Part 1
1. Describe the setting. Why is the idea of a well-lighted place so significant to this short story?
The setting of this short story takes place in the early 1930's. The place where the story takes place is a little cafe. It is a well-lit place. A place that sounds to be comfortable and beautiful on the inside. The setting of this well-lighted place is so significant to this short story because the old, deaf man in this story just wants to be in a "clean, well-lighted" place for the night. He is afraid of the nothingness that exists in the dark. The loneliness and emptiness that has to go with going home and leaving the cafe. It also shows how the bodegas are nothing like the cafe because the bodegas are not well-lit and they are filled with vulgar people. It shows that being in this cafe that is so pleasant does not compare to being in somewhere like a dark bar when you can't even hear yourself think.
2. Why are the characters nameless?
I believe that the characters are nameless because in this short story the names don't matter. Not that the names are not important but they really don't make a difference in the story. Also, I think that we are supposed to understand the loneliness of the old, deaf man, and him not having a name helps to emphasize his feelings of loneliness, to me. I feel like the names would make the situation less about the understanding of how people feel when they have to go home to nothing and night. I think that the point was just better understood when one doesn’t have to worry about who is who, and can just focus on the big picture of the story: the "clean, well-lighted place".
3. What is the connection between the old man and the older waiter? What is the purpose of the younger waiter in the story?
The connection that exists between the old man and the older waiter is that they bother have insomnia, they both have nothing to go to at night. They both have this fear of the thought and real-life existence of "nothingness". Being in a place where there is nothing, having nothing to hold on to, being nothing and going home to nothing. They both feel better when there is light. As if the light was to swallow up the darkness in its heroic return to the sky every morning. They both feel happier and more comfortable, like the nothing doesn’t exist as long as you are in clean, well-lit place.
The purpose of the younger waiter in the story is to show us how careless people in this world can be to one-another. To me, the younger waiter represents the someone that doesn’t know any better, but yet, doesn’t care to learn. The younger waiter doesn’t care about how neither the old, deaf man or his older co-worker feel. The older waiter tries to tell him about the darkness and the loneliness that exists in the darkness, but he doesn’t care to listen, because right now he has his wife and kids waiting for him at home. At one point the old, deaf man could have had all of this, but through his life he has lost the things that meant the most to him and now he is old and lonely. The young waiter represents the unwillingness to listen and learn, a quality that the younger generation so often posses. He is an example of the "nothing" that the old, deaf man and the older waiter are afraid of, because it used to be a "something" to them, but now it is nothing because they no longer have it. i.e. the “confidence" that the younger waiter possesses.
4. What is the plot. Be specific and briefly outline the 5 plot elements.
Conflict: The conflict in this short story is that the old man is staying in the cafe so late and the younger bartender feels as though his "valuable" time is being wasted taking care of this old man that he thinks is pretty much a waste of space and time.
Rising Action: The rising action in this short story takes place while the older bartender and the younger bartender talk about the old man and his past and how he tried to kill himself, but was saved and how the younger bartender wants to go home and therefore wants to kick the old man out and not give him another drink because the younger bartender wants to go home.
Complications: While giving the old man his last drink, the younger bartender told the old man that he should have killed himself the week before and then he intentionally overflows the old man's glass.
Climax: The younger bartender decides to deny the old man the last drink that he asks for. He treats him like he is a foreigner and doesn't speak English, and he says, “No.” to the old man very slowly.
Falling Action: After the old man is denied his last drink, by the younger bartender, the old man accepts it and gets up, pays his bill, and leaves.
5. What is the theme (in one sentence)?
The concept that I am left with after reading this short story is that for every person out there that has ever felt alone or scared of the "nothingness" that occasionally takes exists in life, there is always some place that is their safe-haven.
Part 2
Research the life of Ernest Hemingway. Compose a one paragraph biographical summary. Highlight the facts about Hemingway's life experiences that are evident in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place".
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), was born in Oak Park, Illinois and he won the Nobel Prize in 1954. Hemingway "believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could only have one end", Hemingway once wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald: "We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get a damned hurt use it - don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist" (Lynn (13.), p. 10). Hemingway's first hurts were so grave it took him nearly ten years to write them down in a novel. Hemingway's good fortune in business, art and marriage was overshadowed by serious attacks on his health (anthrax infection, cut eyeball, glass-gash in his forehead, grippe, toothache, hemorrhoids; kidney trouble from fishing in Spain, torn groin muscle, finger gashed to the bone in an accident with a punching ball, laceration of arms, legs and face from a ride on a runaway horse through a deep Wyoming forest, later: car accident in Wyoming in which his arm was badly broken). Hemingway's suicide was not that surprising after all. During all his life he was obsessed with death and, in a way, also with violence. Nevertheless, when his father committed suicide, he strongly condemned this deed as a violation of his Catholic faith, but then committed the act himself. Hemingway was very preoccupied with death. In his youth, it was the death of small animals, later of big game or enemies in combat. Death was always present and always threatening but was, as in the Tibetan yin-yang symbol, linked to life, which Hemingway, considered most intense in the prospect of death. At times, he lived on the edge and sometimes tried to get even closer to the brink of that edge. On the other, on the yin side, waited what the Castilians call the "nada" or the endless dark nothingness. The very last years, 1960 and 1961, were marked by severe paranoia. He feared FBI agents would be after him if Cuba turned to the Russians, that the "Feds" (Burgess (9.), p. 110) would be checking his bank account, and that they wanted to arrest him for gross immorality and carrying alcohol. He got upset about perfectly normal photographs in his Dangerous Summer article. Hemingway was receiving treatment in Ketchum for high blood pressure and liver problems - and also shock therapy both for depression and his continued paranoia at FBI surveillance (The FBI, it turns out, were keeping tabs on Hemingway as a result of his period spent in Cuba). He attempted suicide in the spring of 1961, and received treatment again, but this was unable to prevent his suicide on July 2, 1961 - at 5:00am, he died as a result of a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. He is interred in the Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho. In 1996, his granddaughter, actress Margaux Hemingway, would take her own life; she is interred in the same cemetery.
References:
http://www.helium.com/items/838560-literary-analysis-a-clean-well-lighted-place-by-ernest-hemingway?page=2
http://www.helium.com/items/838560-literary-analysis-a-clean-well-lighted-place-by-ernest-hemingway?page=2
http://www.timelesshemingway.com/ernesthemingwayprimer.pdf
http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Hemingway_Ernest.html
