Tuesday, January 3

A little bit of literature

“The young man, whose name was Robert Jordan, was extremely hungry and he was worried. He was often hungry but he was not usually worried because he did not give any importance to what happened to himself and he knew from experience how simple it was to move behind the enemy lines in all this country. It was as simple to move behind them as it was to cross through them, if you had a good guide. It was only giving importance to what happened to you if you were caught that made it difficult; that and deciding whom to trust. You had to trust the people you worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make decisions about the trusting. He was not worried about any of that. But there were other things.”

“This Anselmo had been a good guide and he could travel wonderfully in the mountains. Robert Jordan could walk well enough himself and he knew from following him since before daylight that the old man could walk him to death. Robert Jordan trusted the man, Anselmo, so far, in everything except judgment. He had not yet had an opportunity to test his judgment, and, anyway, the judgment was his own responsibility. No, he did not worry about Anselmo and the problem of the bridge was no more difficult than many other problems. He knew how to blow any sort of bridge that you could name and he had blown them of all sizes and constructions.”

Vocabulary build-up

The adjective whose is a possessive form of who or which. But the tradition holds that whose should function only as the possessive of who, and be limited in reference to persons. 

The pronoun whom is the objective case of who, and is used when who is not the subject of its own clause. Whom can be used as a direct or indirect object. Be careful, whom is a formal word which is sometimes used instead of who. Whom can only be the object of a verb or preposition.

Comments

Ernest Hemingway was an American author, journalist, and the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is praised as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, changing the style of English prose more than any other author. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. Part of the expatriate community of Paris in the 1920s, the former journalist and World War I ambulance driver began a career that led to international fame. In 1937 he traveled to Spain to cover the civil war for the North American Newspaper Alliance. There he experienced scenes that inspired “For whom the bell tolls”, which was published in 1940. The book tells the story of American teacher Robert Jordan, who has joined the antifascist Loyalist army. Jordan has been sent to make contact with a guerrilla band and blow up a bridge to advance a Loyalist offensive. The title is derived from Meditation 17 of John Donne’s “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” (1624): “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” The novel was a worldwide success, inspiring a film adaptation, which starred Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, and songs by Metallica and Raúl Seixas.