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A character in For Whom the Bell Tolls

Rafael

The gypsy in Pablo's band. A very good talker, a passable shot, and completely unreliable for an hour at a time.

What they want

To fight without belonging to anything. "Who wants to be in an army? Do we make the revolution to be in an army? I am willing to fight but not to be in an army."

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.

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At a glance

In the book
Rafael — the gypsy of Pablo's band
Posted to
The machine-gun post above the camp, which he leaves
Calls Jordan
"Roberto", alone among the band
Asked Jordan
To read the palm of his hand and tell him what would happen in the next three days
Agustín's rating
One of the band's two weak elements

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Rafael is the gypsy of the guerrilla band that hides in a cave in the mountains north of Madrid, fighting for the Spanish Republic behind the fascist line, and he is the band's entertainment. He tells the story of the train the band once blew up better than anyone else who was there, eats twice as much as anybody, and within an hour of meeting Robert Jordan — the American who has come to blow a bridge — is calling him Roberto and asking him to read the future in the palm of his hand.

He is also the man the others have in mind when they talk about weak elements. Given a post to hold, he will hold it until something more interesting happens.

How the book draws them

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

  • "Pablo killed more than the bubonic plague"His summary of the leader's first year of the war, delivered philosophically over a cup of wine on Jordan's first afternoon, with Anselmo adding the drinking and the horses as footnotes.
  • The trainHis account of the raid that wrecked the prison train is the best storytelling in the band. The engine coming on chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu, the front wheels rising, the earth going up black, the whole thing falling on its side like a great wounded animal. He got so excited he put his hand flat on the machine-gun barrel and burned it, and Pilar slapped him across the face: "Shoot, you fool! Shoot or I will kick your brains in!"
  • "Pablo has no friends"After the confrontation in the cave he asks Jordan very softly why he did not kill Pablo when the moment was there, and makes clear it was expected: "Three or four times we waited for you to kill him. Pablo has no friends."
  • The worst suggestion in the caveWhen the band debates what to do about Pablo, Rafael offers to hand him to El Sordo to sell to the fascists, and proposes blinding him first so he would be easy to handle. He points out, when told to stop, that Pablo did exactly that to a wounded Civil Guard. Pilar shuts him up.
  • The haresHe is supposed to be watching the road from the machine-gun post. Before daylight he hears a hare thumping in the snow, tracks the pair of them, kills both, and comes back grinning with one hanging from each hand — while a fascist cavalryman has ridden straight past the empty post and into the camp. He is genuinely sorry, and genuinely still pleased about the hares. "I am sorry, Roberto, as sorry as thee."
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