A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

This story is set in a small unnamed town somewhere located in Spain between 1930’s and 50’s. The entire scene is taking place in a cafe and a street . “It was very late and everybody had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference”. What makes it interesting is that no matter where the place is, what matters is that is a good place to be on a dark windy lonely night. “This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.” You can find comfort and a way to escape from trouble in the middle of silence. Hemingway in “The clean, well-lighted cafe” story suggested that light chases away the dark, it was the place where this old man feel relax and could take a breath from the life he was living.

In this story characters are name less because Hemingway through out the story is trying to show that there is no meaning in life; everything is nothing, that nothing matters, there is no good no bad, no right no wrong. You can see it clearly when the older waiter expresses while describing the awful nothingness of life “nada y pues nada y pues nada”, nothing can offer him comfort, and he is being overwhelmed by the spiritual emptiness. Life is nothing but each character is different , with a unique identity acting in the middle of nothing.

The connection between the old man and the old waiter is that both got to the point where insomnia has capture them, they just hate sleeping and for them life has become a no meaning segment which humans have to pass through.

PLOT

Conflict: Between man and time, each character has a different vision of the meaning of time. (youngest ones value time and older man is just passing the time until he dies).

Rising Action: When the waiter gives more drinks to the older man trying to make him go home.

Complications:Comparison between the older waiter and the younger waiter and also the connection between the old man and the old waiter. Ex. When the young waiter wants to close the cafe early, while the older waiter wants to remain open because the old man is still there. It reflects the difference between the young attitude of impatience toward the old man. “I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe...With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night...”

Climax: When the older waiter is describing Nihilism (believe that nothing exists).

Falling action: When the older waiter continues their conversation in his mind, considering the nature of life, only emptiness. Then he goes to a bodega to drink alone at the bar, which he finds very unsatisfactory, and finally he finds out that he would lie in the bed and with the daylight, he would go to sleep. “It is probably only insomnia. many must have it”. There is no reason to believe that each of his days would be less empty than the ones in the past.

THEME

Years pass and as you get old you believe that there is no meaning to this world, there is no God you are alone in the middle of nothingness. The older waiter understands the old man. he defends him, he too seeks a place to despair the night.

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899, Oak Park, Illinois. At the age of seventeen he started his career as a writer in a newspaper. Years later he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army and at his twenties became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris. He used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain and from then on he portrayed all his thoughts on his novels. He was a short story writer and essayist and was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature. He was married four times and ended his life the same way as his father, he committed suicide.

Hermingway was dealing with despair, depression and desperation for much of his life, he struggled to find a true meaning and purpose to life, he found life meaningless. He reflected himself in this story with the old man. He made the character deaf, alone, despair, alcoholic, and had insomnia which finally showed how he cut off from the rest of the world.