Hopefulness Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is about life’s transitions. The story is about an old man, an old waiter and a young waiter. The old man is deaf, has money and a family, attempted to commit suicide, and goes to the café to drink every night. The old waiter is sympathetic towards the old man and does not have anybody waiting for him at home. The young waiter is confident and married, is self-centered and is not compassionate towards older people. The story takes place in a café near a military base. There is an old man drinking alone at the café in the early hours of the morning. There are two waiters, a young one and an old one. The young waiter wants to close the café early and go home to his wife while the old water is willing to keep the café open. Because the young waiter wants to leave work early he tells the old man to stop drinking and leave; the old man leaves and both of the waiters close the cafe. The young waiter goes home to his wife while the older waiter goes to a local bar for a cup of coffee. While at the bar, the old waiter contemplates ...
In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
The speaker in “Five A.M.” looks to nature as a source of beauty during his early morning walk, and after clearing his mind and processing his thoughts along the journey, he begins his return home feeling as though he is ready to begin the “uphill curve” (ln. 14) in order to process his daily struggles. However, while the speaker in “Five Flights Up,” shares the same struggles as her fellow speaker, she does little to involve herself in nature other than to observe it from the safety of her place of residence. Although suffering as a result of her struggles, the speaker does little to want to help herself out of her situation, instead choosing to believe that she cannot hardly bare recovery or to lift the shroud of night that has fallen over her. Both speakers face a journey ahead of them whether it be “the uphill curve where a thicket spills with birds every spring” (ln. 14-15) or the five flights of stares ahead of them, yet it is in their attitude where these two individuals differ. Through the appreciation of his early morning surroundings, the speaker in “Five A.M.” finds solitude and self-fulfillment, whereas the speaker in “Five Flights Up” has still failed to realize her own role in that of her recovery from this dark time in her life and how nature can serve a beneficial role in relieving her of her
Individuals are prone to fear regardless of whether it relates to something as minute as choosing between clothes, or it can be something life altering, such as making a bold decision to leave home in search of a better life. In the memoir, “The Iron Road”, Al Purdy describes his fear as it relates to his future in his younger days. Al Purdy describes his life when he was just a seventeen year old boy wanting to leave home in search of a Job. He was quick in his decision to leave his parents, rather judicially so in terms of his confidence to climb aboard a train without the consent of his parents. The reader can feel sympathetic for a teen who is unaware of the potential hardships of life, when
The world of Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” exists through the mostly unemotional eyes of the character Nick. Stemming from his reactions and the suppression of some of his feelings, the reader gets a sense of how Nick is living in a temporary escape from society and his troubles in life. Despite the disaster that befell the town of Seney, this tale remains one of an optimistic ideal because of the various themes of survival and the continuation of life. Although Seney itself is a wasteland, the pine plain and the campsite could easily be seen as an Eden, lush with life and ripe with the survival of nature.
In Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the old wealthy man keeps ordering drinks. One of the employees of that restaurant mention...
...gway talks about the happy moments when sometimes we forget about the reality the stress of the daily life and just enjoy talking, drinking and laughing with your friend and beloved people.Also, this can be those evenings when you are working on something very important and do not want others to disturb you.On the last paragraph the memoir brings everything together , telling that we all have moments in life that we are poor, stressful, heart broken or losers, but still when we look back e realize that we were not really unhappy. Life has positives and negatives, it should be a blast and that’s why the book was titled a moveable feast presenting that life is not stationary, but is full of different stories, scenes and is funny how our mind makes us forget the difficult times and call up the good ones although Hemingway was writing about both sides in his memoir .
Ernest Hemingway does not feel the need to give much detail on the setting. The reader knows that it is late and that these men are in a café. The main character is sitting in the shadow and he is drinking brandy. Hemingway leaves out details from the setting but does make it clear that this café is, like the title suggest, clean and well-lighted. He only states important aspects of the setting demonstrating that details are nothing: nada. Through his writing Hemingway implies that this old man feels that little details in the world mean nothing. When the older waiter asks the younger waiter why this drunken man had tried to commit suicide a week before, the younger waiter simply answers “Nothing. He has plenty of money.” In the young waiters mind this old man has everything. Obviously, this old man feels that things like money are nothing and thus not worth living over. Ernest Hemingway, through the lack of deta...
