The Fifth Column

by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway viajou à Espanha durante a Guerra Civil, em 1937, e acabou envolvido naquele sangrento conflito. Hospedado em Madri enquanto assistia à destruição da cidade, escreveu sua única peça teatral, 'A Quinta-Coluna', que transporta o leitor aos horrores daquelas batalhas.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Spanish Civil War

95 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hemingway’s only play. It’s without any real plot with weak female characters unflatteringly betrayed. Set in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War with Philip Rawlngs a sort of secret agent world weary and cynical.

Supposedly Rawlings is trying to choose between the woman he loved or the fight he believes in. The play feels incomplete and needing more work with a clearer plot and less misogyny.

[tortoise dreams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently Hemingway's only full-length play, The Fifth Column was written during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which was in part a proxy war for other world powers and a preview of the world war to come. The main character is an American working for the Loyalist or Republican side against the fascists. The Lincoln Battalion is mentioned, which was formed of American volunteers who served alongside the Republican forces. Hemingway suggested that the "moral is that people who work for certain organizations have very little time for home life." The cover blurb states that the "hero is torn between the woman he loves and the ideological fight he believes in." While all that is certainly in the play, it seems Hemingway may have been more directly trying to get the War more attention, get it out in front of the public, and a play (or possible film) might've been a good way to do that quickly. It's also a bit of a shoot 'em up, as was his previous and almost contemporaneous novel, To Have and Have Not (1937). This short work seems a sketch that would've required more work and development. Most likely a capable and independent director would have had to do some rewriting (even Tennessee Williams' work was heavily rewritten by his directors). Mostly mediocre, with little plot or complexity, The Fifth Column seems embryonic and unfinished. Readable, but in the end unsatisfactory. I assume it's largely forgotten today by all but those reading their way through Hemingway's oeuvre (what a Scrabble word). My copy, similar to that shown, is "A Triad Panther Book" from Granada Publishing in 1978. It was 95p at the time, but $3.25 in Australia. [3★]

[Alex Cortes · Rating 1 out of 5]

A veces sorprende que haya escritores que escriban maravillas y luego escriban mierdas como esta

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this to fulfill a category in a reading challenge I'm doing and chose this particular play because I recently learned what a "fifth column" is from some other book I read and thought it was interesting.

So far I've only read this and A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway but I don't really think his writing is for me. I found the dialogue, setting and themes to be very similar in both of this works (stop with the mud already...I get it—everything was "very muddy"). If it weren't for the different character's names, they could practically be different parts of the same story.

First of all, I'm no feminist, but the girls he writes are so mind-numbingly vapid and spineless that it's hard to forgive once, much less from two different works. His main female characters are just love-stricken morons that don't really love in the true sense and can't say anything but "Darling, this" and "Darling, that" and basically live to be embraced and then rejected by their current man of choice.

And then, the guys. Ugh. The guys are just cold, cynical, moody jerks. The guy in this play threw his lover's current guy out of a window, told her he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her at night and then took it all back in the day (again and again) until he finally leaves her for good (after kissing her against her will)...oh, and he has a side woman the whole time too that he equally makes miserable.

I get that he's trying to paint a picture of war and the mental/emotional turmoil that it causes for those involved and the distance/inability to attach that ensues for many of them, but good grief. His characters are just flat and totally unlikable/inhuman in a variety of ways.

There's really no plot to the play. You get dropped in to the characters' lives and taken back out during what might as well be a random period in their lives. That, in and of itself, doesn't bother me, but combined with everything else it just adds to the feeling of pointlessness. I don't find his writing that interesting, either.

I'm not completely done with Hemingway, but I'm not impressed so far. The edition that I have is combined with a bunch of his short stories (which I might be more willing to try). We got an antique copy in Michigan having learned that he spent almost 20 summers there and used northern Michigan as a setting in several of his works.

I'm interested to see if he explores more variety in his writing and am sure I'll be reading more of him, but probably not anytime real soon. I liked that I could read this play in one sitting and it was interesting to read his stage directions. I just didn't really like it that much overall.

