Clean Well Light Place
A Clean Well Lighted Place Earnest Hemmingway Analysis The conversation starts out with the narrator setting up the story and the scene, as most do. An indication is made about the setting in the café with the leaves giving a shadow and hence telling us that the story was taking place on a patio or street of the café. An old man that was deaf and seems to be on hard times, which he was, especially after finding out that he had recently tried to commit suicide. One of the waiters who’s table the old man was sitting at began to get impatient with him just sitting there taking up his time, that he felt was better suited for sleep since three-o-clock in the morning was too late for bedtime.
This was one indicator of the waiter’s age, his impatience was most likely derived from his youthfulness and preoccupation with a young family at home. Several statements made by the younger waiter like, “You’ll be drunk” and “You should have killed yourself last week”, began to encourage the older waiter to take up for the old man and let his true feelings out instead of being passive and courteous as he had been in previous conversation. As the ensuing conversation takes place between the waiters we begin to realize each one’s priorities and what relationship that the old man plays in their lives. The older waiter began to recognize himself in the old man, not mentioning anything about a family of his own at home. Another reason the older waiter sympathized with...
Using the detail,“Dinner threw me deeper into despair,” conveys the painful feelings caused by her family at dinner (Paragraph 5). This detail indicates that Tan was continuingly losing hope that the night would get better. Tan reveals these agonizing feelings to make the reader feel compunctious. In making the reader feel sorry for her, Tan knows she can continue to misreport details in the passage without being questioned. The detail,“What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners,” emblematizes the dishonor Tan feels towards her relatives and cultural background (Paragraph 2). This detail implies that due to Tan’s attraction to Robert, she will detract her feelings of others to better her relationship with Robert. Tan used this detail to reveal that if Tan cannot better her relationship with Robert, she will become despondent. As a result of distorting details, the passage illustrates Tan’s dishonorable feelings towards her cultural
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.
The adults, although they felt awkward at first, respect each other’s culture. When Amy’s dad had finished his meal, he “belched loudly, thanking [her] mother for her fine cooking,” and although the minister was uncomfortable at first, he “managed to muster up a quiet burp.” The author’s use of imagery displays two people with contrasting cultures respecting each other’s heritage. Robert and Amy’s actions portray them as anxious and insecure, but the adults display a lively and jovial mood. During the dinner Amy’s relatives “murmured with pleasure” amongst themselves while Robert and his family are silent. Amy feels her relatives are being rowdy, but in reality they are expressing their happiness through conversations with one another. Tan’s use of the word “pleasure” implies that they are enjoying themselves and “murmured” has a connotation of being quiet, so Amy perceives the dinner as worse than it really is. Amy’s mother senses Amy’s unease, and knowingly tells her she understands that Amy “wants to be the same as American girls on the outside, but inside you must always be Chinese.” Tan’s use of dialogue expresses Amy’s struggle to find her identity and it displays her mother as
In the story he tells us how he and his father would sit and wait at the restaurant his mother worked at. How is mother would whirl around the restaurant “pencil poised over pad, while fielding questions about the food” (9) calculating each step she took. “She walked full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand. She stood at a table or booth and removed a plate for this person, another for that person, then another, remembering who had the hamburger, who had the fried shrimp, almost always getting it right.” (10) He described his mother’s calculated steps and how she had to modify her behavior for the needs and wants of each guest and table.
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...
The husband was also selfish in his actions. With good intentions, the wife had planned a surprise for him, but he was not pleased. “Instead, he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for embarrassing him” (13). When the narrator describes the husband at the beginning, he has a “self-satisfied face” (3). Embarrassment is a result of feeling self-conscious. Because of his self-conscious nature, he assesses first how the few people in the restaurant will view him because of his wife’s actions. He does not prioritize appreciation for his wife’s effort and care, but rather sees the worst in her misguided actions. The husband’s selfishness causes him to be prideful, which in turn causes him to destroy his relationship with his wife through his actions.
This short story revolves around a young boy's struggle to affirm and rationalize the death and insanity of an important figure in his life. The narrator arrives home to find that Father James Flynn, a confidant and informal educator of his, has just passed away, which is no surprise, for he had been paralyzed from a stroke for some time. Mr. Cotter, a friend of the family, and his uncle have much to say about the poor old priest and the narrator's relationship with him. The narrator is angered by their belief that he's not able, at his young age, to make his own decisions as to his acquaintances and he should "run about and play with young lads of his own age ..." That night, images of death haunt him; he attempts make light of the tormenting face of the deceased priest by "smiling feebly" in hopes of negating his dreadful visions. The following evening, his family visits the house of the old priest and his two caretakers, two sisters, where he lies in wake. There the narrator must try and rationalize his death and the mystery of his preceding insanity.
