Old man at the bridge Explain abot the tgeme of resignation depression impending death
Answers
As occurs elsewhere in Hemingway’s writings, specifically in “The Killers,” the narrator of the story seems more affected by the inevitability of the man’s probable fate than by the old man. Just as the old man worries about the goats he left behind, and the narrator tells him it’s best not to think about them, the narrator worries about the old man he will have to leave behind, but is obviously not able to stop thinking about him.
Nevertheless, one lingering question occurs to the reader as the story closes and the narrator bemoans the old man’s impending death. Why doesn’t the narrator help the old man at least part of the way to the trucks bound for Barcelona? Surely everyone, including the narrator and the old man, is going in the same direction. Surely it would not be a great imposition for the narrator to help a 76-year-old man who had already walked 12 kilometers along at least part of the way to safety. Are the old man’s fatalism and the narrator’s despair justified? Since this story began as a news dispatch recounting an encounter Hemingway actually had, this question takes on more than academic significance.
There is one symbol of hope in the story. At the beginning of the narrator’s conversation with the old man, the birds the old man was looking after were referred to as “pigeons,” but by the end of the story, they become “doves,” symbols of peace in wartime. The narrator makes this switch as he asks, “Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” It is unclear whether this is a slip of the tongue, because the narrator is clearly distracted by the impending arrival of the enemy, or if Hemingway is attempting to give the image of the birds flying away an even more positive tint by referring to them as symbols of peace.