[Mateus Braz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A causa é nobre, o homem nem tanto. Sob bombas e peles de raposa prateada fica difícil agir corretamente. "Ele é um homem bom, mas mau" nas palavras da camareira. Na revolução não há heróis, há homens que relutantemente abdicam de uma "vida boa", mas ao mesmo tempo se agarram desesperadamente a ela. Quem não se agarraria? Bombas não apagam as diferenças de classe. Lutamos pelos proletários, mas eles continuam de cabeça baixa.
Via de regras todos queremos ser bons, gentis e amáveis. Via de regra não conseguimos. Philip não tenta mais, o barro e a pólvora já engrossaram seu sangue, e fica cada vez mais difícil não ser um completo babaca. A empatia por aqueles que ele luta para defender já não existe mais. Ninguém o entende, e tampouco ele tenta entender aqueles ao seu redor. A "vida" não pode interferir na missão, mas quando a noite cai, ele se entrega a desejos mais simples, desejos burgueses. À noite tudo parece que vai ficar bem, o álcool gentilmente balança sua cama como um berço, fica fácil esquecer da dor, fica fácil amar,seja lá quem for, mesmo que só por um par de horas.

[Julia Santos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nota: ⭐️⭐️⭐️,5

Única peça teatral escrita pelo Hemingway, possui o ponto forte de tratar a história com tanta veracidade pois fora escrito durante a Guerra Civil Espanhola, enquanto o autor vivenciava o horror da guerra.

[Lisa's book adventures · Rating 3 out of 5]

wasn't really my cup of tea and the ending was quite disappointing.
But it's still Hemingway and I love his was of writing and the way he uses and describes his scenes in this book is just great.

[Salva Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

La única obra de teatro que escribió Hemingway. Es sencilla y me ha resultado atrayente leerla por completismo, ya que es un autor que me gusta mucho y tenía curiosidad. Está ambientada en la Guerra Civil Española, en la que estuvo presente como corresponsal de guerra.
En esta edición viene acompañada por 4 relatos cortos ambientados también en la Guerra Civil, en los que plasma vivencias personales, que me han resultado más interesantes que la obra principal, de ahí que le haya subido a las 4 ⭐️.

[Maxie d'Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mas breve reseña que caminar en tormentas para salir a cumplir misiones en el infierno de la guerra y ver a los ojos a la informacion no podes ignorar la complicidad diaria de estar en esa mierda hasta que metes la mano para destapar el avance o salida de todo el maldito sistema ke fear ... 🚬⚡⛈️🕶️

🍨🚬 Esta demas decir que seria si no entrar en la escena siguiente la mas tibieza mental de intuir en nadie entrando por una puerta .. 🚬⚡

[Sarah Gamal · Rating 3 out of 5]

nothing happens but it was a pleasant read ig

[Johanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

no lo terminé. me aburrí.

[almudenasaiz · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like having toast with no jam. Pleasant read but no flavour at all.

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a play with some good moments, some good bits of dialogue. Hemingway himself considered it a failure, and it has rarely been produced.

The main character, Rawlings, is Hemingway, talking the way he talked, looking the way he looked, behaving the way he behaved, only here imagining himself as a secret agent. This character is the only fully drawn character in the play. A few others hold promise, but remain unrealized. The female lead, Bridges, is made unsympathetic and unbelievable, and is actually an unflattering portrait of the great war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. The physical description is of Gellhorn, and she did buy a fur coat on the black market, but she was far from 'lazy and stupid' as Hemingway writes Bridges, but at least he adds she was brave and charming. Gellhorn was, in fact, brilliant, and far from lazy, and a much better journalist than Hemingway.

This play can be regarded as a rough early draft that the author gave up on and never bothered to work on again. I recommend it worth reading only for Hemingway completionists, or those studying playwriting and desirous of reading many good, bad, and mediocre plays, or those studying plays about the Spanish Civil War, or perhaps those pondering the difference between autobiographical journalism and autobiographical fiction.

[Laurie Hertz-Kafka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping to gain some insights into the conditions during the Spanish Civil War since Hemingway had lived in Spain during that time, but they were sorely lacking. The play mainly dealt with the main character's relationships with women and people he met in the hotel bar, which made it somewhat trite and disappointing. Some were fifth columnists, but that aspect seemed secondary.

Other readers got more out of it. Here is a review by a teenage reader with some insights. The Fifth Column by Ernest Hemingway | Mission Viejo Library Teen Voice https://share.google/gfkFPbPU1gPiYnPxY

[Katsuro · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just didn't move me. Sorry. It's a very tentative grade--for a while I was going to give it three stars, but it's not quite good enough. Would have worked better as a short story. I've read every one of Hemingway's short stories, I can vouch for that. With that said, it wouldn't have been one of his best ones, but still.

[Rebeca Torres · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philp es un personaje tan vibrante, como Hemingway. Su misión es ver y disfrutar; todo sin dejar de seguir adelante.

[Guillem · Rating 3 out of 5]

6’5/10