composition

A Clean Well-Lighted Place

Name: Daysi Fernandez

A Clean Well-Lighted Place

The setting of Ernest Hemmingway’s short story “A clean, Well-Lighted Place” is a clean Spanish café where two unidentified waiters are discussing an old man. The man, also unidentified, comes every evening, sits alone and drinks beyond the closing hour. According to the youngest waiter, the old man had attempted to commit suicide a week earlier. When the elderly waiter inquires why the old man had tried to kill himself, he is told that the man was in despair. But when asked why the old man was in desperation, the young waiter responds: “Nothing” and continue to reveal that there is no reason to commit suicide particularly when one has sufficient money like in the case of the old man. To the young waiter, committing suicide yet you are rich is un-heard of because money is everything and can solve many problems. Contrastingly, the old waiter knows too well about despair and fear and these could not be the reasons why the old man wanted to take his life. Of the old waiter, Hemmingway says, “it was nothing that he knew too well.” Without plot and characters that stand for anything and with nothing happening in this short story, Hemingway enables the reader to focus on his narrative style that gives the story its meaning.

While searching for the meaning of the story, readers are in a privileged position to find it through the author’s third person narration. That is to say, Hemingway’s omniscient third person position of narration makes it possible for a reader to see and comprehend what is happening in the minds of the speaker. Specifically reader get to know what is happening in the mind of the young waiter and the old man as well as the old waiter’s mind from whom the true meaning of the short story is revealed.

Looking closely at the mind of the old waiter, the readers can find how insightful and meaningful story is. Steadily, Hemingway’s diction enables the reader to understand the actuality of living. The reality of life, in this case, is found beneath the emotions, darkness, isolation, as well as the existential depression caused by ‘nothingness.’ Existential nihilism is the kind of philosophy that Hemingway uses in his narration. He reveals this through the old waiter who paints life as meaningless and vanity. In this regard, life is presented as empty, useless and emotionally dark especially in the existence of the old man and the old waiter.that is akin to saying that the two are victims of misery, loneliness, fear and nothingness or nada. For them, the clean, well-lighted café, though deserted, is the only refuge from where they can forget their fears and hopelessness.

Other narrative techniques that Hemingway use include eventual isolation and existential depression in his quest to express the essential themes of the short story. Eventual isolation from life is conveyed through the old man’s deafness and his habit of sitting in “the shadow of leaves of the tree”. This implies the intensity of the old man’s isolation from the rest of the world is huge. His attempt to commit suicide implies that the old man is hopeless and suffers depression. Thus, he has no chance to redeem his life. According to Hemingway, one can escape their troubles by finding a place to hide from ‘nothingness’; a clean, well-lighted place.

References

Hemingway, E. (1933). A clean, well-lighted place. Scribner’s Magazine.