A Clean, Well-Lighted Place BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him. "Last week he tried to commit suicide," one wai ter said.
"Why?" "He was in despair." "What about?" "Nothing." "How do you know it was nothing?" "He has plenty of money." They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside hi m. "The guard will pick him up," one waiter said. "What does it matter if he gets what he's after?" "He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago." The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer w ith his glass. The younger waiter went over to him. "What do you want?" The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said. "You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at hi m. The waiter went away. "He'll stay all night," he said to his coll eague. "I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week." The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched 1
out to the old man's table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy. "You should have killed yourself last week," he sa id to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. "A little more," he said. The waiter wa iter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile."Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again. "He's drunk now," he said. "He's drunk every night." "What did he want to kill himself for?" "How should I know." "How did he do it?" "He hung himself with a rope." "Who cut him down?" "His niece." "Why did they do it?" "Fear for his soul." "How much money has he got?" "He's got plenty." "He must be eighty years old." "Anyway I should say he was eighty." "I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?" "He stays up because he likes it." "He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me." "He had a wife once too." "A wife would be no good to him now." "You can't tell. He might be better with a wife." "His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down." "I know." "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing." "Not always. This old man is clean. clea n. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him." 2
"I don't want to look at him. I wish he w ould go home. He has no regard for those w ho must work." The old man looked from his glass across acro ss the square, then over at the waiters. "Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The wa iter who was in a hurry came over. "Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners. "No more tonight. Close now ." "Another," said the old man. "No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head. The old man stood up, slowly counted co unted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip. The wa iter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity. "Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. "It is not half-past two." "I want to go home to bed." "What is an hour?" "More to me than to him." "An hour is the same." "You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home." "It's not the same." "No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a w ife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry. "And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?" "Are you trying to insult me?" "No, hombre, only to make a joke." "No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. "I have confidence. I am all confidence." "You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said."You have everything." "And what do you lack?" "Everything but work." "You have everything I have." 3
"No. I have never had confidence and I am not young." "Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up." "I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said. "With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night." "I want to go home and into bed." "We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone w ho needs the cafe." "Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long." "You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is w ell lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves." "Good night," said the younger waiter. "Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation w ith himself, It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was w as a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y naday pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine. "What's yours?" asked the barman. "Nada." "Otro loco mas," said the barman and turned away. "A little cup," said the waiter. The barman poured it for him. "The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,” the waiter said. The barman looked at him but did not answer. It w as too late at night for conversation. "You want another copita?" the barman asked. "No, thank you," said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted 4
cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with wi th daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
Notes on
"A Clean Well-Lighted Place"
é"--not a bar as the waiter makes clear in the last paragraph of the story. The The setting of the story is a "clean, well-lighted caf é"--not place is a town or city in Spain--as we can conclude from the currency: the old man pays for his drinks with pesetas--the chief monetary unit of Spain. The time setting is not specific. We could say that the setting is contemporary with Hemingway's writing--i.e. 1933 however it is not important to the story. Hemingway essentially universalizes the story by not fixing it in time but suggesting that it’s theme is timeless.
Re: "another saucer" The way the waiters keep track of the tab for each table is by giving a new saucer with each drink. Each saucer represents one drink, so to calculate the final bill they count the saucers, as we see the old man doing later in the story, and multiply the number of saucers by the price per drink. Re: "Fear for his soul" Suicide was considered a mortal sin. Re: "there are bodegas open all night long." A bodega is a cellar or shop selling wine and food. Re: "that is all that is provided" The café is closing, but some stand-up bars remain open. In the next paragraph, the waiter stands in front of one--presumably just a little down the street. The barman does not seem in a hurry to shut up his shop, and even seems a little anxious to sell a drink to the waiter. Re: "nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada" Literally this means nothing and then nothing and nothing and then nothing Re: "Our nada who art in nada" The beginning of the Lord's prayer with significant words replaced by "nada" or nothing. The Lord's prayer begins: "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . ." After this the waiter does the same for "Hail Mary full of grace . . .". Re: "otro loco mas" These words mean another lunatic. Re: "copita" A copita can mean a glass of brandy. It also can be translated as "a little cup" the words the waiter uses just before when he is asking the barman for the drink.
