41 pages • 1 hour read
The Other Side of the Bridge
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Themes
Personal Loss
The premiere theme of the novel is personal loss. Arthur, whose acceptance of loss bears more than a passing resemblance to the biblical character of Job, is central to this theme. Arthur loses his father, most of his friends, his brother, his mother, and his son. Through all of these losses, Arthur soldiers on, though the novel has plenty of examples of people who do not.
Ted Hatchett, for example, who suffers perhaps the greatest personal loss of anyone in the book, returns from war badly disfigured and ultimately makes the choice to kill himself. Jake, unable to deal with his own losses, flees Struan twice, the later time apparently for good.
Ian loses his mother and struggles through this loss, ultimately admitting that he can never forgive her and move beyond the loss. This is symbolized by Ian never opening a single letter that his mother sends him, despite the fact that she sends him over 100 letters.
Fate Versus Free Will
Another theme running through the novel is the tension between fate and freewill in the characters’ lives. Arthur represents one side of the scale; he is seemingly content to take what fate hands him and is usually not proactive in the situations presented to him.
The opposite side of the spectrum is Jake, who refuses to accept whatever role his family might like to see him play. Jake throws everything aside and disappears, leaving only a one-line note indicating that he’s sorry. That he is the cause of a considerable amount of loss in the book conveys a sense that while you can run from fate, you cannot escape the consequences of doing so.
Between these two extremes is Ian, who starts off wanting to avoid what he sees as his fate: ending up a small town doctor like his father. While Ian initially feels stifled by fate, he is active in considering it. Ultimately, Ian engages with fate and learns to take an active role in shaping his own fate. While he does end up a small town doctor back in Struan, it is not simple fate that has put him there; rather, his own freewill has done so.
The Small Town Versus The Larger World
Another theme present in the novel is the larger world versus life in Struan. The outside world is, for some, a thing to be feared, and the fate of those whose lives are destroyed by WWII reinforces this view. For others, the larger world is a thing to be desired, a way to escape the small town fate they refuse to accept. Jake and Ian’s mother both leave the small town for the larger world, but both pay a heavy price for doing so, with Jake losing all ties to the only family he has left and Ian’s mother permanently losing contact with Ian.
Pete, the character who most eloquently rejects the outside world, sums up the novel’s attitude toward Struan and the north more broadly when he tells Ian, “Everything that matters to me is right […] here […] I don’t have to go anywhere else to find it” (306). While this may work well for Pete, it might seem to not be the same for Arthur, who the reader never sees outside of Struan. Arthur, in staying, sees family and friends disappear, and, at the end of the novel, loses his son.
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By Mary Lawson
