Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and His Life
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21st, 1899. He was the son of Dr.
Clarence Edmonds and Grace Hall Hemingway. He grew up in a small town called
Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway was brought up in a somewhat conservative household by his parents who pushed the value of politeness and religion. It wasn't until he began English classes in school that his writing talent began to shine. After he graduated from high school Hemingway turned his back on university and he decided to move to Kansas City. It was there where he got his first job as a writer. He was a reporter for the Kansas City Star. The Star was the first to introduce to him the news writing format which demands brief, to the point sentences and the smooth flowing of ideas. It seems that Hemingway adapted this style to his fiction writng. Hemingway demonstrates this talent in a short story called "A Clean Well-Lighted Place".
When he was 19 Hemingway enlisted in the army. He was rejected due to a defective left eye. He then turned to the Red Cross in which he became a second lieutenant. The Red Cross brought him to the front lines of the war in Italy.
It was here where he saw many disturbing sights which probably had a hand in shaping his character.
After extensive injuries from the war, Hemingway returned unhappily to
Oak Park...
Tennessee and then following his boyhood dream of becoming a baseball player. He started out his
served in the First World War and was in a German gas attack. By the
moved to Chicago at the age of 5. Nobody liked him there, and he was in many
He was then drafted into the U.S. Army where he was refused admission to the Officer Candidate School. He fought this until he was finally accepted and graduated as a first lieutenant. He was in the Army from 1941 until 1944 and was stationed in Kansas and Fort Hood, Texas. While stationed in Kansas he worked with a boxer named Joe Louis in order to fight unfair treatment towards African-Americans in the military and when training in Fort Hood, Texas he refused to go to the back of the public bus and was court-martialed for insubordination. Because of this he never made it to Europe with his unit and in 1944 he received an honorable discharge.
joined the army in 1915 after a frustrating career in the post office. His mother died
In 1946 graduated from high school as a Valedictorian and joined the U.S. Army. He trained in engineering school at Fort Lewis, Washington. He served 18 months in occupational forces in Japan.
of the world. Yet, there would come the day when he would be known as
the University of Michigan and when he was initially denied admission he went to work to
joined the army in 1914 and uses his knowledge he had in the war to
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.
which he served as a member of the French army. After the war was finished, he
Chicago because of a job he accepted as an MD at some University. His family
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.
Existentialism is a philosophical term that comes from the 19th century and at the time used to describe philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sarte 's and Simone de Beauvoir 's writing themes. It is a term of many vague definitions but does not contain synonyms. It is a unique concept, but could define as one 's reaction to human existence as a whole, and the difficulty finding/lacking a purpose in the world. Without experience and walking in one another 's shoes, no one will ever fully understand someones complications or situations in life. "The Clean Well-Lighted Place" is a story that is not bias, and consists of the viewpoints of an existentialist and the opinion of