Symbolism in A Clean Well-Lighted Place

Symbolism in A Clean Well-Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway’s A clean, well-lighted place is a short that revolves around two central locations; a clean, bright café and a dark not so clean bar. The story has three main characters Two waiters, one young and the other one elderly, and one deaf and elderly man who is a regular customer at the clean, well-lighted café. The focus of this paper is to carry out a literary analysis of the short story by focusing on the symbolism as a rhetorical device and its use in the story.

Darkness and light represent the various features of the characters’ lives. Hemingway contrasts light with darkness. The light is a symbol of peace, comfort, pleasantness, and people’s company. Darkness signifies despair, loneliness, death, and emptiness or nothingness of a person. The elderly customer finds solace at a well-lighted café and wants to stay for long hours. The old man wants to be in the company of others at the café because there is no one at home for him because his wife had passed on. By staying late at the café, the old man feels the peace that he longs for to deal with loneliness. At night there is thick darkness, which in this story shows the solitude of the man. The elderly deaf man is a lonely, which is the reason he visits the café at night because there is nobody to comfort him at home.  Darkness represents the hopelessness of the old man. The man wants to drink at night to drawn his despair and loneliness.

Hemingway says that the old man who visits the café is deaf.

“…the old man liked to sit late  because he was deaf and now at night he felt the quiet…” (Hemingway 379).

Deafness symbolizes the separation of the old man from the rest of the world. The elderly man is living in his world, which is lonely and full of nothing. The elderly customer cannot hear what the two waiters are saying even when they talk about him, which shows how he has drifted from the rest of the world. His only world is his alcohol, which he takes at the café every evening.

The ages for the three characters symbolizes the changes that can occur throughout life.  The younger waiter is confident, has a good job, and a wife to get to, which signifies that the life of the young man has a purpose.

“I have confidence. I am all confidence.”

“You have youth, confidence, and a job,” the older waiter said.”You have everything.” (Hemingway 382).

The older waiter lack confidence and he likes to stay at the café, and when the café closes, he goes to the bar to drink. The age of the young waiter also shows the peak of life where someone has a lot of energy and zeal. At his age, the older waiter understands how, the older deaf man is feeling. The age of the older waiter is a representation of a mid-age crisis where a person starts to feel the old age creeping, and he is disturbed by the feeling that he has insomnia and he can old sleep at day time. The old man age symbolizes the end of life where a person is hopeless, alone and separated from the world and want to die despite having a lot of money.

The title of the story is a symbol of a café. A clean, well light place refers to a café. To the older waiter, the title of the story are qualities of a nice resting place that should stay open at night, varying from bodegas and bars. The neatness and the light of the café is a representation of an antidote to the nights when the older waiter senses nothing the strongest. Therefore, for the old deaf man and the older waiter, the café is a symbol of an escape point from “nada” as the older waiter describes it. The café signifies the opposite of nothingness. The cleanliness and the lighting of the café symbolize order, peace, and clarity, while nothingness identified by the older waiter is a symbol of confusion, darkness, and chaos.

The older waiter recites the lords player replacing some of the verbs and nouns with “nada,” a Spanish word that means nothing.

“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…” (Hemingway 383).

By reciting the Lord’s prayer in that manner, it symbolizes his disbelief and distrust in religion to provide comfort and meaning to his life. The elder waiter is resentful about religion and thus mocks the Lord’s prayer as he finds his meaning and comfort from places that are clean and well-lighted where he can fend off insomnia, loneliness, and the thoughts of personal immorality.  The older waiter believes in “nothing”  meaning he has no purpose in life, which is the reason he takes comfort at the café and the bar in the late hours of the night.

Hemingway uses symbolism throughout the story. The author aimed to evoke the readers to find out the insight of the story. Hemingway uses symbolism to give a deeper meaning to the story. For example, the title of the story is a symbol, the characters, and their specific features, the café and the bar are all symbols of different things.

Works cited

Bennett, Warren. “The Manuscript and the Dialogue of” A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” American Literature (1979): 613-624.

Hemingway, Ernest. “A clean, well-lighted place.” The short stories of Ernest Hemingway (1933): 379-83.