Product Description

As a Spanish cafâe closes for the night, two waiters and a lonely customer confront the concept of nothingness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2293273 in Books
• Published on: 1990-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Library Binding
• 30 pages

Review
Much-anthologized short story by Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner's Magazine in March 1933 and later that year in the collection Winner Take Nothing. Late one night two waiters in a cafe wait for their last customer, an old man who has recently attempted suicide, to leave. The younger waiter, eager to get home to his wife, turns the old man out, but the older waiter is sympathetic to the human need for a clean, well-lighted place, an outpost in the darkness. The story is a powerful existential statement about the insufficiency of religion as a source of comfort, and it contains an often cited version of the Lord's Prayer that substitutes the Spanish word nada ("nothing") for most of the prayer's nouns. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

Customer Reviews

Hemingway's Finest
Hemingway's cool, sardonic short story "A Clean Well Lighted Place" is one of the best shory stories EVER written. Most of the themes that Hemingway wrote about in his many classics are represented in this 2,000 word story. It only takes a few minutes to read, and each time leaves the reader with a stinging feeling. Also, indicitave of Hemingway's philosphy: nada y nada.

symbolism throughout
I read this book for my college class and found it extremely interesting with a lot of symbolism throughout. There was a lot of intense imagery used by Hemingway such as the darkness of the night outside. As well, the old man's deafness is also a powerful image used in the story. 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. There are also imagery about nothing or "nada" which the old man was suffreing. Overall, this story is incredibly deep and was a bit hard to understand.

The conflict in society.
To me, the story has so many meanings; I just have analyzed the story in my reading class. The whole story at first will give the readers a sight of boring, but after the readers involve in it and analyze it; it turn out that the story has so many meaning. First, just looks at the old waiter; he is not the main character, but you can see the way that old man live right now will be the way that the old waiter will. As you can see, the old man didn't have friend; his wife has died a long times ago, and he is so lonely, but looks at the old waiter; you will see the same situation the the old waiter will go through in the next couples of years; he has the same situation but just becasue he has job now. In the long run, when time goes by, he will be old and can not work and feel so lonely because of lacking friends. You can see the old waiter doesn't want to go home at night; he also want to stay because his life is the same with the old man: he has no friend; he wants a well lighted place to enjoy to cover his darkness, and because his life is lonely too. In the big picture, you can see the conflict in society; when some one gets older, they may feel lonely and boring . It likes the process of the society to eliminate the elders out of society's activity. The more some one getting old, the more he (or she ) is isolated.