"A Clean Well-lighted Place"
             In Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place" (reprinted in R.S. Gwynn, Fiction 2nd ed. [New York: Longman, 1998] 104), images of light are contrasted with images of darkness and shadow to symbolize the contrasting ideas of faith and doubt. These images of opposites are the theme of the story, and throughout the stories length they reinforce its meaning.
             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 this, or possibly that he is trying to remove himself from the rest of the world, since his attempt at suicide failed. 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"...The old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he could feel the difference"(104). In his deafness he is enabled to disconnect from the rest of the world, which is the most probably reason for his loneliness. 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 i...