In Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, we acquaint ourselves with the protagonist Robert Jordan, an expert dynamiter from the US who has given up his life at home to participate in the Spanish Civil War. By orders of a General Golz, he is to strategically blow up a bridge at the precise time of a Republican offensive in order to hinder the mobilization of Fascist reinforcements. In order to do this, he enlists the help of mountain guerillas of the area; he is led to guerillas’ hideout by his guide, the elderly Anselmo.

What is notable about this book specifically is its strange diction in which it goes about telling the story. Indeed it really incorporates an almost Spanish type of grammar, yet it is largely executed in English, with light Spanish punctuations here and there. The sentences are not incorrect, but they feel like direct translations of sentences first written in Spanish. This is particularly true for inter-character dialogue, but less so for the narration.

What I particularly enjoyed about this book is that it portrays very real experiences, human experiences, and with that, clear and substantial emotions. Hemingway deliberately takes the more palpable parts of the war and the human condition to his audiences, depicting the more basic, primordial side of people: hunger, lust, killing, and death. There is much that goes on behind the lines and in between battles; people get hungry, and food must be prepared (as in the first chapter). As well, Robert Jordan and Maria make love in the woods. There is constant talk of killing and death among the guerillas of the camp, and later in the book, the actual killing commences. As discussed in class, there is indeed a certain universality to this book and its characters, where such experiences could have been lived by anyone and at any time; war, killing, and love are forever.

Hemingway moves on to create more complex emotions as well, putting the reader in difficult situations just as the characters face. As an example, there is a very real uneasiness as the people of the cave plot to kill Pablo, and we later find out from Pilar that almost certainly has Pablo overheard the conversation.

In the same vein, he neglects to substantially explain the political motivations and underpinnings of the war. Perhaps Hemingway did not want to bog down his book with overly complicated and hardly relatable struggles of ideal (and the inevitable battle of acronyms) that plagued the earlier books we have read. We learn very little about the situation in Spain of that epoch, and as a novel of historical fiction, it serves more as fiction than historical.

Nonetheless, I enjoy its simple prose and I look forward to reading the rest of this book.

I’ve brought up the idea in class before that there comes a time when a cause is no longer worth fighting for. I mean this in the practical, life saving sense if not the idealistic sense. I believe there exists such a time in every conflict, and it is not only not cowardly but it is the right thing to do to stop fighting at such a time.

In the beginning of  this novel, I believe Pablo has at least answered this question for himself. Whether or not we have reached this point where there is no point in keeping fighting is obviously a matter of perspective and opinion, but no other character shows signs of even having this question in mind, and Pablo is labeled a coward for having posed this question to himself.

I contend Pablo is the sanest of all the characters for having done this (though ironically the answer to this question is probably what led to his alcoholism), though I can see why idealists might disagree with me. Pablo was clearly brave, patriotic and committed to the conflict based on the information we’re given about how many people he killed when the conflict started. We’re further told of how disorganized and outgunned this group was when the conflict started so we can, I believe, safely assume that Pablo hasn’t stopped fighting now because they don’t have a logical superiority or lack of conviction.

Ergo, the only explanation that I can see that remains for Pablo’s behavior is that he’s done the math and realized that not only is this war unwinnable, and he’s doing his fellow countrymen a disservice if he keeps fighting by inflicting more death and destruction for no actual strategic gain. War, in particular its brutality, is often justified as the ends justifying the means; but here it has become clear to Pablo at least that the end is unreachable and hence there is no way to justify the means.

All other characters appear to be rationalizing keeping the fight up. In particular, I believe they’ve set up a kind of straw man for themselves with this bridge. They’ve deluded themselves into believing that if this bridge can be blown up, then the whole war can be won, whereas in reality it is a tiny and insignificant part of the larger conflict that can easily be rebuilt given Franco’s resources. We furthermore see their inability to recognize the true extent of how unmatched they are and facing reality by how they just assume planes passing by are their own, when most likely that was not the case or they just couldn’t face it not being the case.

Sebastian Lee and Annie Lu

Annie and I both thought that the class discussion went well. We initially created a surplus of slides on our PowerPoint presentation, with various questions that we had about the book and the war, as well as passages and quotes we found interesting. In particular, we had many questions centered on the politics of the civil war.

Ultimately, the slides were sufficient in provoking discussion for most of the class period, and there were very interesting points brought up by our classmates throughout.

Topics that frequently came up in discussion included Orwell’s motivations for writing the book (as a form of “propaganda”), Anarchist, Communist and Socialist policies, and what made foreigners want to participate in the war.

