Clean Well-Lighted Place

1. The setting to A Clean Well-Lighted Place takes place in an Italian cafe late at night during World War I. The setting shows that the cafe is always lit and the streets surrounding it are always lit up, it never gets dark there. The idea is that the old man is lonely and whenever there is light he will not fear the dark and being around other people will keep him alive.

2. The characters to the story are nameless because Hemingway is telling the story how he wants to. He uses minimum building blocks to complete the story. This story in whole is just simple. It is about finding out their true identity and why they are different but similar at the same time.

3. The connection between the old man and the older waiter is that they both are lonely and tired out by life. The older waiter respects and defends the old man because he is clean and tidy in what he does. For example, the old man never spills a drop of his drink and is always proper. The older waiter seems to be a clean, proper man as well where we can see a comparison to one another.

4. The rising action is the beginning part to the story where the old man is drinking away while the two waiters, one young and one older, talk about life and why their cafe remains open late at night. The conflict is the old man does not wish to leave and to keep drinking while the younger waiter wishes to leave and be home with his wife. The older waiter unlike the young waiter lacks confidence and is not young. Like the old man, he likes to stay late at the cafe and believes that staying here may lead to someone who needs the cafe. The climax in this story is when the old man goes on his way because the young waiter had told him they are closed when really there hours of business were to remain open until the last customer left. In conclusion to this, we see that the old man and the older waiter continue there night somewhere else because they cannot go to bed. 

5. The theme to this story is Solidarity. He defends and understands the old man and his thoughts are with him.

Ernest Hemingway's life in a paragraph:

Ernest Hemingway was an American Author who started off working in a newspaper office. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois and later moved to Kansas City at seventeen. During the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army where he was injured on the front line. He was recognized by the Italian Government and spent many times in hospitals. Upon his return to America he became a reporter for both American and Canadian newspapers. He then moved to Paris where he became a member of expatriate Americans. He then began to write novels, The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, etc. All of these works and others had to do with loneliness and finding meaning in life. Also they take place during the War and post War. He was an alcoholic his whole life and this can be related to how the old man in A Clean Well-Lighted Place was. He never slept and was always working or drinking and he suffered with sleeping disorders as well, known as insomnia. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are effective in his short stories. He died a lonely man in 1961 in Idaho.

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http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html