Alienation, anxiety, panic and depression are all common to humans, and yet are often poorly understood, poorly related to, and poorly sympathized for. In reference one last time to Hemmingway’s short story, it is clear that the characters could easily be the same man at different stages in life, and different stages of anxiety over one’s life. A young waiter, healthy and confident with a family life waiting at home. Next, an older waiter, who has nothing waiting at home for him, and suffers alienation and anxiety. Lastly, an old man whose alienation has turned to panic and depression, and thus suicide. This gradual decline is common among our society, and often the young healthy characters portray our hope and dreams, while the older characters convey lost hope, the despair of loneliness and the inevitably of the aging
In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, written by Ernest Hemingway, the plot focuses on two waiters watching an old, deaf man and discussing whether or not the old, deaf man should leave. The two waiters have differing views about the old man mainly because of the perspective of each of the waiters. One of the waiters is younger and want the old man to leave so they can close up the café. He wants to get home at a reasonable hour and says, “I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock.” On the other hand, the older waiter sympathizes with the m...
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 tone of the story is one of dread, sadness, and nervousness. The narrator in the story is a sad, paranoid and nervous character. His life seems to not be going that well, because he is living with the old man. The story doesn’t go into why the narrator was living there, but if you have a roommate your finances may be frayed.
In the final few paragraphs, Hemingway mentions that it is getting dark outside, and later that "it was quite dark and still raining in the palm trees" (170). Then, just before the maid comes to the door with the cat, a light comes on in the square. The amount of light seems to correlate with the hopes of the wife and the chance she has to change her situation. The light near the end is a signal for the arrival of the cat, a gift from the hotel-keeper. The reader is left to wonder whether the woman will demand more respect from her husband now that she has experienced a feeling of importance and self-worth.
The story begins with a rather heavy premise of the world’s impending demise, yet, this premise is immediately juxtaposed by descriptions of children playing together in “the light of the green hurricane lamps” and the “easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air” (Bradbury 1). There is a serenity to be found that simply doesn’t match up with how somber the topic should be, and the calm nature of that introductory scene never really fades away as the plot progresses. Despite this being the last night of the world, the couple takes time to wash and stack dishes with a “special neatness”, and they sit “together by the fireplace watching the charcoal embers” as time passes by (Bradbury 3-4). There is no fear, despair, or panic found within the atmosphere, only peace, and this was intentional. The atmosphere suggests that when faced with the totality of existence what really matters are the subtle things that bring about personal peace. When all is said and done, life is found in the smell of coffee while watching the fireplace.
Joyce surrounds the young protagonist with the darkest imagery as develops the exposition of the story. For instance, North Richmond Street, where the boy lives is “blind,” and “the short days of winter” darkened the streets where he and the other neighbor boys play making the houses seem “somber” (Joyce 741). However, all is not dark in the lad’s life, well not at first. Joyce’s use of light in association with Mangan’s sister, creates a sense of hope for this boy who is covered in darkness. In fact, whenever she appears she is bathed in light. For example, Joyce first describes her “waiting” for the boys, “her figure defined by the light” (741), and later while protagonist speaks with her about Araby, he notices that “the light from the lamp opposite [the] door caught the white curve of her neck; lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing” (Joyce 742); she truly is the light of his life. In addition, Joyce could be hinting at her innocence and purity present in
At first glance “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway is an unemotional, unfinished and simplistic narration of two waiters and an old man. However, when readers dig a little deeper for insight, they can truly see how meaningful this story actually is as Hemingway captures the source and essence of nihilistic thought, in a time of moral and religious confusion after the World War I. The post World War thinking of Hemingway and the Lost Generation in Paris was expressed and represented through his ideas, which were influenced by the ordeals of war. Due to Hemingway’s disturbing and unsettling experiences while serving in the military, he portrays the idea that all humans await an inevitable fate of eternal nothingness and everything that we value is worthless. He states that all humans will die alone and will be “in despair” about “nothing” (Hemingway 494), also that people will look for a “calm and pleasant café” (Hemingway 496) to escape from his misery. Hemingway goes on to say “[Life is] all a nothing, and a man [is] nothing too” (Hemingway, 496), undoubtedly abolishing any existence of a higher being. After observing the actions of individuals in the past three decades, Hemingway attempts to elaborate in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” that life is about gradual despair and not continual enlightenment and that we all will eventually fade into “nada” (Hemingway 497).