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway, analyzed by Elizabeth S. Wall The main focus of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is on the pain of old age suffered by a man that we meet in a cafe late one night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people around him, and uses his deafness as an image for his separation from the rest of the world. Near the end of the story, the author shows us the desperate emptiness of a life near finished without the fruit of its labor, and the aggravation of the old man's restless mind that cannot find peace. Throughout this story stark images of desperation show the old man's life at a point when he has realized the futility of life and finds himself the lonely object of scorn. The most obvious image used by Hemingway in this story is that of the contrast between light and dark. The cafe is a "Clean, Well-Lighted Place". It is a refuge from the darkness of the night outside. Darkness is a symbol of fear and loneliness. The light symbolizes comfort and the company of others. There is hopelessness in the dark, while the light calms the nerves. Unfortunately for the old man, this light is an artificial one, and its peace is both temporary and incomplete. "... the tables were empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind." Perhaps the old man is drawn to the shadows so that the darkness of his own age will not be so visible as it would be in the full force of the electric light. His body is dark with the effects of illness. Even his ears bring him a sort of darkness as they hold out the sounds of the world. 5
The old man's deafness is also a powerful image used in the story. "...the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he could feel the difference." Deafness shuts the old man out from the rest of the world. In the day, everything must be a reminder to him of his disconnection from the world. The busy streets, the marketplace, the chatter in the cafes along the street, the animals, and the motor vehicles fill the town with noise all day long. The old man knows this and recognizes that he is completely cut off from the sounds that he probably had not thought much of as a young man. In this cafe so late at night he is not missing much. In fact, he might prefer to miss the conversation about him between the two waiters. The younger waiter is repulsed by the old man. He says, "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing." The same thing may have been said by the old man when he was young. One might even conjecture that the old man chooses to be deaf rather than to face the nastiness of caducity and hear the words of disdain spoken by his juniors. Another tool used by Hemingway in this story is the image of Nothing. Nothing is what the old man wants to escape. The older waiter, who sometimes acts as the t he voice of the old man's soul, describes his adversary: "It was all nothing, and a man was nothing, too...Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada y pues nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada nada be thy name thy kingdom nada they will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee..." The Nothing is a relentless monotony, unbroken by joy or sorrow. It is unending emptiness without comfort or companionship of man or God. It is the senselessness of each heart-beat that is just like the last and refuses to give in to death. The old man's loneliness is i s empty. His days of retirement without useful work or purpose are empty. The emptiness of a life without progress of meaning is Nothing, and this Nothing afflicts the old man with a powerful grip. The only escape from this Nothing is blissful unconsciousness, sought after through intoxication but permanent only in death. The old man's death-wish is further played out through the metaphor of insomnia, an ailment which he apparently shares with the older waiter. Insomnia keeps the two awake through the hours of darkness, just as a tenacious life keeps the old man breathing when he would rather rest in his grave. In the second paragraph of the story, the older waiter informs the younger that their elderly customer had tried to commit suicide the week before. The old man is racked with despair - at his loneliness, the darkness of his life, his segregation from the world, and the Nothingness that permeates his existence. He wants rest, but it is withheld from him. Even when he tries to take his own life, his niece cuts him down from his noose. Peace is far from this man, and what little relief he may find is incomplete like the artificial light of the cafe. He tries to drown himself in whiskey, but that also fails to bring him rest. There is only left the hope that, as drunk as he is, he may pass out when he arrives home. This story is filled with images of despair. The contrasts between light and dark, youth and age are harsh and well defined. The reader leaves the story with a feeling that there is no escape from the doldrums of the winter years of life. Perhaps it is Hemingway's own terror of old age and infirmity that he is trying to communicate to the reader.
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Historical Context and Notes on A A Clean Well-Lighted Place@ Taken from http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:KZOlvszIrHU:www.grammardoc.com/summer/eng102/DQ5.htm+clean+welllighted+place+existentialism&hl=en This story was published in 1933, between World Wars I and II. Hemingway was living in Paris at this time and doing a lot of travelling in Europe. He saw and felt firsthand the effects of World War I and the severe economic and spiritual depression it caused. World War I was one of the t he bloodiest wars ever fought in Europe; the people of the countries on both sides were drawn in b y patriotic patrioti c propaganda, and their governments told them that the war would be over quickly and would result in huge victories and profits to them. But the war dragged on for four years, at tremendous cost. Europe was destroyed; a whole generation of young men died : nearly one third of all British young men, and nearly three fourths of all French and German young men. The suffering was horrible and it became apparent that it was not for truth and justice, but for the prestige and profit of the leaders, who were quite willing to sacrifice the lives of their people for their own egotism. On paper, Germany and Austria lost the war, and England and France won. But the Treaty of Versailles, which set the terms for the surrender of Germany and Austria, created, not resolution, but hatred and more suffering, and set the stage for the rise of Hitler and the beginning of World War II. One of the results of World War I was a loss of faith: people realized they could no longer trust their governments, and in the face of such pointless destruction, many could no longer trust their gods. People began to question every religious and social institution that had bound society together, and many came to the conclusion that no social or religious institution could be trusted, that, in fact, all of it was an illusion, including God. One school of philosophy that incorporated this view was existentialism. There are different varieties of existentialism, but its basic belief is that there is no God, and therefore, life can have no inherent meaning. We are not put on earth for any purpose. Our birth is an accident. There is no grand design to life. It is all chance. There is no order in the universe. It is all chaos. Our religions and our social structures are meant to help us avoid facing that terrifying truth. But this does not mean that life must be meaningless. It simply means that we, ourselves, must determine what the purpose of our lives is. We must set our own standards and live by them. Thus, our principles and our actions are everything: if we fail to live up to our principles, then life is truly meaningless. Hemingway subscribed, generally, to this theory. He believed that life was inherently meaningless, and that all we could do was set high standards and adhere to them with dignity, all the while knowing that this dignity is all that keeps us from falling into despair.
