Ever since Thomas Carlyle defined the concept of heroism, American writers of the nineteenth century wrestled with the notion of creating a heroic figure for the New World, a hero with distinctive American traits. From Thoreau to Melville, from Hawthorne to Mark Twaine, American literature of the previous-to-last century is rife with characters which were designed to exceed the human scale of values in order to qualify for what can only be described as the “heroic dimension”.

The American Civil War marks a decisive turning point in this American quest for heroism. If the battlefield is one of the traditional testing grounds for heroism, the mass carnage caused by the American War inevitably influenced- and forever changed- the standards, measuring scales and the very concept of the heroic in the New World. Stephen Crane was the first American writer to grasp the impact of the Civil War on the heroic figure as constructed by the American literati, he was the first to notice that the American War had demolished and obliterated the figure of the hero as created by his predecessors, or at the very least, that the American concept of the heroic had to be re-defined.

More surprising than Crane ( who spent his short lifetime hearing Civil War stories) is Ernest Hemingway´s devotion to the American War. Hemingway had to go back two generations to his grandfather who was a soldier in the war, and yet the American War echoed so strongly in his imagination that he was personally compelled to participate in almost every conflict which ocurred in his lifetime...The American Civil War is indeed the cornerstone on which he built his masterpiece “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. The hero of his novel, Robert Jordan, is constantly looking back to his grandfather for inspiration in the Spanish conflict in which he is involved. It is for the construction of his heroic code that he turns to his grandfather, forever inquiring into his own mind what his grandfather´s response would have been under the changing circumstances of his mission.

Following the lead of Stephen Crane, Hemingway in his Spanish novel stumbles upon a new mode for the heroic where “mission” is viewed not simply as a military assignment to be fulfilled at whatever cost, nor even as a total commitment for the ideals and a cause worth fighting for...Robert Jordan discovers, in the course of the story, that he must re-direct the “mission” to his own self. He discovers that blowing a bridge or even fighting for the ideals of the Spanish Republic are of little consequence unless he can, so to speak, re-program himself using the knowledge that Pilar-the leader of the guerrilla group which aids him in his fight- passes on to him during the days they spend together.

To develop his concept of the modern hero, Hemingway uses Nietszche´s own theories (“Man and Superman”) to describe an “unstable hero”, a hero in quest of his own identity. To signify this “aporia”, to try to solve this oxymoron is precisely the task Hemingway set himself by writing his novel on the Spanish War.