He could be described as very close-minded to anyone else 's opinions, he is a man of self-assurance. "I have confidence. I am all confidence" (Hemingway 202) He expresses in the story. This man has a family, stability, his job, and everything to look forward to. Although he contains the inability to connect with others in the story due to the lack of experience. When the older waiter said "what is an hour" he replied "more to me than him" (202) This quote shows his lack of empathy for one who does not feel worth in themself, he rushes out with no worries about anyone else 's problems. The younger waiter 's mentality consists of selfish views that since he has all he needs in life and happiness within himself that other 's lives are less important, with less meaning. He approaches the old man sitting and calling for another brandy exclaiming "You should have killed yourself last week" (201). This quote is ironic because the man could not hear the bold statement made by the younger waiter, but highlights the mentality of his that once you lose the materialistic qualities of life, it 's over. The younger waiter shows a more fatalism perspective, with expressing that everything happens for a reason and that the man was supposed to kill himself that night. Hermingway successfully created a character with opposite views to better express the
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of ridding his life of the man's "Evil Eye" (34). Although afflicted with overriding fear and derangement, the narrator still acts with quasi-allegiance toward the old man; however, his kindness may stem more from protecting himself from suspicion of watching the old man every night than from genuine compassion for the old man.
Ernest Hemingway's short story titled "A Clean Well-Lighted place" deals with the loneliness, isolation, and depression felt by many during the modernist period. The story takes place in a well lit café, occupied by two waiters (one old, and one young) and an old deaf man. This story is the perfect example of the modernist form because it questions the meaning of life. Joseph Gabriel, in is essay titled "The Logic of Confusion in: Hemingway's "A Clean well Lighted Place", believes that "the dominant visual image of the story is the radical contrast between the minute spot of light represented by the café and the infinite surrounding darkness outside."(Joseph Gabriel, The Logic of Confusion in: Hemingway's "A Clean well Lighted Place", Pg, 541) One can't help but compare the story to the image of moths att...
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 to 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.
By looking at the old man, the reader can easily come up with many conclusions and symbolic interpretations. Firstly, the old age is a symbolic representation of all the aged persons, who appear discontented with their age. These individuals are more reserved and withdrawn from the rest of the society. The writer therefore omits the detailed explanations of the problems associated with advanced age and hence leaves the reader to make deductions. This means that he had the knowledge of these issues but failed to incorporate them into the story in order to make the reader understand better and develop a broader insight into the problem.
Poverty is “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions” (Merriam-Webster dictionary, 2015); in other words, struggling to provide a comfortable living style. It is the cause of family stress and many other problems, especially for the children. Millions of people around the world are struggling with poverty; families suffering to provide enough food seem to be growing in numbers. According to the United States Census Bureau, the poverty rate was highest in the 1960s and decreased greatly in the 1970s. However, it is now slowly starting to increase again. Recently released census data by the Bureau showed that one in five people are living in poverty (Census Bureau, 2014). Poverty is even
Poverty is the insufficiency or the absence of a certain amount of material owned or money. Poverty is a various concept that include social, economic, and political elements. The problems of poverty are many, like child development, crime, education, and low social mobility. However, there are many solutions that we can use to stop poverty, like creating good jobs, working full time , raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, not having children before getting married, and getting good education. Poverty is Affecting thousands of people every day, leaving people on welfare and without homes, so governments needs to create jobs for the homeless so that they can get back on their feet again. When they have jobs, they have income,
The young boy while tending to his mother also did the following things to try and help her get better because of how sick she was at the time. When he made her some tea and it was a little strong he agreed with her in a manner of almost trying to be equal saying that “”’Tis too strong,” I agreed cheerfully, remembering the patience of the saints in their many afflictions. “I’ll pour half of it out.”… “’Tis my fault,” I said, taking the cup. “I can never remember about tea.”” (207) When the young boy says this I feel that he is trying to act as if he is older than he really is because he is “the man of the house” and he is taking care of his sick mother. Also, while he has been taking care of his mother, he decides not to go to school today because taking care of his mother is much more important to him than going to school. After he turns down the bus ride to school he offers to go to the store to pick up a few things that his mother might want to get but is certainly unable being laid up in bed all day. So he offer to get eggs because ““What will I get for dinner? Eggs?” As hard boiled eggs were the only dish I could manage.”(207) I believe that in this exchange he denotes his young age because all he could make is a simple kind of dish that a lot of people and young people certainly know how to prepare.