December 25, 2003

ON MY BOOKSHELF

“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
By Ernest Hemingway

Brent Vickers, 24,
roving field biologist

The more things change, the more things stay the same for Leland High School’s 1997 homecoming king, Brent Vickers. Always one to determine what makes him smile brightest, Vickers is once again following his heart, building a resume to warrant admittance into the biological PHD program of his choice.

“I’ve always liked science,” says Vickers, who graduated in 2002 from U.C. Berkeley with his bachelor’s degree in Integrated Biology.
Science has returned the compliment, with work dragging Vickers to exotic lands including Tahiti, the Hawaiian Islands, and most recently, West Virginia, which Vickers readily admits was a lot colder than his first two posts.

“West Virginia was nice,” says Vickers. “But our truck broke down for a while so I got to catch up on my reading.”

With a break from tracking the habits of the West Virginian white tail deer, Vickers read, specifically, Ernest Hemingway’s, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Hemingway uses “For Whom the Bell Tolls” to examine a human being’s sense of duty in relationship to war and human nature’s preoccupation with individual interests. The main character, Robert Jordan, is an American caught in the middle of the Spanish Civil War. The story, set in the early 20th Century, requires Jordan to blow up a bridge with the accomplice of a local band of guerillas and their leader, Pablo. Unfortunately, Pablo looks beat. He is weary of the war and fails to see the value in carrying out Jordan’s ultimate task: to blow up a bridge.

“What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?” asks Pablo of Jordan.
To make matters worse, two members of the guerillas are desirable women. One is Pilar, Pablo’s interest who remains fully dedicated to the war, despite Pablo’s waning spirits. The other is Maria, a young woman that Pablo had rescued from a Republican prison train and becomes the object of Jordan’s affection.

Jordan struggles with his moral sense of duty. Falling deeper in love he questions the value of continuing with the war.

“I don’t usually care about books dealing with courage and honor and all that,” says Vickers. “But I must admit, some of the dying scenes in this book were excellent. I really liked when one guerilla was about to die and he devised a plan to help out his side in his last moment. He did it. Then he relaxed. He was moments away from being killed and he actually sat there and felt the grass. He wasn’t worrying about anything. He just took that time to appreciate the beauty of the world he was living in.”

– By Justin Peterson

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