English literature and linguistics with ASMA SHEIKH

Q-Discuss Jordan's relationship with Maria. Do you find Maria a convincing character?

                      [2006] [2010]        

A: Maria, in For Whom the Bell Tolls, is the daughter of a Republican Mayer

 in a small town and she is raped by the Fascists earlier.

She had been rescued by Pilar but even though the physical wounds had healed

 the psychic wound is still painful. Robert and Maria were attracted each other.
 Pilar, the gipsy woman, because of her sixth sense realizes that Robert Jordan’s
 time is running and he does not have much time to live. She instigates Maria
 to go to Robert Jordan’s sleeping bag at night. Their meeting and love -
 making heal Maria’s psychic wounds.

 The intensity of love that  Robert Jordan and Maria experience is enthralled in Hemingway 

elsewhere because it has amystic quality in it.

For Maria, Jordan's love is the healing
 touch she needs to cure the psychic wounds and 

a moving spirit for Jordon as he declares: 

“I have not

found one [woman] that moved me as

they say they should move you.”

She becomes for Robert Jordan a symbol of Spain and this concrete symbol
 is far betterthan the abstractions that had confused Robert Jordan before.
 When Robert Jordan is highly confused in his loyalties he returns to Maria
 for giving sustenance to his befogged political loyalty. It is for her he decides
to die and it is in her that he hopes to live after death.

Robert Jordan’s anti – fascism draws Maria to him because in him she
sees the messiah who can  avenge her parents’ death and her suffering.
Jordan’s love breaks the shell into which Maria had withdrawn after
the death of her parents and her rape. 

She discloses to him what she has suffered from and being a Roman
Catholic her confession wipes away the pleasant memory of those tragic
 events in her life, in a manner of speaking. Jordan’s love restores her self
respect and dignity.

In her love for Jordan there is a strong element of worship for the savior because
 in giving  her love to Jordan she is seeking revenge for what she has suffered. She tells

 Jordan: 

‘I want 

to go to hold the legs of the gun and while 

it speaks lovethee all in the same moment.’

 She wants to make her small contribution to the destruction of the Fascists.

As for Jordan, his love for Maria and his task of blowing up the bridge became
 one, in fact. He has to blow up the bridge for Russian General as well as for the Republic,

 which has been raped, like Maria, by the Fascists. Fighting for the Republic becomes more 

concrete because in his mind the Republic and Spain and Maria become one. It is this 

impulse that makes his lie in the pine-needle- covered floor at the end of the novel waiting

 for the Fascist lieutenant and thus helps Pablo and his band to retreat into the
 Gredos hills. His loyalty becomes  the personal loyalty and he is just a husband
 covering the retreat of his wife whom he loves.

At the close of the story, Maria and Jordan’s relationship is, in their own words,
 much deeper than  simple attraction and need.

In the opinion of certain critics when such momentous issue as democracy,
fascism, human freedom, communism- in fact, the destiny of man- are being debated 

in the novel there is no room for  an erotic relationship between Robert Jordon and
 Maria. They think that it is an interpolation.