Translucency In Daniel J. O Malley's Bridge

Children spend the first few years of their lives trying to understand the world around them. They learn to decipher words from noises and shapes from objects, and they look to their parents for guidance on this mission. In the short story “Bridge,” however, author Daniel J. O’Malley chronicles a boy whose religious parents have controlled, rather than guided, his perception: they confine his observations to the walls of the house. But when a couple jumps off a bridge outside the boy’s window, he gives into his desire to explore, watches the implied suicide, and questions his parent’s teachings. And, slowly, these questions lead his convictions and his thoughts to stray from his parents’ predetermined beliefs. Though this awakening only lasts …show more content…
This slow awakening begins when the father tells his son that the fish in the river comes imported from a different location. But his son has already made this assumption, citing that “almost always the water was low enough to see dirt and rocks at the river’s bottom” (193-194). By setting up the water as a means to find evidence, O’Malley portrays it as a clear symbol of reflection and examination: its translucency allows the boy to use his senses rather than call on his parents’ teachings. In contrast, O’Malley relays no insight, no evidence to the father’s thought process. The water becomes the differentiating point between the father’s claim and his son’s statement. For the reader, the boy’s reasoning lends him more credibility, and, through its ability to supply evidence, the water turns into the means that allows both the boy and the reader to decipher faith from …show more content…
When his father tries to explain that the fish comes from a farm in Arkansas, the boy “had believed his father,” but then his father tells him that they come “not from Arkansas but from Asia” (193). This time, O’Malley omits the detail of whether the boy still believes his father. This omission represents a shift in thought, an inward defiance to an obvious contradiction — the fish cannot be both from Arkansas and Asia. But unlike the previous scenario, the boy cannot use the water to confirm or deny his father’s words. Instead he stays silent, knowing that he does not have the evidence for either option. This silence communicates the boy’s emerging reliance on facts and the lack thereof. He shows that he no longer blindly believes his parents’s contradictions when put forth as truth and that he can discern the truth from assumptions. Reflecting O’Malley’s own beliefs, such a transition reveals how the examination of facts can lead to an escape from ignorance. After he encountered the water, the boy almost immediately loosens his ties with blind faith. As such, the water begins his search to decipher reality from his parents’ words and, similarly, truth from