“Old Man at the Bridge” by Ernest Hemingway Essay

Old Man at the Bridge was inspired by Hemingways travels as a struggle correspondent during the Spanish well-be subscribed War in the 1930s. Old Man at the Bridge demonstrates the post of narrative art. It takes a small, ordinary detail in a position and by the art of score-telling transforms it into a powerful story about the cataclysm of war. The senile man becomes a symbol of the countless civilian victims of war those without politics. The experient man is going to die at the duodisplaced, disoriented, alone. Hes not a cat, nor a dove, but a hindquarterswho was only taking care of animals. The themes of the story are many impeccant people become victims of war, even when exposed to the atrocities of war some(prenominal) people do not lose their basic humanity. The story is position in a war zone at a pontoon nosepiece across the Ebro river. The time is Easter Sunday 1938. Such geographical call as San Carlos, Ebro contribute to the credibility of the story. A first person bank clerk who tells the story through careful description, reportage of dialogue and insightful comment about the nonagenarian man.The cashier makes the reader see the old man. His elaboration with him suddenly brings the old man into focus, he emerges out of the faceless, voiceless crowd. The bank clerks consciousness of the approaching enemy contact is used to clear the dramatic tension between the immobility of the old man and the plan of attack destruction as he constantly observes the feignment of carts across the link while talking. The narrators conversation allows the old man to have a voice. The voiceless victims speak through the old man. The story does not really go in sequence. It starts off in the present, then goes acantha and forth between past and present throughout the whole story. The fundamental character is the 76 yr. old man, a war refugee who has been uprooted and displaced by the war. The old man is without politics, who was only taking car e of his animals, but who has had his world destroyed. He is disoriented, confused and disconnected. He has retreated into his isolated world in which he can only cling to his obsessive thoughts about his animals, and is too trite to go any further.He will die at the bridgeanother nameless innocent victim of war. The Scout is the narrator who creates the story of the old man at the bridge. Through his telling of the story, he gradually articulates who the old man is and what he represents. The Scout at the beginning is the inert narrator who sees the old man and decides to engage him in conversation. By inquire the old man questions about himself, the Scout gradually understands the situation of the old man. At the beginning he thinks the old man is just resting so he encourages him to move on. In the course of his conversation he realizes the old man is disoriented, displaced and that he will not be able to move on, but that he will likely die at the bridge. The poster po st who begins as a detached observer comes to the painful realization that there was nothing to do about him.And he ends with the bitterly ironic observation about Easter Sunday and the old mans luck, which is no luck. The old man will soon cross that final bridge. thither is one symbol of hope in the story. At the beginning of the narrators conversation with the old man, the birds the old man was looking later were referred to as pigeons, but by the end of the story, they become doves, symbols of peace in wartime. The narrator makes this switch as he asks, Did you leave the dove henhouse unlocked? It is unclear whether this is a slip of the tongue, because the narrator is clearly distracted by the impending arrival of the enemy, or if Hemingway is attempting to give the image of the birds move away an even more positive tint by referring to them as symbols of peace.