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A Clean Well Lighted Place Symbolism Essay

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The Symbolism of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
The café is the place to be the older waiter believes is a place in which he needs to get away from the darkness and go to the light, in which the story revolves around. The darkness is a main symbol for the melancholy of emptiness and the light is the way to escape that. “I am one of those who stay late at the café… With all those who need a light for the night.’” (Paragraph 70). In the short story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, Ernest Hemmingway shows that there is nothing more to the world progressing through symbolism throughout the story creating a unifying theme of darkness and light. The story of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” bases on a conversation of the two waiters of the café watching a drunk, old man who they pity. As the two waiters watch the old man, the narrator says, “A girl and a soldier went by on the street.” (Paragraph 10). The street lights shined on the couple as the old man sat in the shadows. “The street light shone on the brass number on …show more content…

The old man tried to kill himself before his niece found him hanging himself, which symbolizes how he is depressed. The younger waiter keeps mocking the old man about it, insulting him by saying, “’You should have killed yourself last week!’” (Paragraph 19) because he is deaf, in which his deafness represents his and the older waiter’s isolation from the world from the world. Because he cannot hear what the younger waiter is saying, the old man just replies, “’A little more’” (Paragraph 19). Another essential symbol relating to the old man that Hemmingway had made was how the old man was under the shadow of the leaves. The narrator says, “…the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind.” The shadow of the leaves is the darkness he is in right outside of the café, isolating

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