28 pages • 56 minutes read
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
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Themes
Futility and Stagnation in Modern Society
A sense of modern life’s futility permeates the text of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” The story itself is an exercise in futility, as the characters remain unchanged. The night the story takes place does not seem to be of significance; it is just as any other night would be. The old man is a frequent customer at the café, and he is known to stay late and get drunk. The waiters know what to expect from him. Likewise, the younger waiter points out, “I never get to bed before three o’clock” (289), indicating that his late nights at work are a regular occurrence, and even though he desires them to change, they do not. His attempts change nothing; they are futile.
Finally, the shift in language in the last paragraph to include the word “would” indicates that the older waiter has not yet done the activities being described, such as walking home, getting in bed, and staying awake until dawn. Instead, these are presented as a hypothesis of what the older waiter will do next. That his actions can be predicted also indicates that no matter what he does, whether he stops at a bar for a drink, closes the café early, or meditates on “nothingness,” he will not change the outcome of his night. Any attempts to do so are futile, and even the old man’s attempt to break from the day-to-day of his life through suicide fails. Instead, he is back to sitting in the shadows of the café, just as he has always done and, it seems, will always do. The story, in essence, ends just as it begins. The characters are stuck in their habits and are paralyzed to change them.
That nothing can change the current state of life for these characters is further indicated when the older waiter twice mentions that the old man “has plenty of money” (288). He has the ability to buy things, go places, and do whatever he would like with his money, yet that does not change the eventual outcome of his life. There is nothing he can do with the money that will produce any result. He, instead, finds himself back at the café, day after day. Money is something without value, emphasizing the Modernist idea that the old world’s values and comforts are useless in the modern world.
Just as money cannot change the old man’s despair and sense of emptiness, prayer—and organized religion in general—are similarly impotent. As the older waiter leaves the café and walks to the bar, he mulls his emptiness and recites a prayer. He says, “Our nada who art in nada […],” effectively wiping out God and heaven and replacing them with nothing. In the new world, religion and God are meaningless and have lost their purpose. The old institutions do not help the older waiter, and he continues to find himself unable to sleep until daylight. The last line of the story—“Many must have it” (291)—implies that the characters’ hopelessness is not caused by their individual circumstances but by the modern era’s conditions.
Generational Divides and the Inevitability of Disillusionment
While on the surface the experiences of the two waiters are the same, their underlying differences take shape over the text and are highlighted by their words and actions. Hemingway characterizes the two men through dialogue, which bounces back and forth from short, quick questions to clipped replies. The questions all flow from the younger waiter; he wants to know more constantly and seeks answers and understanding. On the other hand, the older waiter supplies the answers, though they are often simple facts without much explanation. This implies that the younger waiter is still searching for meaning in his life. The older waiter, however, does not necessarily search for more meaning and has accepted the world’s “nada” as it is. These different perspectives are rooted in their generational divide; the older waiter has more life experience and the younger waiter is more naïve and hopeful.
The younger waiter is also self-centered, another hallmark of youth. He repeatedly questions why the old man remains at the well-lighted café so late into the night and is frustrated by being kept at work and away from his wife. He believes his time is more valuable than the old man’s and resents serving him. Unlike the older waiter, who is sympathetic to the old man, the younger waiter tells the old man he wishes he were dead. While the younger waiter insists that he is confident, this act of cruelty is also cowardly; he insults a man who cannot hear him. This action embodies youth’s hubris and the modern’s world’s cruelty more broadly, a common theme in Modernist literature.
By contrast, the elderly character is content to sit in the shadows and drink, just as the older waiter is happy to keep the lights on to offer a place of solace for those who may need the café. The café is a refuge against the nothingness and despair that these two older characters feel. The younger waiter does not yet need this refuge, as despair has not yet taken hold of him.
Finally, there is a clear line drawn between how the older characters and the younger character handle loneliness. The younger waiter accuses the old man of being lonely, saying, “He’s lonely” (289), as though it is an insult. He also defends himself as not being lonely, as evidenced by the fact that he has a wife. On the other hand, the older characters recognize their loneliness and are resigned to it. The old man has a niece, and yet he chooses to remain at the café by himself, knowing that being surrounded by people does not cure loneliness. Likewise, the older waiter is also alone, even when he is surrounded by others at the bar.
Amidst the noise and music of the bar, the older waiter cannot find the solace he finds at the café. Without a wife or a religion, which he reduces to nada, he seeks simple escapes from his loneliness and the general sense of emptiness he feels in the world. While the younger waiter has a different outlook than the older men, the older waiter’s remark that the old man was once married alludes to the idea that loneliness awaits the younger waiter as well.
Despair as a Human Condition
Despair or a sense of “nothing” is woven throughout the story, not as a feeling that each character struggles to rid themselves of but as an accepted part of their lives. When discussing the old man’s attempted suicide, for example, the older waiter presents the information matter-of-factly, as simply as any other bit of information. He does not embellish it or fuss about it, which implies that despair—the reason given for the attempted suicide—is not shocking or outrageous. It is just part of the mundane of everyday life.
The acceptance of despair as a human condition can be seen in how each character responds to “nothing.” The old man does not attempt to rid himself of this despair outside of his attempted suicide. Instead, he returns to the same space each night, among the shadows, and drinks. His lack of action to change his feelings of despair reveals his resignation to this feeling.
The older waiter is in a similar position; he finds solace in the clean, well-lighted space of the café and is reluctant to leave it. Its cleanliness, brightness, and order provide him with a place to comfortably remain with the “nothing that he knew too well” (291). Here, he can remain awake and purposeful rather than face what he terms insomnia. In fact, it is not until daylight, when he again finds brightness, that he can finally fall asleep. While he visits bars and bodegas, they do not provide the solace he finds in the café. He is not upset when he leaves the bar, and he leaves after little interaction with others. He accepts his condition and is ready to go to his bed and his impending insomnia, which he’s certain is a widespread phenomenon. The older waiter does not even think this despair, the cause of his insomnia, is particular to him; he understands it to be part of the human condition in general.
The younger waiter is also clearly unhappy, as evidenced by his rude behavior toward the old man and his repeated desire to be somewhere else. He has his own tactics for escaping the despair that he is learning exists, seeking comfort in his home and his wife. While he does not quite understand the reasons the old man attempts suicide and wishes to remain at the café so late, he does desire to get away from the café as quickly as possible. Since the café represents a reprieve from the nothingness of the human condition, he wants to separate himself from it. For the younger waiter, leaving the café and the other characters is a way to ignore the unavoidable despair. However, the allusion to the old man’s former wife implies that the younger man cannot permanently escape this despair; he is human, and it will eventually plague him too.
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By Ernest Hemingway
