Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" explores the meaning of life through three characters - the Old Man, Younger Waiter, and Older Waiter - who frequent a café late at night. The café represents an escape from loneliness and darkness for the Old Man and Older Waiter, who see life as meaningless nothingness. The Younger Waiter has a more hopeful outlook, as he wants to get home to his wife. Through their conversation and the symbolism of the café, Hemingway examines different views of life and ways people find purpose.

1. (Ernest Hemingway)

2. A very simple story with
simple setting, plot and characters,
Hemingway implicitly made this short
story become very meaningful. The
meaning of life often becomes an
interesting topic for people to talk
about. Here, in the A Clean, Well-
Lighted Place, Hemingway tries to pull
it out through a different point of view
of the characters, and he uses café as a
symbol to make the setting of this
story. Hemingway wrote three
characters here: the Old Man, the
Older Waiter and the Younger Waiter.
Each of the character has different
point of view about life and how they
live it. The nothingness seem to be
mostly shown from the symbol that
Hemingway uses—The Café—and the
way the older waiter responses to his
conversation with the younger waiter.

3. The café represents an
escaping place. The café where the
Old Man drinks until late at night,
and where the Older and Younger
Waiters work, is a place which
somewhat clean and well-lighted. It
shows us that the light symbolizes
something that will send away the
darkness that the characters feel.
When the Younger Waiter says that
he wants to the Old Man to go home
soon, for he wants to come home
earlier so that he can go to bed with
her wife, the Older Waiter says that
the Old Man may be able to stay
awhile longer, since it hasn’t 3 a.m.
yet. There are other places open, like
bodegas and bars, but they are just
different. The places aren’t clean,
and they aren’t well-lighted. The do
not have that cleanness and light to
send away the loneliness.

4. In the conversation
between the Younger and Older
Waiters, we can see that they have
different point of view of life here.
The Older says that there is no
different between coming home at 3
a.m. or earlier, but the Younger says
it different. He says he has a wife,
and he wants to go to bed with her.
He says the Old Man doesn’t have a
wife, but the Older says he had a
wife once. The Younger Waiter
seems to have no idea that it may
happen to him in his future—to be
lonely. This place is the place where
the Old Man can drink and send
away his loneliness. The Older Waiter
then goes to the bar after he close
the place where he works that night.

5. However, he says that the
bar is not clean, and he refuses to
take one more glass when the
barman offers him. He says “our
nada who art in nada” rather than
“our God who art in heaven”. In the
last paragraph, he says that it may be
just him having insomnia. This
expression shows the nothingness
that he feels towards the life, and
how it will be unimportant to think
about the meaning of life further.

6. Symbolizes by a café,
Hemingway wants to show a place
for the people who think that this life
is nothingness, find a “home”. A
place where they can escape from
the “darkness” with the light from
the place. Meanwhile, not all of the
characters in this short story think
that this world is full of nothingness.
The Younger Waiter is the only
character here that still has a
“dream” for his life. The Old Man and
the Older Waiter, which seems to be
the main character here think that
there is no use think about the
meaning of life because it is only a
nothingness.