I felt that we presented some decent ideas, but to improve for next time, we could phrase the questions differently in order to make it easier for our classmates to respond. For a book discussion, I would make the questions more answerable by (and more specific to) the contents of the book itself, rather than more general questions about the civil war.

Also, the digressions from the planned topics of interest were quite entertaining and informative (e.g. the Cricket test matches), but as regulators we could keep the discussions a little more focused.

Overall, we felt that we asked significant questions, questions that went deeper than the superficial layers, and that the class generated good dialogue about the book.

Sebastian Lee and Annie Lu

We created a PowerPoint presentation with our personal questions regarding Homage to Catalonia to facilitate the class discussion.

We divided the questions/quotes into general categories, sharing and discussing the topics with the class in approximately the following order:

-The purpose, style and tone of the book (How was the book written? Why so?)

Point Of View

What was Orwell trying to achieve?

-The setting of the book (What kind of atmosphere did it create?)

Also: “Spanish” qualities, and their take on the war (“Mañana”)

-Politics

Subtopics:

War vs Revolution (What’s the difference?) – simplifying to “Fascism vs Democracy”

Motivations of the War (foreign interests, interparty skirmishes etc…)

The USSR’s effect on Spain

Anarchist and Egalitarian societies: how would they work?

Motivations of international fighters in Spain (e.g. Bob Smillie)

Skirmish of the Telephone Exchange: could it have been avoided?

The POUM microcosm: why was the class system unable to be abolished?

What happened to Georges Kopp?

–Miscellaneous: events of the book (Orwell getting shot in the neck, Rats, rats, rats! Weapons distribution to the public…)

-Religion: changing roles of the church

Fundada con motivo del sesenta aniversario de la Guerra Civil en 1996, la Plaça George Orwell, ubicada en el corazón del Barrio Gótico del centro de Barcelona, fue la primera plaza catalana en disponer de cámaras de videovigilancia desde el año 2001, (un homenaje un tanto irónico al creador del «Gran Hermano»).

Debo confesar que Homage to Catalonia rompió con varias de mis expectativas. En primer lugar, porque Orwell fue el primer escritor que empecé a leer en inglés cuando tenía quince años y yo sentía, por eso, que lo conocía bien. En este sentido, mi horizonte de expectativas estaba muy condicionado por dos recuerdos: mi lectura adolescente de Animal Farm y 1984 (que juzgué entonces como novelas profundamente políticas, o debería más bien decir ideologizadas) y la insistente recomendación de parte de varios amigos y profesores catalanes, para quien Orwell es prácticamente un prócer nacional.

Mi lectura postergada de este libro chocó de frente con estos recuerdos al leer una de las frases que inaugura el extenso capítulo V: «At the beginning I had ignored the political side of the war». ¿Cómo? ¿Orwell, el gran novelista y periodista comprometido de la primera mitad del siglo XX, se había ido hasta España para poner su vida en riesgo sin tener la menor idea de qué estaba pasando a nivel político? ¿Entonces resulta que hay otro lado de la guerra que no es político?

Desde la semana pasada cuando leímos L’Espoir, me quedé pensando mucho en la noción de afecto que Jon mencionó como explicación posible a por qué los milicianos extranjeros registrados por Malraux en su novela exponían sus cuerpos para ir a pelear a una guerra que a simple vista parecía serles ajena. Me quedé cuestionando mi previsible interpretación de que esa decisión sistemática de miles de personas se debía exclusivamente a ideales, a principios ideológicos. Creo que todo el capítulo V de Homage to Catalonia (hablo de aquel que comentábamos que algunos editores decidieron publicarlo en forma de apéndice por su notorio cambio de registro) puede leerse a partir de este concepto filosófico y me quedé con la impresión de que me gustaría ampliar esta lectura tal vez para el trabajo final.

Otro de los elementos que me llamaron la atención del libro fue la combinación de géneros que mencionamos a principios de la última clase. Me pareció interesante sobre todo teniendo en cuenta que Orwell presenta también una multitud de personajes pero a diferencia de Cela o de Malraux lo hace desde una voz narrativa más dominante, que no abunda tanto en cambios de voz abruptos ni en diálogos introducidos por un narrador que parece mantenerse al margen. La polifonía en Homage to Catalonia, entonces, estaría no sólo en los personajes sino en las múltiples elecciones formales: una suerte de mezcla entre proto-Non-Fiction Novel y periodismo gonzo (unas décadas antes de que ambos géneros se institucionalizaran, por cierto) yuxtapuesta con la crónica literaria y la novela histórica. Esta multiplicidad de géneros, para mí, no hace otra cosa que evidenciar las grandísimas dificultades que implica abordar desde la literatura un evento histórico sin la ventaja que ostenta el discurso historiográfico: narrar la Historia cuando ya se ha escrito sobre ella.

