A Clean Well Lighted Place Analysis Essay Example For Students

A Clean Well Lighted Place Analysis Essay A Clean, Well-Lighted Place†Earnest Hemingway’s A Clean, Well-Lighted Place The main focus of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is on the pain of old age suffered by a man that we meet in a cafe late one night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people around him, and uses his deafness as an image of his separation from the rest of the world. Near the end of the story, the author shows us the desperate emptiness of a life near finished, and the aggravation of the old mans restless mind that cannot find peace. Throughout this story images of desperation show the old mans life at a point where he has realized the pointlessness of life and finds himself the lonely object of derision. The most obvious image used by Hemingway in this story is that of the contrast between light and dark. The cafe is a Clean, Well-Lighted Place. It is a refuge from the darkness of night. Darkness symbolizes fear and loneliness. The light symbolizes comfort and the company of others. There is bleakness in the dark, while the light calms the nerves. Unfortunately for the old man, this light is an artificial one, and its serenity is fleeting and deficient. Maybe the old man hides in the shadows of the leaves because he recognizes the shortcoming of his sanctuary. Perhaps he is drawn to the shadows so that the darkness of his own age will not be so visible as it would be in the full force of the electric light. His body is dark with effects of illness. Even his ears bring him a sort of shadows as they hold out the sounds of the world. The old mans deafness is a powerful image used in the story. Deafness shuts the old man out from the rest of the world. The old man knows this and recognizes that he is completely cut off from the sounds that he probably had not thought much of as a young man. In this cafe so late at night he is not missing much. In fact, he might prefer to miss the conversation about him between the two waiters. The younger waiter is disgusted by the old man. He says, I wouldnt want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing. The old man may have said the same thing when he was young. Another tool used by Hemingway in this story is the image of Nothing. Nothing is what the old man wants to escape. The Nothing is a relentless boredom, uninterrupted by joy or grief. It is eternal emptiness without comfort or camaraderie. It is the pointlessness of each heartbeat that is just like the last and refuses to give in to death. The old mans isolation is empty. His days without useful work or reason are empty. The emptiness of a life without progress of meaning is nothing, and this Nothing afflicts the old man with a powerful grip. The only escape from this Nothing is death. The old mans death wish is further played out through the metaphor of insomnia, an ailment that he apparently shares with the older waiter. Insomnia keeps the two awake through the hours of darkness, just as a tenacious life keeps the old man breathing when he would rather rest in his grave. In the second paragraph of the story, the older waiter informs the younger that their elderly customer had tried to commit suicide the week before. The old man is racked with despair at his loneliness, the darkness of his life, his segregation from the world, and the Nothingness that permeates his existence. He wants rest, but it is withheld from him. Even when he tries to take his own life, his niece cuts him down from his noose. Peace is far from this man, and what little relief he may find is incomplete like the artificial light of the cafe. He tries to drown himself in whiskey, but that also fails to bring him rest. The Environment Essay It is common knowledge that marriages are not always about mutual love between two people and during the time that Chopin was writing, this was more often the case. Marriage was as much about monetary comfort, social status and acceptance as it was about possible love. There are no children mentioned in this story, which makes me wonder if there was a sexual relationship between the Mallards. It seems from the description that Mrs. Mallard has been trapped in this marriage for a long time even though we know she is young. How young is she? Even though I say she is trapped, do not misunderstand me. I do not think this marriage is arranged; instead that she has been coerced by her society to marry despite what she may want to do in her heart and soul. I believe she does love her husband, but it is possible to love and not be married. This was not her case; if she were able (meaning a man would agree with her decision) and she did engage in a loving relationship with a man who was not her husband, she would have certainly been looked down upon. Is her heart condition purely physical or is it also psychological and emotional? We know the stereotypes, as Chopin did, that women are hysterical, timid, weak, and irrational. Could it be that her heart condition is created by those tiptoeing around her in conjunction with her own emotional weaknesses? I find it interesting that her first name is only told to us after she hears of her husband’s death and when she feels the freest. Before this point she is referred to as Mrs. Mallard or she, and after this point when her husband returns home, she is referred to as wife. Chopin is pointing to something very interesting here which leads me back to the title of woman as wife. When Louise marries Bently she becomes Mrs. Mallard; she loses her identity and assumes a new and strange one. While it seems very normal and average for a wife to assume her husband’s name in marriage and in that time, to put it harshly, become the property of him, it cannot be ignored that a certain part of the self is lost. I do feel that there were tensions in the marriage, which lead to this incident. Louise must have been unhappy, since no matter what time period it is in which a marriage exists, the death of a spouse would not evoke positive feelings. Marriage has never been intended as a prison in my eyes, though I am sure many others would beg to differ. As far as who was causing problems within the marriage, I would lean toward a mutual conflict where both sides are equally guilty. The most intriguing part of the story to me is the possibility of it all being a very evil hoax. Richards and Brently, who were close friends, had drawn up this scheme to deceive Brentlys wife in an attempt to discern how she truly felt about their marriage. Richards was the informant to the family of the supposed crash. To me it is odd that no one else provided similar evidence beyond the possibly fictitious telegram that came to Richards. It is also possible that Richards had acted alone in conceiving this scheme. The reason no one followed her to her room is not clear. It is possible that they too were all well aware of the hoax, or that they were all aware of Louises marital dissatisfaction.