A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
By Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
水泡不挑破会自己消吗
A Study Guide
Setting
南京城市介绍The story begins at a cafe in an unidentified Spanish-speaking community. It ends at a bar in the same town. The time is the 1920s or early 1930s.
Some have argued that Hemingway contrasts light and shadow to differentiate the old man and the young people around him, and us the deafness of the old man as a symbol for his paration from the rest of the world.
Characters 国家级城市群
Older Waiter: Employee of a cafe.
Younger Waiter: Employee of the same cafe.股票概念
Old Man: Cafe customer. 艺术女神
Analysis of Major Characters 关于科幻的作文
The Older Waiter
Like the old man, the older waiter likes to stay late at cafés, and he understands on a deep level why they are both reluctant to go home at night. He tries to explain it to the younger waiter by saying, “He stays up becau he likes it,” but the younger waiter dismiss this and says that the old man is lonely. Indeed, both the old man and the older waiter are lonely. The old man lives alone with only a niece to look after him, and we never learn what happened to his wife. He drinks alone late into the night, getting drunk in cafés. The older waiter, too, is lonely. He lives alone and makes a habit of staying out late rather than going home to bed. But there is more to the older waiter’s “insomnia,” as he calls it, than just loneliness. An unnamed, unspecified malai ems to grip him. This 茂名第一滩
malai is not “a fear or dread,” as the older waiter clarifies to himlf, but an overwhelming feeling of nothingness—an existential angst about his place in the univer and an uncertainty about the meaning of life. Whereas other people find meaning and comfort in religion, the older waiter dismiss religion as “nada”—nothing. The older waiter finds solace only in clean, well-lit cafés. There, life ems to make n.
The older waiter recognizes himlf in the old man and es his own future. He stands up for the old man against the younger waiter’s criticisms, pointing out that the old man might benefit from a wife and is clean and neat when he drinks. The older waiter has no real reason to take the old man’s side. In fact, the old man sometimes leaves the café without paying. But the possible reason for his support becomes clear when the younger waiter tells the older waiter that he talks like an old man too. The older waiter is aware that he is not young or confident, and he knows that he may one day be just like the old man—unwanted, alone, and in despair. Ultimately, the older waiter is reluctant to clo the café as much for the old man’s sake as for his own becau someday he’ll need someone to keep a café open late for him.
The Younger Waiter
Brash and innsitive, the younger waiter can’t e beyond himlf. He readily admits that he isn’t lonely and is eager to return home where his wife is waiting for him. He doesn’t em to care that others can’t say the same and doesn’t recognize that the café is a refuge for tho who are lonely. The younger waiter is immature and says rude things to the old man becau he wants to clo the café early. He ems unaware that he won’t be young forever or that he may need a place to find solace later in life too. Unlike the older waiter, who thinks deeply—perhaps too deeply—about life and tho who struggle to face it, the younger waiter demonstrates a dismissive attitude toward human life in general. For example, he says the old man should have just gone ahead and killed himlf and says that he “wouldn’t want to be that old.” He himlf has reason to live, and his whole life is ahead of him. “You have everything,” the older waiter tells him. The younger waiter, immerd in happiness, doesn’t really understand that he is lucky, and he therefore has little compassion or understanding for tho who are lonely and still arching for meaning in their lives.
Point of View
The narrator prents the story in third-person point of view. The point of view becomes omniscient toward the end of the story in relation to the older waiter, allowing the narrator to prent his thoughts. The thoughts flow quickly and disjointedly. To reflect his jumbled thinking—his stream of consciousness—the narrator ignores some grammatical rules and runs words together.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
Life as Nothingness
In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning and that man is an insignificant speck in a great a of nothingness. The older waiter makes this idea as clear as he can when he says, “It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too.” When he substitutes the Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indic
ates that religion, to which many people turn to find meaning and purpo, is also just nothingness. Rather than pray with the actual words, “Our Father who art in heaven,” the older waiter says, “Our nada who art in nada”—effectively wiping out both God and the idea of heaven in one breath. Not everyone is aware of the nothingness, however. For example, the younger waiter hurtles through his life hastily and happily, unaware of any reason why he should lament. For the old man, the older waiter, and the other people who need late-night cafés, however, the idea of nothingness is overwhelming and leads to despair.
The Struggle to Deal with Despair
The old man and older waiter in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” struggle to find a way to deal with their despair, but even their best method simply subdues the despair rather than cures it. The old man has tried to stave off despair in veral unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suic
ide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, well-lit café. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the nighttime and the café, and although he is esntially in his own private world, sitting by himlf in the café is not the same as being alone.
