Beach Haven

Hemingway, Ernest. 1940. For Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
 
​It’s the Civil War, but not the one most Americans think about. Just prior to World War II the country of Spain spiraled into a civil war pitting nationalistic fascists against a republic mostly comprised of anti-monarchy socialists. The story follows a group of socialist republicans just before an attack by their armies against the city of Segovia. Among the guerillas is an American, Robert Jordan, with demolition skills. The group is assigned to blow up a bridge just as the fighting starts in order to hold off some of the fascist forces from assisting.

Along the way Jordan falls in love and has a brief affair with a young fighter, Maria, who had earlier been raped by Falangists, a faction within the nationalist movement. The small band share stories of atrocities they either suffered, witnessed, or perpetrated.

It’s clear from the story that one of the themes Ernest Hemingway is sharing is how there are no ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ in war, rather all sides feel justified in both their cause and their actions. Likewise, none of the survivors of incidents or episodes within war are unchanged. Like other works I’ve read by Hemingway, his storytelling is masterful.

Daudet, Alphonse. 1903 & 1917. The Siege of Berlin. Vol. XIII French Fiction, in The Harvard Classics Self of Fiction, edited by William Allan Neilson and Charles W. Eliot, 431-437. New York: P F Collier & Son Company.

This story depicts a physician recounting to a friend an experience he had with a former patient. Much earlier in his career he had been called to the home of a former French colonel who was prostrate on the floor and near death. He was attended by his granddaughter. His son, her father, was away fighting the Prussians and all of France worried over the progress of the war.

Eventually the colonel regained some consciousness and in his stupor sought confirmation that the war was going well for the French. The doctor affirmed this untruth and the man improved slightly. Between the granddaughter and doctor they decided to try fabricating French victories over the Germans, and each time they did the patient improved.

As the war drug on ever more badly from French troops, they deluded the colonel of the opposite. They made up victories that were not happening, and hid the advances of the enemy. Eventually Paris was under siege. The conspiratorial caretakers instead described how Berlin was under siege by French troops. As canon fire could be heard in the distance they told him it was celebratory, and that soon their troops would be parading down the Champs Elysees through the Arc Triomphe. The patient’s apartment overlooked the likely parade route. He prepared to receive the troops by stepping out onto the balcony in his best uniform. Eventually the ‘treatment’ ended as he saw the Prussian helmets approaching with their spiked domes. He fell prostrate again on the floor, this time dead.

Daudet approaches the story with a combination of descriptive action, inner thoughts, and dialog at times hushed between the physician and granddaughter, or confident when either of them gave assurances to their patient. Daudet in some ways links the fear and despair of the French public over the actual war with the concerns he depicts in the caretakers of the colonel. 

De Musset, Alfred. 1903 & 1917. The Story of a White Blackbird. Vol. 13, in The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, edited by Charles W. Eliot and William Allan Neilson, translated by Katharine Royce, 391-426. New York: PF Collier & Son.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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This story is an allegory, perhaps maybe autobiographical. The main character is also the narrator, telling his own story. A little blackbird is rejected by his family when white plumage begins to show on its body. Eventually the family leaves him to himself. In his sadness, he travels to seek a new tribe. A number of bird families initially open their flock to him until they discover that he is actually a blackbird. Then they want nothing to do with him. He ventures about through a number of different animal species seeking a new tribe. The pattern is the same, initial acceptance ending in eventual rejection because he is, after all, a blackbird.

The blackbird’s attitude grows steadily more and more gloomy until he hears two birds speaking. One says to the other, “If you ever succeed, I will make you a present of a white blackbird!” He comes to recognize that he is less an oddity and more a rarity. His life then turns for the better as he comes to depend on himself, and is less concerned about finding a tribe.

The work is written in a way that can appeal to children as a simple story, yet adults can read many philosophical and sociological threads within it as well.