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 cafe, 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 t
The older waiter's statement that, "I am one of those who. The cafe is a "clean, well-lighted place". 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 cafe due to his own happiness, while the older waiter, unable to keep the cafe open any longer is forced to pass his lonely night in a bodega. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nothing and then nothing. 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. His feelings of being lost in an eternal loop of nothing seems to drive him near mad by his continuous use of nothing, as if to say his life is nothing. There are vast contrasting opinions among the waiters as well,". Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs a cafe. Many must have it"(108), that unites them in this cafe.
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Acceptance Essays
