Old Man at the Bridge

Short story by Ernest Hemingway

"Old Man at the Bridge" is a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway, written in 1938 and first published in Ken magazine^[1] (Vol. 1 No. 4., May 19th, 1938)^[2] with which he was involved.^[3] It was then collected in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).^[1] Set in Spain, it is inspired by Hemingway's experience as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War.^[1] The story was originally written as a news dispatch by Hemingway from the Amposta Bridge over the Ebro River on Easter Sunday as the Fascists were set to overrun the region.^[4] Hemingway's notes on the incident have been reproduced.^[5]

Plot summary

On Easter Sunday the narrator a Republican soldier^[6] crosses a pontoon bridge on the Ebro Delta during the Spanish Civil War to explore the land beyond to determine the Fascist enemy's movements. On returning to the bridge the narrator meets an old man, the last person to leave the town ahead. The seventy-six year old man that he was forced to leave his animals - two goats, a cat, and four pairs of pigeons. The old man keeps returning to the fate of his animals. The narrator warns him to walk to then get on a truck to Tortosa and onwards to Barcelona...

Analysis

The old man is too old to fight and very tired, he is inclined to remain at the bridge to await his fate, as his animals have already done. The old man neither supports or opposes the Fascists, and he has attachment for his animals and his town. By the end of the story the pigeons have become doves, representing peace -- in contrast to the war around the narrator and the old man.^[7] The old man himself represents the good shepherd wanting to look after his animals.^[6] The repetition of the old man's focus on the animals emphasizes his inability to separate the past from the present. The story is further intensified by the imminent death of at least one of the two main characters.

External links

Youtube audio
Youtube Story explained
Sentence length and complexity

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Prime Study Guide Retrieved 22/9/2022.
^ Biblio Retrieved 22/9/2022.
^ "Press: Insiders". Time. March 21, 1938. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
^ brainly Retrieved 22/9/2022.
^ Hemingway at the bridge Retrieved 22/9/2022.
^ ^a ^b Litcharts Summary Retrieved 2/92022.
^ A Summary and Analysis of Ernest Hemingway's Old Man at the Bridge' Retrieved 22/2/2022.

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Nonfiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

A Moveable Feast (1964)
Islands in the Stream (1970)
The Dangerous Summer (1985)
The Garden of Eden (1986)
True at First Light (1999)
Under Kilimanjaro (2005)

Short stories

"Up In Michigan" (1921)
"Indian Camp" (1924)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"Banal Story" (1926)
"Today is Friday" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1927)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Now I Lay Me" (1927)
"A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
"Ten Indians" (1927)
"An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
"A Pursuit Race" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
"Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Plays

Today is Friday (1926)
The Fifth Column (1938)

Screenplays

The Spanish Earth (1937 film)

Letters and
journalism

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet
"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story
A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series
To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)
For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1959 TV play 1965 TV series 1984 song
The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 film 1999 animated film
Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) Under My Skin (1950) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977) Soldier's Home (1977) My Old Man (1979) After the Storm (2001) The Garden of Eden (2008) Across the River and into the Trees (2022)