A Clean Well-Lighted Place Essay

Ernest Hemingway’s writing reflects the historical landscape and artistic movements of his time. As the world changed, the flourishing age of Victorian writing transformed into the era of Modernism. One can see this noticeable change through the structure of Hemingway’s signature writing style, as well as his focus on the great internal and external struggles presented at the turn of the century. Hemingway’s In Our Time fits cohesively within the expression of visual art, poetry, and prose--including the artist’s willingness to break out of the typical structure and traditional form of storytelling.

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” the narrator describes the importance of the cafe compared to all the other places that are open to convey the idea of loneliness and despair. Through the use of imagery, symbolism, point of view and, allegory Ernest Hemingway establishes a connection between the older waiter and the deaf guy, as he illustrates the significance the well-lit cafe brings to their lonely night. As the waiters discuss their thoughts on being open so late, the older waiter claims to be one of those who enjoy the aura of the cafe being open so late compared to other places. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.“ The role the cafe plays to diminish loneliness and despair does not go unrecognized by the older waiter and deaf guy who find their escape in that clean well-lit cafe. Loneliness screams louder at night for those who walk through it by themselves. They look to find comfort in a well-lit place with a calm and pleasant aura. The feeling displayed between the old deaf man and older waiter does not register with the younger waiter who does not understand the search of finding peace found in the cafe. The younger waiter has a wife to go home to as the older deaf man and older waiter have nothing and that is their escape from their dark loneliness, the cafe. Since it is clear that Ernest Hemingway has established that the old deaf man

Sadness, frustration, or discontent, however it’s put, there is an obvious difference with the characters in, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway, and their ideas of mortality and old age. The short story shows the concept of “nothingness,” displayed through a very depressing view on life. This suggesting that all people, even those who are happy and content, will eventually end up lonely, drunk, or unhappy. By allowing a reader to view this from three diverse perspectives, Hemingway is able to render how someone’s attitude of their own life can go from one extreme to another. Allowing suicide as a final option to surface for some.

Hemingway’s usage of theme, setting, persuasive writing, and verbal irony helps to create different moods throughout the story. The theme “talk without communication”

It shows what there is. It does not search for what there might be. The old man sits in the shadow and looks down. Joyce's character carries a chalice of faith through a maelstrom of mundane chatter (228). Hemingway's sips a glass of brandy. To him, the mundane is not a distraction on the way to higher awareness, it is all there is. If one does not like it, one may numb themselves to it, or one may quit it. This old man will not listen to myths of meaning and comfort. He has gone deaf, perhaps out of not wanting to hear any more empty promises or stories that fail to hold up. Joyce's boy has had his first crushing disappointment. Hemingway's old man has had his last. There is no more looking up for him. His drink, his regular café, these are his comfort and his refuge.

Hemingway does not tell his readers much about his characters. Instead he lets the dialogue from the two waiters give an insight to what all of their lives might be like. In

Ernest Hemingway's short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," first published in 1933, is written in his characteristic terse style. It is the story of two waiters having a conversation in a café, just before closing up and going home for the night. They cannot leave because they still have a customer. One is anxious to get home to his wife, while the other sympathizes with the old man sitting at the table. Without realizing it, they are discussing the meaning of life.

Hemingway chose a unique approach to his story. Many short stories are filled with formal speech. However, Hemingway presented to us his story, without using exquisite words or elongated sentences. His writing was direct and minimal, but also precise. The author allowed us to create our own environment, by playing off common experiences in everyday life. By doing that he produced an atmosphere that can easily be fashioned and manipulated by the reader in order to create a relatable surrounding.

Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” like all of his other stories, is based around a famous code of behavior. The philosophical premises that are demonstrated in Hemingway’s code of behavior tell people to accept that there are no guidelines or rules in life, face reality and see things exactly as they are, no matter how difficult, contain their despair and self-pity by sheer willpower, don’t make trouble for others, and instead of judging others, people should view the unenlightened with irony and pity. By analyzing “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” the reader can find different examples of this code of behavior within Hemingway’s writing.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is my favorite Hemingway story, so I wrote a parody mocking Hemingway’s masterful dialogue in the piece and other Hemingway characteristics. I took a careful look at the story and remembered a quote by Hemingway describing his writing process at a café in France. The quote reads “It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write”. This quote inspired the old man in my parody to be Hemingway at his favorite café engaged in his writing process. The story of my parody is essentially a story of an elderly Hemingway seated late in his favorite cafe writing while the two waiters gather the courage to ask him to leave.

Hemingway starts the book out by moving to Italy where he joined the Army during World War 1 as an ambulance driver (Sindelar, 2014). Hemingway joined the war to end all wars, ready to display honor and courage (Sindelar, 2014). During battle, he was blown up in a trench (Sindelar, 2014). After the war returning home, he fell in love, contemplated marriage, and was rejected by the woman he loved (Sindelar, 2014). His conflict with death, battle wound, and first experience with love, all became key events for developing a code of behavior for facing life’s challenges (Sindelar,

Ernest Hemingway has this uncanny, yet, clear and distinctive writing style, that has made him a successful author and a means of many criticisms. One critic in particular, David M. Wyatt, says that Hemingway has a way of making the beginning of his stories “raise the very specter of the end against which they are so concerned to defend.” (Wyatt). In his two short stories, “Hills Like White Elephants” and “A Clean-Well Lighted Place, Hemingway draws out this uncanny effect in anticipating the sense of an ending. He paints this very minimalistic style, “only centering on surface elements without giving explicit content of the underlying themes”(Wyatt) he creates. He wants readers to depict what’s below the surface, letting the crux emit through.

      Hemingway's second portrayal of symbolism that a reader may distinguish is the café itself.  The café represents a sanctuary of the evilness of the world.  The namesake of the short story is a clue for the reader to see that the café would represent some form of an asylum not only from the elements of nature, but also safety from evil.  An example of the usefulness of this sanctuary is how the deaf old man uses the café as a safe-haven to be to himself after the incident where he almost succeeded in committing suicide and enjoys the comfort the café gives.  The old waiter represents in the café the kindness and caring that the café should provide; whereas the younger waiter is more of a materialistic character.  He clearly displays shallowness and selfishness.  Arthur Waldhorn writes that the older waiter helps keep the light on a little longer at the café for those, who like himself, 'do not want to go to bed.' (P 28)  The younger waiter is a protagonist in attitude of the older waiter.  The philosophy of Nihilism is brought into this theme when the older man recites the Lord's Prayer but substitutes the word "nada" for every noun in it.  Nihilism is brought onto a larger scale because it is very evident that there is nothing to believe in, even as a

This story was written by Hemingway in 1933. It details an evening's interaction between two waiters, and their differing perspectives of life. Hemingway uses an old man as a patron to demonstrate the waiter's philosophies. Hemingway is also visible in the story as the old man, someone who society says should be content, but has a significant empty feeling inside. What follows is a line-by-line analysis, putting emphasis on the philosophies of the waiters.

A clean well lighted place by Ernest Hemingway has a few themes that stand out clearly but the one theme that stands out to me is despair. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, despair means to lose all hope or confidence. In the story, the older waiter and the old deaf man somehow share a common bond of despair. Both men are of age and like to be out, late at night, alone. Asides from the story alone, the theme of the story can be brought out by the setting. The setting contributes to the story’s theme in different ways. The setting contributes to the mood of the story, to the structure of the story, and to the lesson of the story. The café represents salvation for despair which is shown through the setting of the