George Orwell’s book, Homage to Catalonia, as discussed in class, could be of many genres, specifically historical, political, and autobiographical. This memoir, is a personal account of his time during the Spanish civil war. In the beginning of the novel, Orwell describes the atmosphere and the feelings of camaraderie felt at the start of this ‘revolution’. He talks about the atmosphere in the town of Barcelona,

“Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initial of the revolutionary parties…Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying it had been collectivized” (3).

This gives the reader a sense of the feelings of how the people felt, plus the extent of control the Anarchists had over the city. The condition of the town can only be described as ‘shabby,’ ‘untidy,’ kind of sombre, which is evidently a sign of the coming war. The fact that formal speech for addressing others, was not to be used, ‘Señor’, ‘Don’, and ‘Usted,’ gives me the idea that language is also a significant part of a country and that by changing certain parts of it, is a part of the ‘revolutionary’ movement. The people have all joined the ‘workers’ side,’ which says a lot about the fear people may have of not being a part of the norm, such as the people of the bourgeoisie class. The attitudes of the people part of the revolutionary army, were obviously layed-back because of how much the Spanish people have a habit of being late. What they share in addition to that, is their goal of going against the fascists. The idea of pushing things off, delaying, being unprepared with the equipment, contributed significantly to their continuous loss. Much like in Days of Hope, feelings aren’t enough.

In Chapter V of the novel, I find it interesting how Orwell describes rats, being almost nearly as big as the size of cats, making the reference through an old army song “There are rats, rats,/ Rats as big as cats,/ In the quartermaster’s store!” (56). This makes me recall, in Orwell’s novel 1984, O’Brien, a member of the Inner party, uses psychological torture and Blackmailing through the use of rats, in-order to threaten Winston into obeying. It is clear that in both of Orwell’s works, his fear of rats is brought to light. Like most writers, what they write can reflect how they are as a person.

From Chapter VII and VIII on, there is a change in Orwells views, after experiencing the trench warfares and such, he started to become a “democratic socialist.” There seems to be a clear disappointment in his part, because once he returned to Barcelona, he felt that the revolutionary atmosphere had disappeared, perhaps due to the losses they’ve had. After all that they were fighting for, freedom and equality, the re-emergence of the class system most likely brought him down. From the start, this war, may have been a loss cause already, so why does Orwell, go back to the front to fight? Would it make much of a difference?

The political situation seemed to be unstable in Spain, perhaps one could say that thanks to this instability, Orwell and his family, were able to successfully escape prosecution. Which could be seen in Chapter XII. A question I’ve been wondering, is it possible that Orwell regretted joining the POUM? If from the start, Orwell had been on a different side to begin with, would he have been a regular journalist, or would he still eventually join the war? From the start, he was swept with the emotions of the people, that’s why he joined the revolutionary front instead of being a journalist. Given the political situation, it makes me unable to relate to his feelings because it feels like a whole other world and also since we live in a love different era, an era of peace.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is a personal account of the Spanish Civil War. As a British expatriate, he joined the POUM (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) and fought on the Republican side. He grew to love the Socialist society the Republicans have built and it provided him the motivation to fight:

“In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for” (10).

However, he is soon disappointed by the state of the military. “To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind: right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense which I had learned when I was fifteen years old” (16-17). He was very disappointed at how disorganized the army was and the fact that no practical instruction was being done. He also finds that the soldiers were starving for months and exhausted.

He also talks extensively about the political differences within the Republican side. He states:

“As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names–P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T.–they merely exasperated me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. (I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties” (75).

It seems like he was caught up in the revolutionary spirit that was present in Barcelona, and not necessarily for the cause. It seems like it was rather an emotional response as opposed to a response through constructive examination of his ethics.

The question is, why is the title of the book Homage To Catalonia when it seems like there is an absence of any respect or reverence rendered to Spain or Catalonia? I have yet to read the full text but I do not see any homage being paid to the respective country/ies so far.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is a personal account of the Spanish Civil War. As a British expatriate, he joined the POUM (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) and fought on the Republican side. He grew to love the Socialist society the Republicans have built and it provided him the motivation to fight:

“In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for” (10).

However, he is soon disappointed by the state of the military. “To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind: right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense which I had learned when I was fifteen years old” (16-17). He was very disappointed at how disorganized the army was and the fact that no practical instruction was being done. He also finds that the soldiers were starving for months and exhausted.

He also talks extensively about the political differences within the Republican side. He states:

“As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names–P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T.–they merely exasperated me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. (I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties” (75).

