Question

Why is the old man at the bridge?

Answer 1

The old man sat down beside the road because he is too tired to go any farther. He is one of the many civilians fleeing before the advancing forces of the Fascists. The Fascists, or Nationalists, were killing peasants and workers as a means of spreading terror and also under the assumption that these impoverished people must be supporters of the lawfully elected Loyalist government.

The narrator, a nameless soldier, is standing there because he is watching for the approach of the enemy. He is evidently an American and one of the many foreigners who volunteered to help the Loyalist cause against the fascist rebels. The dialogue in “Old Man at the Bridge” is in English, but it is simple and lucid. Hemingway was very good at writing dialogue and used dialogue to characterize the speakers as well as to provide exposition.

The narrator is primarily concerned about the advancing army, but he is also concerned about the old man.

“This is not a good place to stop,” I said. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.”

When the narrator again advises him more urgently to get up and go on,
“Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.

It is pretty obvious that this old man is going to get killed when the Fascists cross the bridge. He is too old and too worn out to flee any farther, and he doesn’t really have anything left to live for. He might be said to symbolize the Liberal government and its Loyalist supporters, gradually being overwhelmed by the Fascists who were backed by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

This little story, or slice-of-life, is intended to represent the big picture of the war. Hemingway was a foreign correspondent and was accustomed to sending brief dispatches because of time and communication constraints. Foreign correspondents were fond of finding little scenes that symbolized great historical events. Hemingway wrote this story as a dispatch and then decided to publish it as a short story instead.