I chose to read and write about Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place". Here is a summary of what happens. Two waiters in a Spanish café are waiting one night for their last customer, an old man, to leave. As they wait, they talk about the old man's recent suicide attempt. The younger waiter is impatient to leave and tells the dead old man he wishes the suicide attempt had been successful. The young waiter has a wife waiting in bed for him and is unsympathetic when the older waiter says that the old man once had a wife. The old man finally leaves when the younger waiter refuses to serve him anymore.
The older waiter argues that they should have allowed their customer to stay, that being in the café is not the same as drinking at home. He explains that he is also one of those "who likes to stay late at a café . . . . With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night." He does not want to close, since there may be someone else who needs the café. When the young waiter says there are bodegas open all night, the other points out that the bright atmosphere of the cafés makes it different.
After the younger waiter goes home, the older one asks himself why he needs a clean, pleasant, quite, well-lighted place. The answer is that he requires some such semblance of order because of "a nothing that he knew too well." He begins a mocking prayer: "Our nada who art in nada as it is in nada." He then finds himself at a bodega which is a poor substitute for a clean, well-lighted café. He goes home to lie awake until daylight may finally bring him some sle...
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... self dignity that has been lost over the years. Although it seems that the young waiter helps to steal away more of his self dignity.
This story worked very well for me. I like how the author used three clearly distinct characters in the same environment and showed how time changes people. I'm not too good with picking out hidden meanings and morals from stories but I feel this story basically tries to show. This story shows how simply Hemingway writes and how effective it really is. I write nothing close to this style, but this story shows how you can describe situations and people through a lot a dialogue. You can really see the difference in characters. For such a short story, whoever reads it can still take away something that someone else may not.
When he was 19 Hemingway enlisted in the army. He was rejected due to a
In Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the old wealthy man keeps ordering drinks. One of the employees of that restaurant mention...
Ernest Hemingway is today known as one of the most influential American authors of the 20th century. This man, with immense repute in the worlds of not only literature, but also in sportsmanship, has cast a shadow of control and impact over the works and lifestyles of enumerable modern authors and journalists. To deny his clear mastery over the English language would be a malign comparable to that of discrediting Orwell or Faulkner. The influence of the enigma that is Ernest Hemingway will continue to be shown in works emulating his punctual, blunt writing style for years to come.
Throughout the 20th century there were many influential pieces of literature that would not only tell a story or teach a lesson, but also let the reader into the author’s world. Allowing the reader to view both the positives and negatives in an author. Ernest Hemingway was one of these influential authors. Suffering through most of his life due to a disturbingly scarring childhood, he expresses his intense mental and emotional insecurities through subtle metaphors that bluntly show problems with commitment to women and proving his masculinity to others.
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.
Hemingway was a man born to change how literature is looked at today. He introduced and showed the world that using simplicity in writing can make the same effect as using descriptive language. I believe that Hemingway is a very creative man and used his technique in different ways, but sometimes authors need to be specific so that the reader can really live in the moment and understand everything from the the character’s thoughts and feelings, to the setting of the story. Sadly, he committed suicide on July 2, 1961 at the age of 61, in Ketchum, Idaho. Even though Ernest Hemingway left this world years ago, his legacy still lives here with us.
When I read this story the first time, I was completely lost in finding a meaning or even making sense of it. Upon reading a second and third time, I found the story to be a story within a story, and that in order to understand it; one has to understand the symbolism in it. Hemingway used a story to tell an entirely different story. It was rather fascinating to discover some of the hidden meanings, considering the story is absolutely full of them. It takes a great writer to send the reader on such a journey of discovery, and Hemingway did just that.
Hemingway packed plenty of theme, symbolism, and overall meaning into this short story. However, the story would not have been nearly as meaningful had it been written from another point of view.
In conclusion, Hemingway uses three writing skills, which are "telling fact”, “using quality statement” and “drawing inferences to readers". They make his story more incisive and vivid. After reading his Big Two-Hearted River, I do have a clear idea about what he was writing about, and when I read the story, what he describes really showed up as some pictures in my brain. What I learned from Hemingway’s novel and Dr. Hammond’s book is to use those three powerful skills into my future writing.
	"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway is a story which emphasizes on three age groups that each have a different view of life. By analyzing the three different points of view, we see Hemingway’s perspective of an old man. The short story is about an old man that sits in a very clean bar every so often who drinks away at two o’clock in the morning and is the last one to leave. There are three waiters: one is a young man, one is an older gentleman, and the last is a very old man. All the waiters see him in a different way based on their age.
...ugh, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.’ Hemingway was not big on self-analysis; he said upon receiving his Nobel Prize that "a writer should write what he has to say and not speak it." But the facts of his life are important, for Hemingway he believed that a good writer ought to draw always upon personal experience for his material. He wrecked his body in pursuit of a macho ideal. He wrecked his relationships in pursuit of… well, who knows what exactly he was after. After a lifetime of celebrating striving and stoicism, Hemingway ended his life wracked in mental and physical pain. Whatever his personal challenges, Hemingway's professional legacy is clear. American prose is different because of him, and his unique style has influenced art, film and countless other writers. We can only imagine that Papa would be proud
...tow upon him the humanity we so brutally robbed him of the previous night. The counter clerk replied that he came into the restaurant often, ordered a cup of coffee, sat at the same booth in the dark corner, and slowly sipped the hot contents as if savoring every last drop of the civilization it provided.
The Old man found refuge in the clean, well-lit cafe, as an escape from his thoughts and knowledge that there is nothing more than human life, and the thoughts of there being no God and no Heaven. Unlike the Older waiter who found himself late at night, in the dirty, uncleaned bar without the dignity that the Old man had. He depicts the idea that he will not be able to sleep to his audience by stating he has insomnia; however, in reality we know that it is because he is afraid of nothingness, of darkness and of being alone, unlike the Old man who found refuge from these feelings in the. ”shadow of the leaves of the tree made against the electric light.”
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).
In novels or other literary works many authors write about things they dream about. Many write about what stories they have heard from fellow companions. None have written about such vivid, yet traumatic experiences as the twentieth century writer, Ernest Hemingway. That is why Hemingway's tend to concur to his real life experiences.