had ties to communism, and the rebellion led by the future fascist dictator Francisco Franco. But for our present moment, what matters is Hemingway’s ability to recognize the virtues and the sins of people on both sides of the Spanish Civil War. ![]() I’m dubious about that overly-romanticized understanding of the novel-I find it a great novel because of its resistance to easy romanticism. ![]() They hand in mind the protagonist’s self-sacrifice for a cause greater than himself. During the 2008 election, the two major political party presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, spoke about the importance of the novel in their lives. Our times are a good time to pull it off the shelf. This fall marks the 80 th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. ![]()
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