The Old Man by the Bridge - A Tempered Lament

The Old Man at the Bridge is a novel by Ernest Hemingway. Because of its short length, it was considered "not even a novel, but a short essay". However, it has won the appreciation of many people for its unique narrative method and profound connotation.

The Old Man by the Bridge

describes a conversation between me and the old man about persuading him to leave and not to go, in a relatively calm environment just before the outbreak of war.

Ernest Hemingway's theory of icebergs goes like this, "Icebergs move in the sea in a very solemn and magnificent way, and that's because only one-eighth of them are exposed on the surface." When an iceberg floats on the surface of the sea, we can only see a small part of it exposed to the water, but underwater, there is a huge mountain lurking. Hemingway used this as a metaphor for writing: seven-eighths of a writer's thoughts and feelings are hidden behind the words, and only one-eighth of them are really expressed through the pen. If the writer can handle this point, the reader can strongly feel the weight of the eighth.

Ernest Hemingway, in "The Old Man at the Bridge", skillfully used the technique of point to point, not to write the bloody scenes of the war, but through the depiction of the artillery fire forced to leave their homes to the side of the person to emphasize the cruelty of the war.

The old man in the article neither understands politics nor war, and what he has is only a few animals that accompany him. In his lonely old age, the artillery brutally deprived him of the only remaining warmth in his life.

The old man knew that this place was about to become a battlefield, and I tried to persuade him to leave many times, but why didn't he want to go? The text mentions that the old man was the last to leave San Carlos. The first reason is that San Carlos is his hometown, and he doesn't want to leave until he has to.

Secondly, the future of the country's destruction made him confused about his prospects.

That day was Easter Sunday (in the West, Easter is second only to Christmas), which represents rebirth and hope, and the old man gave up his escape on that day. It is implied that his future is bleak.

The dialog between the old man and me is full of contradictions because the two men are different from each other. "As a scout, I was distracted by the old man's ramblings, while the old man was more concerned about the fate of the animals, and so he was perfunctory about my questions.

While everyone else is busy running for their lives, no one cares about the animals, and they are cruelly abandoned. They know nothing of human hatred, but are forced to face it. We can imagine what the fate of the animals will be in such a world situation. War will mercilessly deprive them of their lives like a wheel running over dust. But the old man, and he alone, still respects the value of other lives. In his eyes, this is what makes the world worth living.

The Old Man at the Bridge is essentially a "show". Hemingway lets the characters talk to each other without judgment, and lets the reader imagine, based on his own experience and the situation, what kind of tone the speaker might use and what kind of action he might take.

On "telling" and "showing". The so-called "narration" is that the narrator appears from time to time, he wants to tell the reader that the story is his, it will be in the novel of people and events to explain and judgment, but also can not help but reveal his feelings about those people and events. (See Chekhov's The Man in the Suit for more details). The so-called "show" is that the narrator almost completely disappears behind the text, leaving the reader to face a period of life, a person or an event alone when reading. This narrator, who refuses to show his face, only presents those people and events objectively.

"Telling", is the traditional novel of the usual techniques, he has not yet detached from the original storytelling prototype. Since Flaubert's creation of the realist novel, the modern novel gradually to "show" closer. Novels have become more and more "objective", and the author's intention has become more and more implicit. In fact, in a novel, it is unlikely to use only "tell" or only "show" throughout the whole novel, and usually take a combination of the two (narration and description).

The Old Man at the Bridge uses a limited perspective. The development of the novel to the present, more and more novelists in the narrative gradually pay attention to mask the author's intention, deliberately hide some links, leaving the reader to their own deduction, judgment and evaluation. Completely dependent on the eyes of the characters to see the world in the novel, completely relying on the narrator to lead the reader into each chain of the plot, so that the reader's mobility to the maximum, so that the reader becomes no longer just passively listen to the story, but also have to use their brains, mobilize their own knowledge, experience and imagination.

? The opposite of "limited perspective" is "omniscient perspective". Generally speaking, traditional novels prefer to tell stories from an omniscient perspective. In such a narrative, the narrator is equivalent to God, who knows all the clues, developments and endings, and is clear about the psychology, past and future of each character, and even comes to the foreground to comment on the characters and make moral evaluations and emotional judgments. (See Maupassant's The Necklace for more details.)

Often, "omniscient perspective" and "limited perspective" are also called "God's view" and "mortal gaze". mortal gaze".