"Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield and "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway: Compare and Contrast Lonely Characters
The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze two short stories, "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield and "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway. Specifically it will compare and contrast the two short stories. Both of these stories feature lonely, pathetic characters that have no friends or family to help make their lives a little less forlorn. They are both very sad people who spend their lives alone, but more than that, they both face ridicule from others, which indicates how society views the aged and the lonely.Both of these characters try to escape their loneliness by going to public places. Miss Brill goes to a public band concert, but never interacts with anyone else, even though she goes every Sunday. The old man goes to a "clean, well-lighted" cafe to drink brandy so he will not be alone, as well. People around them, because of their age and their actions, ridicule both of them and both of them are hurt by this ridicule. The old man has tried to kill himself because his life is so empty, and Miss Brill goes home to her tiny a
Mansfield writes, "She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her" (Mansfield 183). They are lonely, sad characters, and their lives seem pointless somehow. However, she has more chances to make her life mean something, and to interact with others, but she does not take them, while the man has far fewer chances to really interact with others. His life is even more solitary, because he is so isolated from the world around him. Miss Brill thinks about her empty existence and realizes that no one would miss her if she was gone, and that is a terrible realization to have. Miss Brill may actually be the sadder of these two characters, because for so long she has not known what a ridiculous figure she makes, and because she gives herself airs in her world of make believe, and makes herself better than she really is. She is always dignified and appears to do the right thing, from teaching school to reading to a blind man, and she is always thinking about how she appears to others. That is clear by her action at the concert. That really makes her the more pathetic of the two characters. The old man who is deaf, still carries himself well. When people age, society turns their backs on them, and they become pathetic and sad characters. Because she does not take the initiative and attempt to reach out to others, Miss Brill has cut herself off from the world and from relationships in life. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too" (Hemingway). Hemingway writes, "Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours.
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