The Angel of the Bridge by John Cheever
"The Angel of the Bridge" by John Cheever is a psychological short story that explores themes of fear, familial dynamics, and personal transformation. The narrative centers on a narrator who feels embarrassed by his elderly mother's love for ice-skating, only to discover her profound fear of flying. This revelation, alongside his older brother's irrational phobia of heights, prompts the narrator to confront his own unexpected fear of large bridges, particularly after a distressing experience crossing the George Washington Bridge.
As a frequent flier for work, the narrator initially romanticizes flying and the beauty of the world from above. However, his emotional reaction to the bridge challenges his perception of reality, leading him to view life as chaotic and devoid of joy. His attempts to address this phobia through medical advice are met with resistance, reflecting a broader reluctance to confront psychological issues. The turning point occurs when a hitchhiking folksinger—symbolically referred to as the "Angel of the Bridge"—intervenes, offering comfort through her music and helping him rediscover beauty and order in his surroundings. Ultimately, while he gains the ability to cross bridges without fear, the experience leaves a lasting impact on his understanding of himself and his world.
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The Angel of the Bridge by John Cheever
First published: 1964
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The mid-to late twentieth century
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
The narrator , a businessperson and the protagonistHis older brother , also a businesspersonHis mother The hitchhiker , a young woman and folksinger
The Story
The story begins with the narrator being embarrassed that his seventy-eight-year-old mother likes to ice-skate in Rockefeller Center in New York City. He shortly discovers, while he is waiting with her in the Newark airport to put her on a plane to visit some friends of hers in Ohio, that she is mortally afraid of flying. His next revelation is that his older brother, more successful in business than he and their mother's favorite, has recently developed an intense fear of high buildings, especially the elevators in them. Although the narrator's confrontation with his mother's phobia has given him an insight into her fragility, his brother's neurosis—perhaps because the narrator feels in competition with him—strikes him as absurd.
The narrator is afraid of neither heights nor planes. His business requires that he fly frequently to the West Coast and to Europe. He romanticizes flying: He enjoys comparing the simultaneous activities in different time zones, the way the sky appears at high altitudes, and the way night moves across a landscape seen from the air. Without warning, however, on the way back with his wife and children from a visit in New Jersey, the narrator undergoes a strong emotional and physical reaction to the George Washington Bridge as he drives across it. From then on he is afraid of large bridges, especially high ones.
He informs the family doctor, who in effect informs him that he is being cowardly. When a psychiatrist suggests that the anxiety behind his fear will need long-term analysis, the narrator backs off, unwilling to spend the time and money, or to entrust his problem to psychiatric procedures.
The narrator's phobia changes his view of himself and of the world. He begins to doubt the joy that he finds in living and to see the world as emotionless and chaotic. He senses that the high point of a bridge symbolizes for him his loathing of the complexity and banality of modern civilization. He tells no one of his phobia other than the doctor and the psychiatrist, and he takes extravagant means to avoid driving on bridges; he drives twenty miles out of his way on a trip to Albany, New York, and he leaves his rented car in San Francisco to take a cab across the Oakland Bay Bridge.
The narrator's fear comes to a head on a Sunday morning when he drives his daughter back to a convent school in New Jersey. He does not remember his phobia until he is actually on the George Washington Bridge. Managing to hide the symptoms, he makes it across. He decides to return on what he thinks is the easier Tappan Zee Bridge farther north. Everything he thinks of either to avoid the bridge or to console himself fails. His wife might send someone for him, but the shame he would feel would damage his marriage. He might stop at a friend's house for a drink, but he would have to explain why he needed one so early in the day. When he stops for gas, he finds the gas station attendant too withdrawn for conversation. He might wait for the bars to open in the afternoon, but he has spent all his money on gas.
Finally, he arrives at the bridge and begins to cross. It upsets him more than he has ever been upset on a bridge since his phobia began, and he is forced to pull over. A young woman gets into his car, thinking that he has stopped to pick her up. She is a hitchhiker and a traveling folksinger who plays in coffeehouses. Besides her cheap suitcase, she carries a harp with her. She turns out to be the "Angel of the Bridge," for she sings him a folksong as he drives, and this not only calms him completely but also leads him to see order and beauty in the bridge and the river. The singer leaves at the toll station, and the narrator from then on is able to cross bridges without fear, though he still avoids the George Washington Bridge.
Bibliography
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