To BE or not to BE / To Cross or not to Cross The bridge in selected short stories: A phenomenological approach.

Abstract

The question of 'Being' is an ontological issue that has intrigued both philosophers and ordinary people ever since the dawn of civilization. Indeed, this question has endured variable and various responses and reactions throughout the ages. In his magnum opus, and Time (1927) (Sein und Zeit), the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889- 1976) devoted his seminal work to the question of What is Being claiming that it had not been satisfactorily resolved. This study examines four short stories written by different writers of different nationalities. All short stories at hand were written in the thirties of the twentieth century and all have one focal spatial point; namely, 'the bridge'. The titles of the stories are The Bridge (written between 1916 and 1917 and published posthumously in 1931) or Die Brucke by the Czeck writer Franz Kafka, Old Man at the Bridge (1938) by the American writer Earnest Hemingway, Across the Bridge (1938) by the British writer Graham Greene, and The Bridge by the Russian writer Nicolai Chukovsky (1882 - 1969) mostly known for writing children's literature. The texts will be examined with the objective of tracing the relevance ofexistential phenomenology to these short stories with special reference to Martin Heidegger.