Many literary critics consider Ernest Hemingway to be the greatest writer of the 20th century. Hemingway had a zest for life and adventure; he was also considered a genius at his craft. He won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature. Hemingway entered the international scene during the early decades of the 20th century when his contemporaries, writers like William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Eugene O'Neill were improving American literature by leaps and bounds. And, while other writers like Tolstoy and T.E. Lawrence had also written from personal experience in combat in War and Peace and Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Meyers 336), Hemingway was the first American writer to combine chaotic battle scenes with observations of minute detail in a novel that was both autobiographical and historical and contained elements of topography and ethnology. Thus, Hemingway became famous for his contribution to American literature, not only for his short stories but also for his great novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls.
According to J. Donald Adams in the New York Times Book Review, For Whom the Bell Tolls "is the best book Ernest Hemingway has written, the fullest, deepest, the truest . . . [and] will . . . be one of the major novels in American literature" (Mellow 521). Another critic claimed that the book was exactly what the author wanted it to be: a true book. That critic, Clifton Fadiman, also added that the book was written with one prejudice, "a prejudice in favor of the common human being" (Mellow 521-522). And, while the now-famous novel reinforced Hemingway's position as a great writer of American fiction, it also was a departure from his previous novels because it engaged many real characters in a fictional story. Moreover, the characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls had more complex personalities than the characters in his previous stories. And, not surprisingly, the book became a best- s...