Modern Tragic Heroes

[mortalterror]

Jordan dies saving everyone he loves or cares about, nobly sacrificing himself in a cause he believes in, not giving up, fighting to his last breathe. How could that be tragic? That ending is incredibly life affirming, and Jordan is showered in glory. I can't think of a more heroic way to go out. He's one more of Hemingway's Christ figures who are physically beaten but unconquered in spirit, who grasp a moral victory from the jaws of inevitable defeat by virtue of their being true to themselves. Sure, it sucks that he's got to die just as he's found the woman of his dreams, but he was never so ready to die now that he has something to believe in, someone to protect. Tragic heroes are destroyed internally and externally. The things they are hoping for are denied them. In Robert Jordan's case, he is sure of himself. He knows what he is doing is right, and serenity pervades everything he does. Life and time are the last gifts he can offer to the woman he loves, and he gives them gladly. Moreover, the final stand is a gift to himself, a commitment to die as he had lived, justifying everything he had done before. He is not like the protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front who's death is meaningless and absurd, who dies last of his companions, in a war that's already lost, in a cause he knows is wrong.

[prendrelemick]

I thought it was meaningless, The enemy had already crossed the bridge.

I'll have to read it again.

[Jozanny]

I myself hardly think the Spanish Civil War was *glorious* from what I've read, and the images I've seen. I don't even think that Hemingway's melodrama makes it glorious. What Hemingway does is take one segment and turn it into an artifice, but this isn't the same thing as what we'd find in Beowulf or Homer.

I know mortal loves Hemie, but I think he is misreading what Jordan's death amounts to, and that is a vainglorious waste. It is embedded well within the novel itself that war is often a tragic and petty vendetta, never mind ideology. The two narratives competing in the novel are Jordan's and Pilar's, with minor asides from the other supporting characters, and Pilar isn't about *glory*; she is about the reality and anguish of a conflict which kills human beings, where fascism and socialism are little more than labels for class resentments.