Reader Response to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
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.
Hemmingway's somber tale is about conquering late night loneliness in a bright cafe. The customer drinking brandy suffers from it and so does the older waiter. However, the younger waiter cannot understand loneliness because he probably hasn't been very lonely in his life. He mentions a couple times throughout the story that he wished to be able to go home to his wife, yet the old man and old waiter have no wives to go home to like he does. This story have a deeper meaning to me because I often am in a similar situation at work.
For a little over three years, I've been a weekend bartender at an American Legion Club. I almost always work the entire weekends, open to close, which proves to be a tortorous schedule at times. Like the cafe in Hemmingway's tale, the Legion is a civilized place, often well lit, and quieter than most clubs. Because members have to either have served in the military during wartime or have a relative that did, the patronage is often older and more respectful than an average barroom. And because most members are older, they may not have a family to go home to, or they may be just a little more dismal because their lives have been longer and harder than most. In many ways, they are very much like the old man sipping brandy while hiding in the shadows of the leaves in Hemmingway's cafe. And in many ways, I am like the young waiter, anxious to leave.
The young waiter seems selfish and inconsiderate of anyone else. In the beginning of the story, he's confused why the old man tried to kill himself. "He has plenty of money," he says, as if that's the only thing anyone needs for happiness. When the old man orders another drink, the younger waiter warns him that he'll get drunk, as if to waver his own responsibility rather than to warn the old man for his sake.
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.
Bigger Thomas wasn’t just one man but every man Richard Wright, the writer of Native Son, had encounter in his childhood and adulthood. Wright had encountered a nice Bigger, violent Bigger, and a Bigger Thomas who hated the white society. He combined all of these Thomases and created Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Bigger filled with enrage and fear of the whites accidentally kills a white woman and tries to run away, but only to end in a prison cell waiting for his punishment. Bigger’s definition of himself and the white society had limited his possibilities of having a greater future but Bigger could have went to the right path if he had controlled himself and his choicies.
Bigger’s last moments of freedom was when he was running on the roofs of apartment buildings. It was very cold out that night and a lot of snow on top of the buildings. Before he was running, he was in the trapdoor and had heard a lot of noises, footsteps, shouting, and it was getting him nervous. He was about suicide but his pride got in the way. When he came to the last ledge their was no more roofs.
Across Canada and the United States there are many First Nations languages which are a part of the Algonquian language family, all of which with varying states of health. Although these languages share many characteristics of the Algonquian language family, the cultures, systems of beliefs, and geographic location of their respective Nations differentiate them. In being shaped by the landscape, cultures, and spirituality of the First Nations, the language brings the speakers closer to their land and traditions while reaffirming their identity as First Peoples. Using the Blackfoot Nation to further explore this concept, this paper will show that while language threads together First Nations culture, spirituality, traditions and land, as well as their identity, each of these essential components also maintain and revitalize the language.
Who has the role of the victim in a civilization overrun with ethnic prejudices and discrimination? Native Son, a novel by Richard Wright, focuses on the effects of racism on the oppressors and the oppressed. The novel establishes the notion that in an ethnically prejudiced society, discrimination can, and will, come from anywhere, and most significant incidents do nothing but only contribute to its decline. The protagonist lives in a world of inescapable inferiority - in a society where he will never be allowed to succeed or be able to live up its seemingly high standards simply because he is a black man. Bigger is a pitiful product of American imperialism and exploitation. Bigger embodies one of humankind’s greatest tragedies of how mass oppression pervades all aspects of the lives of the oppressed as well as the oppressor, creating a complex world of misunderstanding, ignorance, pain, and suffering. Wright eloquently exploits this theme of racism and allows the reader to truly feel how the pressure and racism affects the feelings, thoughts, self-image, and life of a black person.
The Native Americans who occupied America before any white settlers ever reached the shores “covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell paved floor” (1). These Native people were one with nature and the Great Spirit was all around them. They were accustom to their way of life and lived peacefully. All they wish was to live on their land and continue the traditions of their people. When the white settler came upon their land the values of the Native people were challenged, for the white settlers had nothing in common and believe that it was their duty to assimilate the Native Americans to the white way of life.
