Hi, I'm Rebecca Balcarcel.
Let's take a look at Ernest Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."
It can be a confusing story, partly because the dialogue
has a lot of subtext.
That means that people don't say exactly what they mean.
They're implying a lot.
So let's walk through the story.
We start out in a cafe.
Picture a outdoor patio or a terrace, where they've got chairs where people can have a
drink or eat, kind of like the outside of a Starbucks, except a little more
pretty.
This is where the story takes place, and we have three characters: an old man who's sitting
and drinking at the cafe, a young waiter who waits on him, and an
older waiter who deson't wait on the old man but who understands the old man and his psychology
and some of what the old man is going through.
Now if you've ever been a little depressed, a little down, or you've
been through a dark period in your life when you really did not want to go to sleep when
it came time for bedtime, then you have felt the same way that the old man
feels, and that the old waiter feels in this story.
Sometimes you can't quite let go, watching videos on the internet, or
watching movies one after another, and you don't wanna go to bed.
Now why don't we want to go to bed?
Is there an emptiness that we can't face when there's silence
and there's darkness?
Whatever it is, that's the same situation that the old man is in.
And that is why he finds himself here at 2:30 in the morning, at this clean,
well-lighted cafe.
Now the young waiter wants nothing more than to go home.
He wants to clean up, get everything in order, so they can leave.
He has a wife waiting for him.
Meanwhile, the older waiter understands how pleasant it is for the old man to sit here
in a public place but not really interacting with the public.
In fact, the old man is rather deaf, and so he can't
interact a lot with other people, but at least he's not alone alone in his bed in the dark.
Okay, so the older waiter has some compassion, and throughout the story
we see that.
At one point the younger waiter says, "Well, I wanna be home an hour early, 'cause I have...
That hour is valuable to me, and it's not valuable to this
old man."
But the older waiter says, "Yes it is.
It's just as valuable for him to sit here and fend off that loneliness,
that darkness, as it is for you to go home and enjoy your wife and, you know, crawl into
bed."
We have place in the story where we see a young couple walking by.
But instead of being a happy, young couple in a normal way, it's a soldier and woman
who does not have a head covering.
So these people too are keeping loneliness away, but by finding eachother.
But yet, what do they have?
This woman without a head covering probably is a prostitute, or, at the very least, kind
of an escort-type woman who is not going to be in a long-term
relationship with this soldier.
They are not in love, and we have some hints from the waiters who say, uh, "Well, as long
as that soldier gets what he's after, isn't it
fine?
Isn't it a good way to spend his time?"
Well, maybe it is.
But that soldier is lonely too, and likely the woman is
lonely as well.
So we have a whole cast of characters who are lonely, except for the young waiter, who's
wanting to get home to his wife.
The young waiter has a couple other advantages: Besides having wife, he's
young and he has a job.
And the older waiter says, "Well, you have everything," and the young waiter says, "Well,
you do to."
But the older waiter knows better than that.
He knows that there's something internal that he's missing, and he does have a job, but
he doesn't have a wife, and he doesn't have the potential anymore that
he used to.
So there's a lot of loss here, in this story, a sense of the beauties of the world and the
love of the world not really being available to this old man,
or the old waiter, anymore.
Now one of the most confusing parts of the story is when we lose track of who is talking.
I actually went down my copy here, and I wrote 'O' and 'Y' for "old waiter, young waiter,
old waiter, young waiter."
For the most part they switch back and forth, but there's a point when it seems like the
young waiter says two things in a row.
Hemingway writes, "'I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe,' the older
waiter said."
So he tells us exactly that the older waiter said that.
Thank you, Hemingway.
But the next line is the young man kind of ribbing the older waiter, saying,
"Oh, you're one of those who likes to sleep with a nightlight, aren't you?"
And then the next line says, "I want to go home, to bed."
Now that sounds like the young waiter's voice, even though it seems like
it's time for the older waiter to speak in this back-and-forth pattern.
But it has to be the young waiter speaking that line,
because after that, Hemingway tells us directly that the older waiter says, "We are of two
different kinds."
He draws a distinction between the reluctance of the older
waiter to close up the cafe, and the eagerness of the younger waiter, the impatience to get
it closed down and go home.
So it's my academic opinion that the younger waiter speaks twice.
From there, it's relatively easy.
The young waiter says, "Oh, look, the old man could go to a bar, right?
There's bodegas open all night long.
And we are in Spain, so we have some Spanish thrown in, bodega being one of those.
You know, why can't the guy go to a bar?
Why do we have to sit here and keep the cafe open for him?
But the older waiter knows that a bar is a quite different place, and if you keep the
cafe open, it's kind of like keeping a little bit of beauty
available, a bit of civilized- a civilized way to be out at 2:30 in the morning, instead
of kind of a pathetic way, standing at the bar, looking lonely, looking kinda
lame, sad...
No, at the cafe you can have some dignity, he says.
And that is why the cafe is so important to the old man, and to the old waiter.
Now let's talk about the cryptic moment when the old waiter starts
to say the Lord's Prayer.
"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name," and so on.
This is a unique way for Hemingway to get across the state of mind this man is in.
What an original idea!
But the man substituting "nada" for almost all the words in this prayer implies that
religion is not a comfort.
For him it's just more meaninglessness.
He doesn't feel close to God, even though this is supposed to be a prayer.
So he's disillusioned, he's distant, he doesn't have an active spiritual life,
there's just this emptiness.
And the technique of putting this word "nothing" into the Lord's Prayer is startling and conveys
this loneliness very well.
Finally at the end of the story, we see the old waiter by himself, and in fact he does
go to the bar to avoid going to bed, to not face his
loneliness...
He goes to the bar.
And at first when the waiter there, or the bartender, says, "Well, what do you want?"
-- you know -- "What's yours?" he says.
Our waiter answers, "Nada."
Now "nada" is the Spanish word for "nothing."
Now he did not come to the bar to buy nothing, so obviously this nothingness is already on
his mind, and the word "nothing" appears earlier
in the story as well.
So when the bartender says, "What do you want?" and he says, "Nothing," we know that really
that's not true.
And so the bartender says, "Ugh, this crazy guy.
[frustrated sound]" And finally the waiter says, "Okay, what I really want is a copita."
(I want a little- a little drink.)
But he doesn't stay there long.
He starts to feel like this is kind of pathetic too.
So he goes home, but as he's walking home we get the sense that
he's rationalizing to himself, because he says, "You know, maybe- maybe I don't want
to go home and go to bed because I have insomnia.
That must be it."
Yeah well, the reader knows better.
That's not insomnia.
Not a clinical disorder or a medical condition.
This is just that loneliness of the heart that we all feel sometimes, but
that is nagging him and- and stealing his centeredness and his feeling of peace or-
or purpose.
He is not necessarily clinically depressed either, but he is going
through a dark night.
Alright, I hope this has helped you understand "A Clean Well-Lighted Place."
There's lots more to say about this story, but I think this will
give you a good start.
Join me for another video!