A perfectly written novel. Certainly rates among the very best American novels ever written. The final scene with Robert Jordan waiting to die is worth the read up until that point and may be the best prose ever written, comparable to the Used Car speech of Grapes of Wrather and Lee's instruction to Hamilton on the centrality of timshel in East of Eden.
Hemingway takes stream of consciousness a step further and shows a man's consciousness at war with itself, self-serving, self-denigrating, self-denying at the same time. It points to the sharpening of consciousness in the face of death, so much so that Robert Jordan feels that he has gained the meaning of a lifetime in 3 days’ time, and even knowing that his death was inevitable, much like that of a Greek tragedy.
If true suffering emerges on the other side of suffering, then Robert Jordan is the proto-man in his essential garb, facing death and determined to follow through with his destiny, even though he feels that it is wrong. I don't get it, in terms of a man sticking to and following orders for a cause, but Robert Jordan comes the closest in making me believe it.
Author: Hemingway, Ernest
Date Published: 1940
Length: 16hr 28min
Narrator: Scott, Campbell
