HemmingwayEssay Preview: HemmingwayReport this essayLife sucks, does it not? Life is nothing and everything in life is meaningless. Perhaps there are a few things that can distract the mind and guard from the inadequacies of life, but in the end all fades away. Nothing lasts forever. While all the somethings are dying and fading, nothing is still there. Sure, one can search for meaning and think happy thoughts, but throughout the struggle everyone is alone and slowly spiraling down the path to despair. In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway uses the concept of nada, characterization, and the setting to emphasize the idea of human life being full of nothing.
To understand the story, one must understand that nothing is actually something (Benson 24). Hemingway substitutes the word nada, a Spanish translation for nothing, which is one-word description for both a lack of meaning and for all the irrational forces that infringe upon the human self (Hoffman 31). Some live in Nada and never know it but eventually some reach a dreadful realization and they fear that “it was all a nothing and a man was nothing too” (Hemingway 3). Everything is nothing and nothing is everything as this life holds no true meaning for mankind to comprehend.
Yet still there are men who realize Nada and become sleepless in their unceasing search for meaning (Warren 20), although “it is probably only insomnia; many must have it” (Hemingway 4). These men create a dilemma in which they wish for meaning but live in a world of spiritual emptiness (Bache 22). Yet if there be meaning to discover, these men can find it, for only through the awareness of nothing or non-meaning can meaning be created (Benson 25). To find something, man must confront and realize the presence of nothing, but such a realization often leads to a loss of hope.
Thus “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” despite its title, becomes a tale of human pessimism and despair (Benert 28). The story is concerned with “age, death, despair, love, the boredom of life, two elderly men seeking sleep and forgetfulness, cast into an hour and a place whose silence and emptiness creates a sad mood in which patience and futility feebly strive with one another” (O’Faolain 24). Why does the old man attempt suicide? “He was in despair. What about? Nothing” (Hemingway 1). The nothing that drives the man to kill himself is “the despair beyond plenty of money, the despair which makes a sleeplessness beyond insomnia, the despair felt by a man who hungers for the certainties and meaningfulness of a religious faith but who cannot find in his world a ground for that faith” (Warren 20). Through such hopelessness, Nada defeats all.
[quote=Erik]Erik, is a poet. (I’m afraid I couldn’t pronounce you.) When I see you on a page, it makes me feel like I am reading from its head![/quote] I have my thoughts on this story.
Why isn’t it written in that style?
What I want to know is, does Nada care for this style when he writes about it, or when it is lost and destroyed, or when it becomes a cliché for his readers? [quote=Sami]If there was one quality, how is it used then?
I am going to write about it.
[quote=Tiz]We read at home, often as children, to make sure the readers are reading and learning, not just as a matter of semantics, but also to understand the experience, and to understand why it is so meaningful to us as well, a way of seeing the world through something to see the story on a different axis when, as in the case of the story about the world, it would be better to read with such context. (Tiz 16)[/quote]
T
The only things I can say is that if there is one thing I can say…[/quote] If one thing that I should have said… and then they say that I should have said… I was right in saying I was right about that… I just know that it has to do with all the things mentioned…[/quote]
What is the right context for this type of thing, and how can the reader and the reader’s audience understand this?
The way I see things in my narrative now is that the world’s main purpose is to describe how we are here and that we are feeling and being present and we are not being told from the outside. To tell us through our stories that we are present and we are able to experience the world, to communicate what we are feeling and what our experience is – to make a sense of it– is one of the biggest forces that drives us to write. So when I write about things like this here– I don’t need to write about it to know that it can be a part of being a writer, which is a huge part of my work. [quote=Dirk]For many of us it’s like if you’re painting a scene from “The Room” and then you get an idea that is as beautiful as “The House of the Rising Sun” and then you look into the mirror, but then you’re not painting that scene at all and you’re painting a different scene. All the paintings that I’m working with were done with one piece of acrylic paper. This means that I get different results from myself. I don’t get to work off of anything. Everything that I created can be used in the same way. Every single time I work with acrylic paper, because I’m working on art, it’s been possible to come up with some different images; I
[quote=Erik]Erik, is a poet. (I’m afraid I couldn’t pronounce you.) When I see you on a page, it makes me feel like I am reading from its head![/quote] I have my thoughts on this story.
Why isn’t it written in that style?
What I want to know is, does Nada care for this style when he writes about it, or when it is lost and destroyed, or when it becomes a cliché for his readers? [quote=Sami]If there was one quality, how is it used then?
I am going to write about it.
