Old Man at the Bridge Summary by Ernest Miller Hemingway

Summary of the Story

The Storyline is set at the pontoon bridge, close to the Ebro Delta, on an Easter Sunday in the Spanish Civil War. The enemy's attack was predicted, and the evacuation mission was going around the areas. The civilians were passing the bridge to protect themselves from the artillery fire. The narrator is a young soldier in the Army tasked to monitor the advancement of the forces. Then, he took notice of the older man, the main character in the Story sitting down on the side of the road. He was wearing poor steel-framed glasses and had dusty clothes on his body.

The soldier was continuously monitoring the bridge and keeping tabs across the bridge. He noted that people and the cart on the bridge were decreasing. At last, he approached the older man and inquired about him. The older man has covered a distance of 12 kilometers from his native place and sitting down due to exhaustion and tiredness. The soldier came into the conversation with the older man and learned he was from San Carlos. The person was very distressed about his animals and the last one to leave his native land.

The soldier deeply anticipated the advent of the fascist Army and the battle between the two armies which would soon ensue. The young man inquired more and later learned that the older man was very distressed about his animals. The older man was responsible for four pairs of pigeons, two goats, and a cat. The captain of the Army instructed him to leave the place immediately as the area was going to witness heavy artillery fire from the enemy side.

The older man had no family members, so these animals played the role of the family in the older man's life. The older man was deeply concerned about the animals' state and reflected on the soldier. The young man tried to calm down the older man with some compassion by saying that the cats could handle themselves and the pigeons would have flown away till now. But the older man was unsure what would happen with other animals (in this case, the goat).

The older man tried to get up but was unsuccessful due to exhaustion. He was 76 years old. Even in the dark hours of the war, the narrator showed a sense of optimism that if the enemy's planes did not fly over the land of the poor, his animals might survive.

Brief Background

It is a story presented in the form of a conversation between a young soldier and a poor civilian who is 76 years old and has covered a 12-kilometer to protect himself from impending death and destruction. The writer creatively tried to present a scene that shows how war affects the lives of common people who has nothing to do with war. There has been a concerted effort from the author to highlight the tragedies and innocent civilians that perished in the war. The older man in the Story becomes one of the innumerable civilians that dies in the war. The Storyline is presented in the context of the Spanish Civil War. The war sent panic and anxiety among those who had abandoned their homes. There was a feeling of impending death among the people.

The Theme of the Story

The terms like impending death, depression, anxiety, and fear can describe the Story's theme. This has been meticulously described in the Story. The older man has been described as a fatalistic hero that has accepted himself as a casualty of the war. The Story deals with the effects of the war and its impact on the common people. The real sufferer of the people who have never played the role, and they do not have anything to do with war. They are crushed under two power struggles. In all these negative atmospheres, the soldier shows a sense of optimism at the end of the Story.

About the Author: Ernest Hemingway

He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and started as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at seventeen. When the US entered the First world war, he became a member of a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian Army. He served at the front and was sometimes wounded. Due to this, he was decorated by the Italian Government and has been in hospital for a considerable time. When he returned to the United States, he reported in the American and Canadian newspapers and was asked to cover Greek Revolution in Europe. He was bestowed with Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.