A Clean Well Lighted Place

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Recommended: A clean, well-lighted literary analysis

Taking another writers story and relating it to your life is what every reader does and is what makes reading interesting and joyful. When you can see other peoples situations or events in their life, if they were fictional or not, and relate it to your own experiences of your life makes you enjoy reading and expands your imagination. The story that I read it called A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, who is one of the great short story writers of the past century. In this story Hemingway focuses on a conversation of two waiters in a café. They are chatting about an old man who is a regular at the café and he comes in every night to drink and kill time. Throughout the story it is to come out that he tried to commit suicide, but his niece cut the rope when he try to hang himself. This old man has no where to go at night, nobody to go home to or even a place that he can be wanted. The two waiters talk and they start to disagree on why the man is still there and why he does not leave. The younger waiter is impatient and wants him to leave so he could also leave and go home to his wife. He makes a comment where he says, "an hour means more to me than to him", which is showing his sense of selfishness and disrespect for an elderly person.

The older waiter, on the other hand, understands despair only too well. He is saddened when the younger waiter insults the old man and is even more grieved when the younger waiter closes the café and makes the old man go home. The older waiter says to him, "You have youth, confidence, and a job. You have everything.." Although the old man has nothing to go home to or nothing to look forward to, he just has a little bit of security and comfort being able to stay a little bit longer in a clean, well-lighted place.

Throughout this story I was thinking of how this younger waiter reminded me of myself in high school. A few years ago I felt just like that younger waiter about a lot of things. I don't think I valued life as much as I do now. I took life for granted and didn't know how much it meant to not only yourself but also to others.

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