The Ebro River is one of the longest and most important rivers in Spain. It cuts the country in two along a northeast/southwest line. It is also the name of one of the most important battles in the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Ebro, which the Republican forces eventually lost to the fascists.
In the story, the bridge at the Ebro River is the road to safety. But for the old man, this bridge has no meaning. Crossing it, he realizes, will not help him. He knows nobody on the other side. For him, it signifies the end of the road.
The soldier tries to get him to cross and tries to comfort him about the animals he left behind. But in the end, the soldier lets the old man stay seated on the wrong side of the bridge. The soldier thinks,
There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.
The old man represents all the decent, humane people who are ground up by war.
This short story depicts the efforts of a narrator to assist a man struggling to leave his homeland due to advancing enemy forces. The elderly man is not only physically exhausted but also feels deeply connected to his home and all it has meant to him. He feels no particular political alignments, has no family to care for, and after twelve kilometers, believes that he has reached the end of his metaphorical road.
He sits by the side of a road just before crossing a bride that might take him to an area of greater safety. The bridge symbolizes the divide between life and death. By remaining where he is, the man likely chooses to die. Walking across that bridge would allow for greater possibilities. The bridge could bring hope.
The water underneath that bridge, then, symbolizes the never-ending flow of time and, for the man, a sense of loss. What has existed before is gone. The animals he worries about are gone. The people in his community all left before him. Everything has flowed away from the old man, much like water rushing its way downstream.
The story's hopeless tone conveyed through such symbolism carries through to the end, with the narrator noting that "cats know how to look after themselves" (and implying that the old man does not) and that this is this man's only source of "good luck."
The Ebro River is a river in Spain. Hemingway's time spent covering the Spanish Civil War as a journalist would have familiarized Hemingway with the Ebro. Indeed, he uses it again in "Hills Like White Elephants" and other stories.
In "Old Man at the Bridge," "river" is mentioned just once, and "Ebro" too is mentioned just once. Its specific name is important because it locates us in both time and space in the story (Easter Sunday, 1938, near the front of the war zone). Let's think about the title to begin to access the symbolic meaning of the river.
"Old Man at the Bridge" essentially captures all of the plot that happens in this story: the narrator encounters an old man sitting at a pontoon bridge, too tired and weak and dispirited to cross it and move safely away from the encroaching Fascists. The river is, essentially, the dividing line between life and death. If the old man stays on this side of the river, he will almost certainly die. If he gets to the other side, he can join the others who are fleeing to get on the "trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa," eventually arriving at relative safety.
When the narrator urges the old man to try to cross the bridge, the man "got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust." Having lost his home and his beloved animals, the man cannot find it within him to want to live. He remains on the side of the river where death will find him. Thus, the river signifies the split between life and death.
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