Most people would not take notice of an old man resting on a bridge, especially during wartime when a battle is expected any moment. But the soldier in Hemingway’s short story “Old Man at the Bridge” does notice the old man and listen to what the man has to say. The short story was published in 1938 but the idea and the notes for the story were made by Hemingway in Spain earlier in the 1930s. General Franco, a fascist, had decided to overthrow the government and went to war against the people of Spain so he could take power as a dictator. This essay takes a brief look at the setting of the story and the irony of the situation Hemmingway has written about.
The prose of Hemingway is to the point and there are no wasted words. This short story is only three pages long yet the reader can still feel for the old man and feelings are raised about war. Although there are not many adjectives used the setting is very clear. Short phrases help the reader picture the scene. Hemingway wrote the man had “very duty clothes” and then expands on the image of dust three sentences further into the paragraph “. . . the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust.” These are very few words but they set an image of a hot dirty day which was made terrible because the people were all trying to escape the Fascist Guard of General Franco. In fact there are other clues in the first paragraph that this not a usual activity, the bridge is not a regular bridge over a river it is “a pontoon bridge across the rivers and carts, trucks, and men women and children were crossing it.” This may have been a temporary bridge due to a flood or some other natural disaster but in the second sentence the reader learns that the narrator is a soldier. Hemingway does not use the word ‘soldier’ but instead describes the task of the soldier. “It was my business . . . (to) find out to what point the enemy had advanced.” Only a few words have set the scene of refugees leaving their homes in order to escape from the enemy on a terrible hot and dusty day.
The soldier is expecting the enemy at any time by ground and by air. The people must hurry to a safe place to avoid the battle.
There is an irony about the war itself which is that the United States supported General Franco although he was a fascist dictator and allied with Hitler and Mussolini during WWII.. Franco had no problem with the Jewish religion but instead Franco claimed he was against the Jews because they were an undesirable race. Franco held this political stance Jews were able to flee Hitler through Spain. But the extent Jews were allowed to escape through Spain is not clear how many Jew used this route. As Tremlett (2010) explains
Later in the war, however, Spain became a major escape route for Jews fleeing Hitler's persecution. Critics claim that Spain's help was deliberately exaggerated to improve Franco's standing in the US.
The old man is very tired and very worried about the animals he has left behind. He was so concerned for the animals that he was the last person to leave San Carlos. At first it seems the man might be a farmer or a zookeeper because of his deep concern. He answers the soldiers question about the animals vaguely, “I take of animals” and “Various animals, I had to leave them.” But there were only three animals after all, “two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.” Then the soldier asks “What politics are you?” The old man at the bridge answers, “I am without politics. I am seventy-six years old. I have come 12 kilometers now and I think no I can go no farther.” There are many signs that this is the “end of the road” for the old man.
At the beginning of the story the soldier noticed the old man and listened to the old man’s worries about his animals. In the end it did not really make any difference. Although having someone to talk with may have been a comfort to the old man, he was still exhausted; he still had no family and he still had nowhere to go. Finally, the irony to recognize is that the old man at the bridge would be killed by the Fascists meanwhile his animals would most likely survive. This can be understood from the short story’s final sentence “That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.”
(801 words)
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. “The Old Man at the Bridge” in the Short Stories: The First Forty-nine Stories with a brief Preface by the Author, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, pp. 84-87.
Tremlett, Giles, “General Franco gave list of Spanish Jews to Nazis” The Guardian, 20 June 2010. Web. 2 November 2012.
