Sunday, May 17, 2020

The Old Man at the Bridge by Ernest Hemingway -- Review

The idea of war as a total evil was described by Ernest Hemingway in the story “The Old Man at the Bridge”.
The civil war in Spain. Difficult days have come for the Spanish Republic. On the roads and crossings of Catalonia, Hemingway saw a stream of refugees. According to a fresh impression, E. Hemingway writes an essay “Old man at the bridge”. It shows the tragedy of the civilian population of Spain, driven out of their homes.
The plot of the story is simple: an old man left the place where he lived before the war. He sits at the bridge across the river. He is tired, nobody pays attention to him. Only the narrator, the military man who monitors the crossing, casually asks the old man about his life. 
Hemingway uses interesting techniques to attract the reader’s attention. At the beginning of the paragraph, it is noted that the old man had very dusty clothes and later it was described that the peasants plodded along in ankle-deep dust. This description created a black and white picture of the place and people who were tired.
This story didn’t follow the traditional structure for stories. The story ends as the military man leaves whereas the old man remains sitting at the bridge.
Here is the link to the text of the story:

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