Throughout Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan struggles to assign some value to human life - specifically, to his own life. This struggle reveals a weakness in Jordan's cold, calculated nature, a weakness that Hemingway poignantly depicts through Jordan's conflicted attitudes towards his father and grandfather. While Jordan clearly admires and aspires to be like his grandfather, a brave soldier in the Civil War and the Indian wars, he endeavors to rid …showed first 75 words of 1015 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1015 total…father's cowardice, Jordan discovers how his life and the lives of others are inter-related. His struggle to assign value to his life, aided by emotions brought out in him by the killing he has done, comes to an end with Jordan changed man, full of new resolution. Jordan's decision not to kill himself is a hopeful message from Hemingway - one that exhorts emotion and the sacredness of life, a rejection of Jordan's father's suicide.