A character in For Whom the Bell Tolls

Joaquín

An eighteen-year-old in El Sordo's band. He was training to be a bullfighter until the war, and his family were shot in Valladolid.

What they want

To belong to something that will hold. He recites the sayings of Dolores Ibárruri — the Communist orator known as La Pasionaria — the way other people carry lucky objects, and the book says so: he brings them out "as though they were talismans".

The book

Cover of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell TollsErnest Hemingway, 1940

Three days behind enemy lines in the Spanish mountains — the longest novel, the biggest canvas, and the warmest heart.

View the book

At a glance

In the book: Joaquín — the youngest of El Sordo's band
Age: Eighteen
From: Valladolid, where his father, mother, two brothers-in-law and sister were shot
Before the war: An apprentice bullfighter, unsuccessfully
Carried: Maria over his shoulder away from the wrecked train

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Two bands of guerrillas fight for the Spanish Republic in the mountains north of Madrid in this novel, on the wrong side of the line, and Joaquín is the youngest person in either of them. He was an apprentice bullfighter before the war and was not good enough at it. Pilar, who runs the first band in all but name, calls him an unsuccessful bullfighter turned Communist, to his face, more than once.

He was with that first band when it blew up a prison train, and carried a girl called Maria away from the wreck over his shoulder. He runs with the second band now, under a man called El Sordo. What he has instead of a family is a set of political slogans, which he repeats to himself and to anyone else in earshot.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

The listAsked what happened to his family he gives it in order, evenly, like an inventory. The fascists shot his father, who had voted Socialist. Then his mother, who had voted the same, and for whom it had been the first time she ever voted. Then one brother-in-law, a tram driver who was in the drivers' union because you could not drive a tram otherwise and had no politics at all. Then the other brother-in-law. Then his sister.
"I am all right and I am ashamed"Maria puts her arms round his neck and kisses him, and he turns his head away and cries without making any noise. Jordan puts an arm round his shoulder and tells him they are all his family now. The boy shakes his head. "Deja," the boy said and turned away sharply. "Leave me alone. I am all right and I am ashamed."
The pigtailHe is growing the little plaited pigtail of a working bullfighter again. Pilar torments him about it — she says it has been years since she kissed a bullfighter, even an unsuccessful one, and threatens to kiss him herself if Maria does it again. Then she looks at him mockingly and says she tires herself with such emotion, and he says quietly that it is not necessary to joke.
TalismansOn the hill, under fire, he offers the slogans to the older men: "There is another that applies to here," Joaquin said, bringing them out as though they were talismans, "Pasionaria says it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." The men wounded around him are unimpressed. One asks him to get La Pasionaria to come and take them off the hill; another points out that her own son has been safe in Russia since the war started.
Under the planesHe is told to crouch over with his head down so the automatic rifle can be rested across his shoulder, and he cannot stop his body shaking enough to hold the muzzle still. He starts the Pasionaria line to himself as the bombers come in, gets three words of it out, and switches without a pause into the Hail Mary.

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