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Salvation In Daniel O Malley's Bridge

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Christians often view salvation as a heavenly resting place; in reality, however, salvation is a lifelong journey that can bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth. This spiritual bridge can be crossed through faith coupled with good works. “Bridge”, a short story by Daniel O’Malley, features a young boy who struggles to comprehend salvation as well as find his own. This motif of salvation is achieved through the use of biblical allusions which also help support the fact that the bridge is a physical representation for the motif of the path to salvation which the narrator fails to cross. O’Malley starts his story with two biblical allusions, “...but also about the flood and locusts and frogs and other plagues that had happened before and could happen again…(192). This alludes to the stories of Noah and the Flood in the Book of Genesis and The Ten Plagues in The Book of Exodus. Both of these stories discuss the consequences that non believers will face if they fail to recognize the God of the Hebrews as the one, true God; however, these stories also display the graces that believers will receive. For example, Noah and his …show more content…

The parallels the story of Jesus feeding Five Thousand from all four Gospels indicate a strong and significant Biblical allusion that, because it is a story about Jesus, carries more weight than the other two allusions. This story reveals that, while out preaching, Jesus, rather than sending a hungry crowd away to starve in their barren, unfruitful city, performed a miracle and fed them all with fish and bread. O’Malley uses this allusion to show that even those still learning can begin to receive the fruits of

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