Old Man at the Bridge
"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.
- ^ Qeqe at the bridge
- ^ a b Litcharts Summary Retrieved 2/92022.
- ^ A Summary and Analysis of Ernest Hemingway's Old Man at the Bridge' Retrieved 22/2/2022.
- v
- t
- e
- 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)
- Death in the Afternoon (1932)
- Green Hills of Africa (1935)
- 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)
- "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)
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)
- "On Writing"
- 88 Poems (1979)
- Complete Poems
- Today is Friday (1926)
- The Fifth Column (1938)
- The Spanish Earth (1937 film)
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)
The Sun Also Rises |
|
---|---|
"The Killers" |
|
A Farewell to Arms |
|
To Have and Have Not |
|
For Whom the Bell Tolls |
|
The Old Man and the Sea |
|
Other film adaptations |
|
- Birthplace and boyhood home
- Michigan cottage
- Hemingway-Pfeiffer House
- Key West home
- Hotel Ambos Mundos, Havana home
- Finca Vigía, Cuba home
- Idaho home
- Bacall to Arms (1946 cartoon)
- Hemingway: On the Edge (1987 play)
- In Love and War (1996 film)
- Midnight in Paris (2011 film)
- Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012 film)
- Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen (2013 documentary)
- Papa: Hemingway in Cuba (2015 film)
- Genius (2016 film)
- Hemingway (2021 documentary series)
- Nick Adams
- Floridita
- Pilar (boat)
- Iceberg theory
- Ernest Hemingway International Billfishing Tournament
- International Imitation Hemingway Competition
- Maxwell Perkins
- Adriana Ivancich
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Premio Hemingway
- Hello Hemingway (1990 film)
- Hemingway: A Portrait (1999 documentary)
- Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure (1999 documentary)
- Hemingway crater
- Kennedy Library Hemingway collection
- Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (first wife)
- Jack Hemingway (son)
- Pauline Pfeiffer (second wife)
- Patrick Hemingway (son)
- Gloria Hemingway (daughter)
- Martha Gellhorn (third wife)
- Mary Welsh Hemingway (fourth wife)
- Lorian Hemingway (granddaughter)
- Margaux Hemingway (granddaughter)
- John Hemingway (grandson)
- Mariel Hemingway (granddaughter)
- Grace Hall Hemingway (mother)
- Leicester Hemingway (brother)
This article about a short story (or stories) published in the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e