“A Clean Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway

“A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” by Ernest Hemingway is about a lonely old man in a café late at night trying to drink his despair away.  About is the operative word.  The old man himself utters few words and these are with the waiters to order and pay for the brandy he drinks.  

Much of the narrative is the dialogue between the two waiters, which is mostly about the old man. It is disclosed that the old man, in despair, attempted to hang himself last week, but that his niece cut him down out fear for his soul.  The younger waiter wants to go home and go to bed where his wife is waiting. The older waiter is reluctant to close because someone might need the café for the same reason the old man needed it.  He rejects the argument of the younger waiter that there are other bodegas and says what is at the heart of the story. "You do not understand.  This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."  By now the reader may realize that the older waiter is the protagonist of the story. He possibly understands the old man better than old man understands himself, because the older waiter is likely in that stage of life when the dimensions of existence are coming into focus.  He feels many of the same feelings as the old man and it becomes clear that his reluctance to close is because he himself needs the café.  The younger waiter goes home and the older waiter continues the conversation with himself about the importance of a clean well-lighted café for patrons.

The following quotation, the thoughts of the older waiter, near the end of the story, just after he leaves the café, explains what troubles the older waiter and the old man. 

“What did he fear? It was not fear or dread, it was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.” 

The reader is told it is not “fear or dread” and that it was “a nothing,” so what is “a nothing?” Hemingway’s use of indefinite pronouns it and that, which lack clear reference creates grammatical indefiniteness that insinuates a mysterious and incomprehensible beyond, “a nothing.” To create meaning and to find your place in in such an awe-inspiring and infinite beyond may seem out of reach. You may need to seek refuge in ordinary everyday existence,

What will tomorrow bring? For the old man when night comes he will go to that well-lighted café and repeat last night and again he will do so with dignity. And the older waiter after a sleepless night will return to make sure the café is clean, pleasant and well-lighted and he will be, “reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café."