Ernest Hemingway’s, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was first
published in Scribner’s American Literary Magazine. This was a magazine
intended for Americans who were interested in literary works and current events.
It reached its peak of success during the First World War. A lot of its content
had to do with the war and politics. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” has a message that is metaphorical, and
the reader must really work to find the meaning. It uses the concept of nothingness to make a comment on the
way our society views life. This piece is successful in this activity system
because it forces the reader to think critically and analyze metaphors,
something people interested in literary works would have a field day with. The
fact that this magazine focused a lot on WWI makes this piece successful as well.
During the First World War, many people thought that society had taken a turn
for the worse and the world was a dark place. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
coincides with this way of thinking, and therefore, many people would find
interest in this piece.
This
piece is difficult to criticize without knowing the meaning first. Hemingway
asserts that society’s construct of reality is essentially meaningless through
an epiphany reached by an old waiter. Jobs, material possessions, human
relationships, even the Gods we pray to are social constructs that only hold
value because we give them value. At the end of the day the only thing we can
depend on is ourselves. The rest is nothing. The world is nothing. However,
this is a harsh reality to come to terms with. He presents the clean,
well-lighted place as a way of seeing this reality and coping with it.
Hemingway develops this idea through metaphor, irony, and allusion.
Hemingway’s
use of irony throughout this piece is beautiful. He plays with the meaning of
the words nothing and everything. Two waiters are waiting to close down their
cafe, however there is an old deaf man who will not leave. The old man recently
tried to commit suicide after his wife died. One waiter asks the other why the
old man did it, and this is the interaction:
"Why?"
"He was in despair."
"What about?"
"Nothing.”
The word play here is almost palpable. At face value, it
seems that there is not a thing wrong with the old man. However, when we reach
the end of the piece and find that Hemingway is asserting the world we live in
is nothing, we are forced to look at this interaction in a new light. The
meaning changes and we see that the old man’s realization of the world being
nothing has brought him to this suicide attempt. His wife has died and he has
realized that human relationships add up to nothing in the end. It is such a
strong, dark realization. We find our heads racing when we re read this
interaction. Hemingway’s use of simple language, verbal irony, and
understatement causes this. He is conveying huge, monumental information in
such a simple way. It brings cognitive dissonance to our heads as readers.
Nothing comes to mean everything, to define everything in this world.
The use of verbal irony creates a
sense of dark comedy here as well. I couldn’t help but smile at this back and
forth because there is so much meant by the simple word, “nothing.” The younger
waiter does not see this and the reader finds a sense of comedy in the
sarcastic understatement.
Hemingway
later uses irony with the idea of everything. The old waiter says to the young
waiter:
“You have youth, confidence, and a
job. You have everything.”
At first
glance, this seems like a genuine statement. This young waiter has a job, a
wife, confidence, a schedule-in a world of social constructs he has everything.
However, it comes to be ironic when the old waiter comes to his epiphany. This
young man has everything, but everything in this world is meaningless so he,
essentially, has nothing. He is clearly still tied up in social constructs, so
he doesn’t even have the realization that his everything is nothing. He is
ignorant. We come to realize the old waiter was, again, being sarcastic. We see
this sense of dark comedy brought up again through verbal irony and understatement.
Hemingway
uses a very successful allusion to religion in this piece to further his point:
“Our nada who art in nada, nada be
thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is 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.”
This is clearly
an allusion to the common prayers Our Father and Hail Mary. He is making the
assertion that even the God we pray to is nothing. It is a social construct
that we have given value too, just the same as everything else. This is such a
powerful allusion because this was published in an American magazine. Many of
the readers have said these prayers an innumerable amount of times. It really
hits home. “Nothing is with thee.” That is such a painful line; it disturbs us,
and leaves us with an empty feeling in our hearts. This is successful because
the message that the world is nothing should disturb the reader, just as it
disturbs the characters in this story. This allusion allows us to feel as the
characters in the story did, and understand its message on a new level.
This
powerful allusion uses a massive amount of repetition as well. Hemingway mostly
employs epistrophe, in which a key phrase is repeated at the end of successive
phrases. When I read this prayer, I found my head sort of blurring all the
words and phrases together. There is so much nada. My head began to spin. I
think this was the affect Hemingway was trying to achieve. We readers find all
the words losing meaning and the only thing we can identify is nada. This
reflects his message that everything in this world is nada. Everything is
meaningless besides nothing. We find ourselves repeating nada in our heads over
and over, it is almost like we are coming to this realization along with the
older waiter.
Hemingway’s
use of climax is perhaps the strongest aspect of the story. He saves the climax
for the very end. Everything in the story builds toward this old waiter’s inner
dialogue. He recites his version of the Our Father, reveals his epiphany, and
the reader’s mind is blown. We are forced to go back and re read the story in a
new light. This imitates the process that the old waiter would have gone through
after coming to his realization. He would go back through is life and view
everything in a different way. He would see through the fake relationships and
the unneeded stresses he put himself through. We go back through the story and
see the old waiter’s use of sarcasm. We see the hidden meaning behind his
words. We are forced to re-evalute the entire story just as he was forced to
re-evaluate his entire life. Hemingway uses plain language, but the climax at
the end gives these plain words an incredibly complex meaning.
Hemingway
writes at a grade level of 3.6 with a Flesch-Kincaid reading ease score of
91.4. However, this is a short story comprised of conversation and a stream of
thoughts. It only makes sense to use simple language because it’s realistic.
These are waiters at a café; they are not going to speak with a Harvard
vocabulary. This waiter is a normal person, going through a normal day, coming
to a life-changing conclusion. It makes the realization more realistic and
relatable. It hits us more and we find ourselves reflecting on our own lives,
analyzing our own “nothingness.” The beauty of the piece comes from the way
Hemingway uses simple writing to reveal monumental concepts. He creates double
meanings through irony, metaphor, and climax. It is absolutely brilliant. This
is definitely a successful piece for a literary magazine audience.
However, there are still questions
to be raised about this piece. When I finished reading I found myself wondering
why a clean, well-lighted place would help the characters cope with this
realization. Why would being in a café somehow make things better? Is the
clean, well-lighted place a physical place? Or a mental construct, a way of
thinking? There is also the timeless question of who said what? The beginning
of the story is comprised of mostly dialogue, but the lines are not assigned to
a specific character. The audience is left to guess which waiter is saying what
and build two different characters in their mind. Why the confusion? This was
obviously done on purpose. Was it to create cyclical quality throughout the
piece? Maybe, it doesn’t matter who is saying what because one day the young
waiter will come to the same realizations the older waiter has? There are many
questions left unanswered, but I think that is part of the magnificence of the
piece. It is so complex. It keeps us guessing and coming back for more. We
can’t stop thinking about it.
By: Erin O'Connor
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