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Themes and Meanings
One of Hemingway's shortest stories, "A Clean Well Lighted Place" has been subject of considerable critical analysis, much of it focusing on the nada, or nothingness. This concept of nada is clearly central to Hemingway's worldview; characters obsessed with death by the apparent meaninglessness of life, appear through his fiction. It is a century in which religion, politics, and various philosophical stances have failed for so many, modern life has devolved into spiritual emptiness and moral anarchy. Nada in "A Clean Well Lighted Place" becomes a metaphor for this modern chaos; the older waiter’s nothing represents an absence of light--including light-- including that word’s association with reason and belief--of order, of meaning. What is important for a Hemingway character, however, is how to respond to this seemingly meaninglessness universe. Hemingway dramatizes this dilemma through contrasting the two waiters; as the older one explains, "We are of two different kinds." The young waiter is selfish and cynical, lacking in empathy, inexperienced at life without realizing it. "I have confidence. I am all confidence, he tells the older waiter. He is like many young people who think that they and their world are as they should be and will always be the same. The older waiter responds ironically, "You have youth, confidence and a job . . . . you have everything." This "everything" will last l ast only until experience, as it must, teaches the young waiter about li fe’s disappointments, about the chaos and futility that youthful confidence now allows him to ign ore. The older waiter is one of the initiated, one who understands the true nature of the world, who clearly sees the distinction between cafés and bodegas, between day and night, between values as they should be and the harsh reality. He represents the socalled Hemingway code, which can be seen as a humanistic, as opposed to theological, effort to create a dimension of meaning. The Hemingway code character recognizes the seeming futility on man’s headlong rush toward death, and, instead of despairing, attempts to create what meanings or values he can, as with the hero’s "separate peace" Fa rewell to Arms (1929). Thus, the older waiter wants to keep the café open, since in A Farewell someone like the old man, like the waiter himself--someone bruised by the dark, disordered world--may need it. The café, rather than nada, becomes the most important symbol in the story since it represents a kind of hope, pathetic though it may be. The old man’s despair at home leads him to try to hang himself; in the cafe he can drink his brandy with dignity. The older waiter recognizes this dignity: "This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk." (The young waiter spills the brandy he pours for the old man.) The café is a place where those without the innocence of youth, the illusions of belief, can pass the time with dignity. It is a refuge from meaninglessness but only a refuge, not an escape. The café must eventually close; all must go home. The older waiter finds the bodega to which he wanders "very bright and pleasant," but the bar is unpolished. It is a temporary substitute for the café just as the café is a temporary respite form the chaos of the dark outside world. "A Clean Well Lighted Place" dramatizes modern man’s quest for dignity amid the destruction of the old values. The individual i ndividual needs to escape his responsibilities while realizing this escape is but momentary. The individual’s indi vidual’s responsibility to himself is himself is to find a clean, well-lighted place or create one of his own. The ironic paradox of the story is that meaning can be created only through an awareness of its absence. Style and Technique
"A Clean Well Lighted Place" is one of the best examples of Hemingway's distinctive style: objective point of view; short, active declarative sentences; frequent repetition of key words; heavy reliance on dialogue in which the characters speak in short, clipped 8
sentences or fragments, an impressionistic representation of everyday speech: "This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The l ight is very good and also, now, n ow, there are shadows of the leaves." In A Moveable Feast (1964), Hemingway identifies one of the key elements of his technique as recognizing that what is left out of a story is just as important as what is included, as when Nick Adams’ recent return from the chaos of war is not directly mentioned in "Big Two-Hearted River" (1925). This approach can be seen in "A Clean Well Lighted Place" in which there is no overt reference to the disappointments the young waiter will certainly experience, the nights he will not be so eager to run home to his loving wife, there is no explanation of why the old man attempts suicide, sui cide, no evidence of what has specifically taught the older waiter about nada. Considerable dramatic tension, as well as universality, is created by revealing so little about the characters, the time and the place. A Corollary to this technique is that everything in the story must be there for a reason. A brief reference early in the story to a soldier and girl, apparently a prostitute, passing by the café is significant to illustrate the younger waiter’s concern only with the practical, the immediate: "He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him," The older waiter’s view is more worldly: "What does it matter if he gets what he’s after?" As the couple pass, "The street light shone on the brass number on his collar." By ignoring the rules, the soldier has captured a moment in the light. Ironically, he is similar to the young waiter so restless to join his wife in bed. Such economic, perfectly controlled storytelling is the epitome of Hemingway's Heming way's style at its best.
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