“The Old Man at the Bridge” is an unconventional war story. It effectively presents Hemingway’s commonly used themes of Moral Ambiguity in the Context of War and The Casualties of War in an uncommon way, using fewer than 600 words and without showing a single moment of violence. This stylistic choice is typical of Hemingway, who favored brief but powerful human moments over larger stages and epic battles.

Hemingway wrote more traditional war narratives in his dispatches from the Spanish Civil War that inspired “The Old Man at the Bridge.” These reports, which were sent to the New York Times in April 1938, include vivid descriptions of battles and depictions of civilian victims of the conflict. Likewise, his most famous novel about World War I, A Farewell to Arms (1929), contains scenes of bloody imagery. “The Old Man at the Bridge,” however, includes none of this. Hemingway begins by eliminating the conventions of a war story. The weapons, the violence and the gore are all excluded; they are, in a way, obvious elements of which the reader is already aware. Instead, Hemingway chooses to focus on an intimate, personal moment.