It seems like he was caught up in the revolutionary spirit that was present in Barcelona, and not necessarily for the cause. It seems like it was rather an emotional response as opposed to a response through constructive examination of his ethics.

The question is, why is the title of the book Homage To Catalonia when it seems like there is an absence of any respect or reverence rendered to Spain or Catalonia? I have yet to read the full text but I do not see any homage being paid to the respective country/ies so far.

I would have to say that this was easily the most entertaining piece we’ve read so far, which is both interesting and surprising for a number of reasons, most notably because the subject matter of the book is dire and tumultuous (as Paz touched on in her blog post). I for one was pleasantly surprised because my experience reading two of his other books (Animal Farm and 1984) wasn’t exactly what I would call “entertaining.” I also, like Paz, found it curious that there was even humor to be found in some of the situations Orwell described, or the series of observations he had. And as I commented on her blog post, I’ll pose it to the rest of you whether you think those humorous insertions were wholly genuine or used primarily for the purpose of entertainment for the reader. This question also brings to mind previous conversations we’ve had in and outside of class, about the author’s intention versus the outcome of a certain authorial choice. Does it matter whether or not Orwell intended to entertain us with these few anecdotes or observations? Regardless, I was entertained, and I do feel that it kept me engaged throughout the narrative (I confess I ended up reading it in one sitting!).

Another matter I’m still not decided on is the issue of whether Homage to Catalonia was a “fair” or “unbiased” narration of the events of the Spanish Civil War that Orwell participated in (I’m referring both to Mauricio’s thoughtful and well-written post, as well as our discussion in class yesterday). On the one hand, I recognize that Orwell does comment several times on the fact that he’s trying to contribute to the narrative by presenting what he believes is more or less an “unbiased” account of the events as he witnessed them. He also goes as far as saying that he believes that 90% of what has been said about the uprising in Barcelona is untrue (thereby suggesting that his contribution is perhaps less biased and more “accurate.” But what I can’t shake is that he does say explicitly that (in my own words) you can’t always trust what you read and that he only offers one perspective on the events that befell Barcelona and greater Catalonia in this time. To me, that disclaimer doesn’t necessarily invalidate the other points in the book where he seems to suggest that his account is more accurate than others, or that his account is more trustworthy than what others have said (especially those who didn’t actually experience the events of the war firsthand), but in my opinion this remark leaves the text’s ultimate stance on its own accuracy or authenticity ambiguous (Orwell’s stance, on the other hand, I don’t think one reading of the book entitles me to venture a guess).

So far on the reading list, Homage to Catalonia appears to be the only one non-fictional, a memoir that recounts the real-life experiences of author George Orwell during the conflict. It is told in first person, narrated by Orwell himself. The story follows him as he first joins the ranks of the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) rather than the International Brigades purely by chance, because he was first issued with papers from the Independent Labour Party (ILP). There, he found a society most resembling and embodying socialism, where people were truly comrades in a fleeting egalitarian realm.

One recurrent theme within the story was the fact that both sides, but especially the Republicans were frequently inadequately armed, with hopelessly obsolete rifles, shells that didn’t explode, and limited ammunition. There were boys as young as fifteen fighting in their ranks in order to support their families.

In addition, there was a lot of intra-Republican squabbling where they would produce nasty, unconstructive rhetoric in the newspapers about their own comrades from different parties. When distributing rifles, this same type of petty politics was present as seen when weapons weren’t distributed to Republican soldiers that needed them most, but rather to those that aligned most with their party (as the Soviets did).

I found it quite interesting that on one hand he constantly berated the Spaniards for their lack of military prowess, terrible marksmanship, lack of organization etc., but on the other hand he praised them for their generosity, their largeness of spirit and their indomitable idealism. Nonetheless, in Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, the Spanish civil war is almost portrayed as a farcical war, a joke war waged by people who don’t know how to handle weapons.

One notion of the book I don’t completely understand is the part about revolution in chapter 5. According to Orwell, “the whole world was determined, upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers’ control, but bourgeois democracy… Foreign capital was heavily invested in Spain… If the revolution went forward there would be no compensation, or very little; if the capitalist republic prevailed, foreign investments would be safe. And since the revolution had got to be crushed, it greatly simplified things to pretend that no revolution had happened.”

What difference would it make whether the press called it a revolution or not? The land reforms were still taking place as they spoke, and the foreign investments still in danger of being relinquished by the state. In fact, when the foreign press simplified the war to merely a struggle between “fascism and democracy”, were they still not lending their propagandist support to the Republicans who were instituting this land reform? Also, why were the communists against the land reform?