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- 15-JAN-2024 | Excerpt from “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway
15-JAN-2024 | Excerpt from “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway
Dan Bogachek
January 15, 2024
Excerpt from “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway
He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.
Two things: contrast and simultaneity.
The wind blowing the trees is an opportunity to paint on the reader’s canvas: they’re tall pines.
Note the juxtaposition between where the gentle slope and the steep pass. The road in the pass is dark, contrasted with the white water.
He could have simply said “the road was dark”, but he splits “the dark” out —which makes room for “oiled.”
We also learn that it’s daytime in the summer.
All this in just three sentences.
The sandwich creates tension: first calm where we find ourselves now, then mystery or danger where it’s steep, dark & oiled, and then on the other side, more calm.
