An Eco-theological Reading Of Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls

One of the most influential novelists in America, Ernest Hemingway has produced works that have lasting influence not only on American literature but also on the world literary at large. One of his representative works For Whom the Bell Tolls inspired many American soldiers in their battle against Nazi Fascists, especially for the protagonist Robert Jordan, who as a lover of life and nature, was brave enough to devote himself to the righteousness.This study seeks to reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls based on ecological theology in order to explore, first, from the perspective of eco-theological creation, the harmonious relationship between man and nature and between man and animals; second, from eco-theological Trinitarian sense, the mutual bonding and inevitable interdependence among human beings; and finally, from eco-theological creation assumptions, the much contested issue of Hemingway’s ambivalent life consciousness. Influenced as he was by the Christian culture which shaped his ecological concept of a harmonious and integral relationship between man versus nature and man versus man, Hemingway was nonetheless never consistent and balanced in his conception of life, and his works reveals much about the way war destroys his conception of life.An eco-theological reading of For Whom the Bell Tolls indicates that this is a work that tells us as much about Hemingway’s conception of a harmonious ecological relationship as about the way such a conception is destroyed and the way Hemingway’s ambivalent life consciousness is fashioned. Hemingway and his works remain an important legacy, cautioning us against any imbalance in the relationship between man versus nature, man versus man and man versus himself. By fusing insights from theology with ecological studies, this thesis hopes to shed new lights on the study of ecological ethnics in literary texts and to contribute to the on-going debates about hot topics on global environmental problems.