The French were one of the first to explore the New World in the last half of the 16th century. King Henry IV of France sent an expedition, led by Samuel de Champlain, to secure exclusive fur trade routes and agreements with the native Indians near the St. Lawrence in present day Canada. In this endeavor, trading posts were built in an area known as “New France”. The native Montagnais tribe were quick to realize the importance the French and other Europeans placed on beaver pelts and for their own benefit, they began “withholding furs to force the Europeans to compete for them” (Anderson, 8). Eventually, the French and the Montagnais’ came to an understanding through an alliance that gave the French exclusive control of the fur trade in exchange for their promise to fight with the Montagnais and their allies against their enemies, the Mohawks.
“In the 10 provinces, Canada has over six hundred Indian bands living on more than 2200 reserves, plus hundreds of thousands of Métis and non-status Indians who do not possess reserves,” (Flanagan 44).
...roups such as the Lakota and the Columbia River Indians have regained their sense of identity through the conflict between their historical agency and structural forces. This new sense of identity, forged in a struggle to regain what has been lost, has allowed these tribes to survive and find new ways to thrive into the twenty-first century, despite the belief that assimilation would have eliminated Native American tribes by this point in time. The fight for historical agency continues for many Native groups, and it may continue for many more decades unless a respectful result can be achieved in the near future.
Earnest Hemingway is known for leaving things out in his writing. He believed that if you knew something well enough, you could leave it out and still get your point across. In the short story "The End of something", he leaves a few things out. Some things he doesn't say at all and others the reader knows something before he says it. He must have know what he was writing about because he the reader can infer certain things.
In Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the old wealthy man keeps ordering drinks. One of the employees of that restaurant mention...
Nowhere in this novel can the reader see a greater example of Bigger’s fear and sense of constriction than in the accidental death of Mary Dalton. The all-encompassing fear that the white world has bred in Bigger takes over when he is in Mary’s room and in danger of being discovered by Mrs. Dalton. This internalized social oppression literally forces his hands to hold the pillow over Mary’s face, suffocating her. Bigger believes that a white person would assume that he was in the room to rape the white girl.
Fear, flight, fate. These are the three simple and meaningful words chosen by Wright to mark Bigger’s sad existence. Growing up angry at the white world, he is forced into working as a chauffeur for a rich white family, the Daltons, to support his struggling family. He is frightened and angered by the attempts of Mary Dalton and her Communist friend Jan to be friendly to him and interprets their actions as condescending. As he tries to stifle a drunken Mary to avoid detection after carrying her upstairs, he accidentally kills her. In a time of panic, he burns the body in the furnace and concocts an elaborate lie imputing the Communist Party. He lies, dodges questions, and even tries to demand ransom, but this can only last for so long before Bigger is named as chief suspect. He brings with him in flight his girlfriend Bessie and later kills her, as she cannot continue with him nor return home. After being caught and brought to trial he is supported by attorney Boris Max who defends him intensely with his own eloquence and conviction. Bigger discovers that the man, though white, feels genuinely for him, but in the end, as dictated by fate, he is sentenced to death and is granted no clemency by a society refusing to take any responsibility for a member for whom it has failed to care.
Upon leaving Boston, the young man’s status and attitude change drastically. He becomes a captive of Crow Indians who treat him badly. He becomes property of a “...scrawny, shrieking, eternally busy old woman with ragged graying hair..” He must gain her trust to earn more freedom around the camp and such. During this time he was “...finding out what loneliness could be.”
Ernest Hemingway is one of the most significant American authors of the Twentieth century. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for mastering the art of narrative and also for the impact that he has made on contemporary style. His involvement in the First World War as an ambulance driver greatly impacted his way of thinking. Severely wounded, he returned to the States and his involvement in the war lead him to write many novels concerning its treacheries. To his suicidal death in 1961, Hemingway composed a plethora of works that centered around was a major theme.