26 pages • 52 minutes read
Old Man at the Bridge
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Themes
The Casualties of War
The idea that no one escapes harm in one form or another when it comes to war was not new in the early 20th century, but World War I centered it for a generation of artists and writers who experienced a devastating type of modern warfare. Hemingway’s most praised novel, The Sun Also Rises, deals with the emotional trauma of the war in greater depth, and many other stories and novels he wrote attempt to convey the horrors of war. In “The Old Man at the Bridge,” Hemingway again presents an intimate portrait of two individuals who are casualties of war.
The first casualty is the old man, who is a physical victim of the fighting despite not being a soldier. His life is uprooted in every possible way, and he will probably not survive. The narrator doesn’t notice luggage or a bag, which suggests he had to flee with nothing, not even food. This kind of displacement, if one survives it, generates emotional problems; even if he does survive, it is difficult to imagine a 76-year-old in these circumstances making a full recovery. Compounding this grief is the fact that he is one of many fleeing for their lives. When the story begins, the narrator watches a steady stream of people escaping over the bridge. Entire towns, such as the man’s home of San Carlos, were emptied and destroyed by artillery; a captain persuaded the old man to leave by convincing him that artillery was headed there. While the story focuses on a single story, there are hundreds of other people in the background who have similar tragedies.
The second, less obvious victim of war is the narrator. He fills the role of a detached and unemotional observer. He witnesses other soldiers helping people in desperate circumstances but does nothing to assist the man who is in conversation with him, not even when the old man falls. He offers nothing more than a suggestion to keep walking and shrugs. The soldier’s loss of empathy and human connection is presented as another kind of casualty, one that is necessary for him to survive in battle. Hemingway demonstrates through the modeled narrative of the old man that even if the soldier survives the coming battle physically, its emotional consequences will haunt him.
Moral Ambiguity in the Context of War
Hemingway was born into a Protestant family but became interested in the Catholic faith while convalescing in Italy during World War I. He converted to Catholicism when he married his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. He didn’t practice the faith, however, and much of his work points to an absence of God in a world where humans become morally indifferent as a means of survival.
The character of the soldier demonstrates this amorality. His behavior reveals that he remembers what it means to be concerned for others, as the narrator engages in conversation with the old man and encourages him to leave the area. However, his sense of responsibility doesn’t extend further than what is convenient for him. If the narrator wants to survive, he needs to set aside matters of concern for other people and animals and the sense of shared humanity.
The old man, on the other hand, serves as a cautionary example of what happens to those whose actions are driven by moral empathy and guilt. He stays to take care of the weak, as one is instructed in traditional Judeo-Christian morality, and he fails. The result is catastrophic not only for the creatures but also for the old man. His physical survival is in question, and he is emotionally and psychologically broken by having stayed behind, attempting to care for abandoned and helpless creatures.
That the story takes place on Easter Sunday drives this point home. The Christian holiday of Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, representing an optimistic promise of life conquering death. It is a spring day focused on celebrating hope, renewal, and rebirth. However, the Nationalist army chose this day to launch an attack on its own countrymen in the civil war. This decision represents a desecration of the day that Catholicism holds as the most sacred of the year. The Catholic Church is on the side of the invading army, whose government will define Spain as a Catholic nation when they win the war the following year. As the war takes place in an almost exclusively Catholic context, the soldiers on both sides are keenly aware of the day’s spiritual significance. However, the war traps them in an alternative morality driven by the need to fight to the death, rather than to celebrate life and the possibility of new beginnings. The narrator points out that it is Easter in the story’s final lines; this evokes a contrast between the day’s sacred and celebratory aspects and the images of imminent destruction of innocent lives, such as those of the old man and the animals.
The emotionally detached narrator avoids assigning blame or judgment for the day’s events. Rather, Hemingway presents two characters whose actions of caretaking or resolutely preparing for battle demonstrate the war’s detachment from the norms of cultural or religious behavior.
The Alienation of Humanity in the Modern Age
Another idea that recurs in Lost Generation works is humanity’s alienation in the modern era. This theme is also present in the story “The Old Man at the Bridge.”
As technology and society continued to change, traditional ways of life were suddenly at odds with the current times. People found themselves and their way of life changing. Both physical and psychological turmoil were often a result of this shift. In fact, many of the deep-seated issues that drove the Spanish Civil War were rooted in this divide. The war reflected the country’s division into “two Spains:” the traditional Nationalists versus the progressive Spanish Republic. The Spanish Republic supported agrarian reform in an aim to shift land from the wealthy aristocracy to poor agricultural laborers so that they could support their families; it also introduced sweeping cultural changes such as legalizing divorce, secularizing education, and establishing women’s suffrage. Many people felt physically and mentally alienated from their land, their old ways of life, their history, and even each other as they experienced the wars and upheaval that began the 20th century.
The old man in the story is clearly ill-equipped to face the new environment in which he finds himself. His previous world was a small town, San Carlos, where he lived closely with animals. The new world offered to him, the metropolis of Barcelona where he knows no one, is so alien that he would rather face a hostile army than attempt to live there. His disorientation at losing everything and everyone he knows is clear, and his reluctance to move from the countryside to the city reflects the alienation that many felt in his era as war or the economy forced people out of their small towns and into the metropolis. Because he is unprepared to change, the man remains in limbo next to the bridge, alienated from both his old life and a new world.
The second form of alienation in this story is the emotional isolation from others. This is evidenced in the detached and unemotional narrator, who has separated himself from others emotionally and stoically accepts his circumstances. This alienation allows him to prepare for battle, defending his location against the invading Fascists; however, it prevents him from acting to save the suffering individual who sits in the dust in front of him. He remains disinterested and detached as the old man discusses the animals he saved. The soldier urges the man to keep moving forward and escape the impending attack, yet he doesn’t intervene when the man stumbles.
The soldier refers to the coming battle as “that mysterious event called contact” (57), using a neutral term instead of “fight” or “conflict.” The moment he shares with the old man may also be described as “contact,” rather than communication or interaction. Their dialogue is fractured, and the narrator focuses on completing it efficiently, as if it were a component of his work rather than a human encounter. The neutrality and detachment required by war demonstrate the Lost Generation’s sense of being alienated from oneself and others/
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By Ernest Hemingway
