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Literature theme of ernest hemingway
Literature theme of ernest hemingway
Literature theme of ernest hemingway
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There is a common exercise to evaluate one’s outlook on life: take a glass, fill it halfway and ask yourself, “Is this glass half empty or half full?” Decide on either one depending on how you see it, either half empty (hopelessness) or half full (optimism). We all see the centered brim of water differently based on our own personal circumstances. The old man in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” would see the glass as half empty. Why? Emptiness is what fills his heart. There’s no gratification in having “plenty of money” and a family, but he finds indulgence in emptying a literal glass of brandy every night somewhere he finds safe, like the well-lit café (167). Even though the story is never clear about why this man is so distraught, the reader is able to understand how he is unable to leave the café. The same theme applies for the two waiters serving him – one has a life to live with his wife, and the other lacks confidence and is one to “stay late at the café”. One has found life, and the other has a lack of confidence and nothing to be proud of. Hemingway develops external symbolism through the setting in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” like purity and light/ darkness, and also a contrasting theme of lifelong fulfillment and temporary fulfillment.
This café, possibly somewhere in Spain, is described as a place where those “who do not want to go to bed” and those “who need a light for the night” are welcome (169). Instead of wallowing in pitiful circumstance at home, those who need hope are those that come to the café, as this place depicts a safe haven for the empty and gives hope to the hopeless, further exemplifying Hemingway’s contrast of faith and discouragement in the story. Even as the two waiters converse, the reader sees th...
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... short story and deliver a different outlook on life, which is one that each character seemed to have as “Hemingway’s style of writing brings a hard-bitten realism to American fiction” quotes an outside source. The modernism in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is the old man continually searching for fulfillment but only receiving temporary gratification, which is so prevalent in today’s society.
Works Cited
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. ""A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"" Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 12th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 167-70. Print.
Bassett, Olena. "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." A Clean Well-Lighted Place: The Revelation of Nada. Lonestar College System, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.
Thornhill, Matthew. "ENGL112." : Ernest Hemingway. Http://www.blogspot.com, 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.
Early on, Hemingway describes that he was “always hungry with the walking and the cold and the working” (22). While spending the day with his wife at the horse races, Hemingway wants to “go to a wonderful place and have a truly grand dinner” (47). The two of them head to Michaud’s, a finer restaurant. Though Hemingway debates whether he is truly hungry in the simple sense or in a deeper way, he decides that he is hungry in the simple sense, and they have a “wonderful meal” at Michaud’s (49). There is some sort of practicality of being hungry as Hemingway argues that “in Paris, then, you could live very well on almost nothing and by skipping meals occasionally and never buying any new clothes, you could save and have luxuries” (83), as though, it is more important to have “luxuries” than it is to have money for meals. This necessity for hunger, is characterized better through the methaporhical meaning in A Moveable
The main focus of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is on the pain of old age suffered by a man that we meet in a cafe late one night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people around him, and uses his deafness as an image of his separation from the rest of the world.
We notice, right from the beginning of his life, that Ernest Hemingway was confronted to two opposite ways of thinking, the Manly way, and the Woman way. This will be an important point in his writing and in his personal life, he will show a great interest in this opposition of thinking. In this short story, Hemingway uses simple words, which turn out to become a complex analysis of the male and female minds. With this style of writing, he will show us how different the two sexes’ minds work, by confronting them to each other in a way that we can easily capture their different ways of working. The scene in which the characters are set in is simple, and by the use of the simplicity of the words and of the setting, he is able to put us in-front of this dilemma, he will put us in front of a situation, and we will see it in both sexes point of view, which will lead us to the fundamental question, why are our minds so different?
Updlike, John. "A&P." Literature. An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 12th Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education (US), 2012. 17-21. Print
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
In Hemingway's short story there are three characters, two waiters and their customer. Of these three, two are older men who are experiencing extreme loneliness. The customer sits alone drinking his glasses of brandy slowly, and very carefully, peacefully becoming drunk. While he is meticulously drinking his alcohol, the two waiters talk about him. They discuss his suicide attempt of the week past. The younger waiter doesn't seem to understand why a man with money would try to end his life. Although the older waiter seems to have an insight into the customer's reason, he doesn't share this with the younger one. He seems to know why this deaf old man is so depressed, and sits there alone and silent. When the younger waiter rushes the customer, the older waiter objects. He knows what it is like to go home to emptiness at night, while the younger man goes home to his wife. The older waiter remarks on the differences between him and his younger companion when he says, "I have never had confidence and I am not young.&qu...