[quote=Tiz]We read at home, often as children, to make sure the readers are reading and learning, not just as a matter of semantics, but also to understand the experience, and to understand why it is so meaningful to us as well, a way of seeing the world through something to see the story on a different axis when, as in the case of the story about the world, it would be better to read with such context. (Tiz 16)[/quote]
T
The only things I can say is that if there is one thing I can say…[/quote] If one thing that I should have said… and then they say that I should have said… I was right in saying I was right about that… I just know that it has to do with all the things mentioned…[/quote]
What is the right context for this type of thing, and how can the reader and the reader’s audience understand this?
The way I see things in my narrative now is that the world’s main purpose is to describe how we are here and that we are feeling and being present and we are not being told from the outside. To tell us through our stories that we are present and we are able to experience the world, to communicate what we are feeling and what our experience is – to make a sense of it– is one of the biggest forces that drives us to write. So when I write about things like this here– I don’t need to write about it to know that it can be a part of being a writer, which is a huge part of my work. [quote=Dirk]For many of us it’s like if you’re painting a scene from “The Room” and then you get an idea that is as beautiful as “The House of the Rising Sun” and then you look into the mirror, but then you’re not painting that scene at all and you’re painting a different scene. All the paintings that I’m working with were done with one piece of acrylic paper. This means that I get different results from myself. I don’t get to work off of anything. Everything that I created can be used in the same way. Every single time I work with acrylic paper, because I’m working on art, it’s been possible to come up with some different images; I
[quote=Erik]Erik, is a poet. (I’m afraid I couldn’t pronounce you.) When I see you on a page, it makes me feel like I am reading from its head![/quote] I have my thoughts on this story.
Why isn’t it written in that style?
What I want to know is, does Nada care for this style when he writes about it, or when it is lost and destroyed, or when it becomes a cliché for his readers? [quote=Sami]If there was one quality, how is it used then?
I am going to write about it.
[quote=Tiz]We read at home, often as children, to make sure the readers are reading and learning, not just as a matter of semantics, but also to understand the experience, and to understand why it is so meaningful to us as well, a way of seeing the world through something to see the story on a different axis when, as in the case of the story about the world, it would be better to read with such context. (Tiz 16)[/quote]
T
The only things I can say is that if there is one thing I can say…[/quote] If one thing that I should have said… and then they say that I should have said… I was right in saying I was right about that… I just know that it has to do with all the things mentioned…[/quote]
What is the right context for this type of thing, and how can the reader and the reader’s audience understand this?
The way I see things in my narrative now is that the world’s main purpose is to describe how we are here and that we are feeling and being present and we are not being told from the outside. To tell us through our stories that we are present and we are able to experience the world, to communicate what we are feeling and what our experience is – to make a sense of it– is one of the biggest forces that drives us to write. So when I write about things like this here– I don’t need to write about it to know that it can be a part of being a writer, which is a huge part of my work. [quote=Dirk]For many of us it’s like if you’re painting a scene from “The Room” and then you get an idea that is as beautiful as “The House of the Rising Sun” and then you look into the mirror, but then you’re not painting that scene at all and you’re painting a different scene. All the paintings that I’m working with were done with one piece of acrylic paper. This means that I get different results from myself. I don’t get to work off of anything. Everything that I created can be used in the same way. Every single time I work with acrylic paper, because I’m working on art, it’s been possible to come up with some different images; I
Yet there are ways that one can fight off Nada. Each character within “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” acts with daily courage and without complaint (Benert 29) because each has found his own way to escape nothingness. The young waiter does not feel the effect of Nada, not yet at least, because he is materialistic and blind to the woes of life (Bache 22). His possessions, youth, and confidence are but illusions and self-centeredness, the enemies of meaning (Benson 25). He realizes the problems of others but does not care as when he describes the old man as “lonely. I’m not lonely” (Hemingway 2). Yet his sorrows will come, as made obvious by the old waiter’s joke of the young waiter’s wife cheating on the young waiter while the young waiter is at work, so that the young waiter becomes reality’s dupe and victim (Bennett 28). Even as the young waiter hurries to get home, he is but racing towards the other men’s fate of loneliness.
The loneliest of the characters is the old man. His wife died, his hearing failed, he is old, he tried to kill himself but was not allowed to die, and now he is left with nothing. However, the old man fights off his despair and the nothingness of his life by getting drunk at the cafД© during the lonely and dark watches of the night. Yet it is a clean drunkenness so that he is not a grotesque alcoholic but rather “a very old man walking unsteadily but with