A Clean Well Lighted place

Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-lighted Place” is a story based around a small café, with its two waiters, its single patron, and the events that take place just prior to its closing and soon thereafter. The patron who keeps the two waiters until closing is an elderly deaf man who attempted to commit suicide the week before. The old man’s attempt to kill himself was thwarted by his niece, who is his caretaker assumedly since his wife either died or left him and he turned to the bottle for support.

In the story, the idea of doubt is perceived as shadow and is seen throughout the entire story “…The tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that move slightly in the wind”(104). This perhaps depicts the doubt that the old man has and by placing himself in the shadow he is expressing thi

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It is not a choice that he is deaf; however, it is a choice that he stays in the dark in the café, which shows that it i!

s his own choice to be removed from society. His apparent trust in his wife not to cheat and his rant on his confidence, to me shows his unrivaled faith. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.

The cafe is a "clean, well-lighted place". It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It can be inferred that although they are alone in their own version of the darkness, they are part of the many gathering in the night in search of something.

The younger waiter, with a wife waiting at home, doesn’t see the difference between the despair of the bars and the comfort of the café due to his own happiness, while the older waiter, unable to keep the café open any longer is forced to pass his lonely night in a bodega. His deafness is also a reinforcement of the constant shadow that the old man constantly lives in which is removing him from the constant turmoil of everyday life".

Images of faith and doubt are consistently referenced to throughout the story most notably when the older waiter stated, “What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. The light symbolizes comfort and the company of others and the darkness the disorder and the lack of cleanliness of their patron’s lives. It is, as the title implies, lighted and an escape from the lingering darkness that surrounds the café and infiltrates the near-by bodegas “…(In the bodegas) light was needed and a certain cleanliness and order” (107).

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Approximate Word count = 902
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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