One observation that can be made on Hemingway’s narrative technique as shown in his short stories is his clipped, spare style, which aims to produce a sense of objectivity through highly selected details. Hemingway refuses to romanticize his characters. Being “tough” people, such as boxers, bullfighters, gangsters, and soldiers, they are depicted as leading a life more or less without thought. The world is full of s...
In life we have to make compromises but that doesn’t mean that we have to compromise our thoughts, beliefs, or aspirations to please another. I think that’s what Hemingway was trying to get through. He wrote a piece that was very subtle but packed a lot of meaning and touches on what people really go through in life. When you sit here and dissect the story your imagination takes over and really makes you take your personal experiences and tie them into the story. Your personal experiences can ultimately leave you with a story you can understand thoroughly and understand the emotions coming off of the characters.
Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver are two of the most influential authors of American literature. Carver’s literary works are often considered to have a close connection to Hemingway’s, because of their similar writing styles, such as simplicity and clarity (Mclnerney, 1989). However, though their works share the same aesthetic feature, their works convey fairly different philosophical inquiry on values of faith and existence. Ernest Hemingway’s A Clean, Well-lighted Place and Carver’s Cathedral are two works with distinctive views on questioning the life and manhood.
The material objects that Hemingway uses to convey the theme are beer, the good and bad hillsides, and a railroad station between two tracks. The beer represents the couple’s, “the American” and “the girl’s”, usual routine activity they do together. This bothers the girl because “that’s all [they] do … look at things and try new drinks.” This shows that the girl is tired of doing the same thing and wants to do something different, like having a baby and a family, instead of fooling around all the time. She wants to stop being a girl and become a woman. Hemingway then presents the reader with two contrasting hills. One hill on one side of the station is dull, desolate, and barren; “it had no shade and no trees”, very desert like. However, the other hill on the other side of the station is beautiful, plentiful in nature, and had “fields of grain and tress along the banks of the Ebro River.” Also on each side of the station where each hill is, there is a train track. These objects are symbolic devices prepare the reader in realizing that the characters are in a place of decision. The railroad station is a place of decision where one must decide to go one way or the other. The t...
Ernest Hemingway was a man whose writing could be summed up as minimalistic and dynamic. While his stories at first glance seem simple, they are deceptively so. He wrote sharp, deliberate dialogue with exact descriptions of places and things. A postmodernist icon, Hemingway broke chronology in his stories and nudged towards the idea of multiple truths. In his story, "In Another Country" he uses both of these postmodern techniques. By effectively using fewer words than his contemporaries to deliver works that resonated stronger with his audience, Ernest Hemmingway earned his place as one of the great postmodernists of the twentieth century.
Hemingway has created a situation where she is forced to depend on him because she is a young, immature, girl in an adult situation. It is when the American tells jig that “we will be fine afterward. Just like we were before, it is the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” that she realizes nothing will ever be the same no matter what he says. During one discussion she says “we could have everything” the man agrees, then she says “no we can’t it isn’t ours anymore and once they take it away, you can never get it back.” He says “But they haven’t taken it away” and her response is “we’ll wait and see.” The American doesn’t realize that at this point she has discovered that if he cannot love her and be happy while she is pregnant how he will ever truly love her as much as she loves him. According to Robert Barron many critics believe that the couple’s relationship has a bleak and ultimately poor ending (Barron). The older waiter in “A clean, Well-Lighted Place” is dealing with a similar situation when a wealthy old man who is a regular at the café he works at comes in after a failed suicide
Ryan, Ken. "THE CONTENTIOUS EMENDATION OF HEMINGWAY'S 'A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE'." The Hemingway Review 18.1 (1998): 78. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.
Through the characters' dialogue, Hemingway explores the emptiness generated by pleasure-seeking actions. Throughout the beginning of the story, Hemingway describes the trivial topics that the two characters discuss. The debate about the life-changing issue of the woman's ...
In 1933, Ernest Hemmingway wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. It's a story of two waiters working late one night in a cafe. Their last customer, a lonely old man getting drunk, is their last customer. The younger waiter wishes the customer would leave while the other waiter is indifferent because he isn't in so much of a hurry. I had a definite, differentiated response to this piece of literature because in my occupation I can relate to both cafe workers.