A_Clean_Well_Lighted_Place

A Clean Well Lighted Place “A Clean-Well Lighted Café” In the story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway focuses on the older waiter who has a realistic understanding of the significance of “nada,” in this world and it actually keeps him up at night. With his understanding, he can empathize with the lonely old man that sits alone night after night in a “well-lighted café”. The younger waiter is more impatient and is ready to go home to his “wife waiting in bed.” He cares very little about the old man’s need for a dignified refuge at night. The story illustrates through characterization and verbal irony what it means to cope with the harsh realization that everything we are and everything our society is based on is empty. Hemingway presents two kinds of characters, those unaware of the emptiness of life and those that are privy to it. The younger waiter is oblivious to what this life has in store for him; he is only concerned about going home to his wife and, as Nathan Kotas writes in his article “Text Anomalies and the Waiters’ Characters,” “…shows all the impatience of youth and an uncaring attitude towards the old man.” The old man clean, well, lighted, place, waiter, old, man, story, place, older, nada, irony, about, understanding, night, life, café, world, woman, well-lighted, verbal, regulations, nathan, kotas, hemingway, emptiness, concerned, characters, benert, youth, younger, wife, waiters’, understood, through, though