A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss suicide.

Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” serves as a social commentary on the times in which it was written, exploring Modernist themes like Futility and Stagnation in Modern Society, Despair as a Human Condition, and Generational Divides and the Inevitability of Disillusionment. The story takes place almost entirely in a single setting, the clean, well-lighted café in which the two waiters work. Not much action occurs in the story, and most of the story and social commentary come through the three characters’ thoughts and dialogue. These three characters represent people adrift who are searching for meaning in a life that has become meaningless. They are prime examples of people struggling with essential, existential questions and looking to escape the new world in which they live, though that ultimately proves impossible; therefore, they come to a place of bleak acceptance or resignation.

The first hint of this meaninglessness occurs when the waiters begin to discuss the old man. After mentioning that he attempted suicide the previous week, the older waiter attributes his attempt to despair, caused by “nothing” (288). This response has a double meaning; speaking literally, the waiter claims that the old man has nothing to provoke such despair since he has money. However, the word “nothing” here also alludes to nothingness as something substantial rather than just a lack of something else. Essentially, his suicide attempt was caused by a feeling of emptiness or meaninglessness. Modernist nihilism describes the feeling that one’s life lacks purpose, and the old man attempted to escape this “nothing.”

Additionally, the old man is physically alone and isolated. He has no wife and drinks by himself, and he is physically separated by his deafness. His alienation is symbolized by his desire to sit in the shadowed area of the “clean, well-lighted place.” He chooses to sit there at a time of day when he can sense the quietness, further distancing himself from others. He is a regular at the café and often gets so drunk he forgets to pay his tab. His reliance on alcohol, like his suicide attempt, represents the lure of escape for the old man. That he drinks enough to forget to pay means he drinks enough to forget other things as well. His attempts are futile, though, as at the end of the night he still must return home, which he is able to do “unsteadily, but with dignity” (290). While he may temporarily escape from his overwhelming sense of disillusionment; he ultimately must return the next day and start the process over again. This is his ritual and his acceptance of life as it is.

The struggle to live with and make sense of purposelessness can be found in the older waiter as well. The older waiter is able to sympathize and understand the old man as he answers the onslaught of questions the younger waiter shoots at him regarding the man’s habits. This connection is enhanced by Hemingway’s juxtaposition of the older and younger waiters. While the younger waiter struggles to understand the old man’s motive in attempting suicide, the older waiter thoughtfully answers, without judgment. He also understands what drives the old man to remain so late at the café, saying, “He stays because he likes it” (289), while the younger waiter wishes the old man would leave and questions why he wouldn’t want to just return home and go to bed.

The older waiter’s understanding of both the man’s suicide attempt and his habit of drinking late at the café highlights the older waiter’s similar struggles with life’s meaninglessness and desire to escape the world, or at least find a place of solace. This commonality contrasts with the younger waiter’s cruelty—he takes advantage of the man’s deafness to tell him he “should have killed [himself] last week” (289)—highlighting not only a generational divide but the modern world’s brutality. The older men have a hard time coping with modernity, but the young man’s disregard hints that adapting to a more violent world isn’t ideal either.

Additionally, the revelation that both older men are unmarried emphasizes the story’s undercurrent of existential isolation, or the belief that one is ultimately alone in this world, even when surrounded by people. The younger waiter says, “He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me” (289), drawing a connection between loneliness and the lack of a wife. Even though the old man had a wife and is currently looked after by his niece, he is not relieved of this loneliness, just as going to a more crowded bar with music does not help the older waiter escape the “nothing that he knew too well” (291). Though they may be surrounded by noise or people, the two older characters continue to experience existential isolation and only briefly escape it at the clean, well-lighted cafe.

The older waiter also struggles with “nothing” and tries to escape it. Upon closing the café, he finds himself overwhelmed by the fact that “it” (291), which remains ambiguous throughout, “was all a nothing and a man was nothing too” (291). Here, Hemingway’s writing style switches from sparse dialogue to the waiter’s stream of consciousness, the only time the technique is used. He struggles internally to find meaning in this nothingness without the ability to define it. He admits that some, like the younger waiter, are able to live in this nothingness and never feel it, but ultimately, it is nada. His stream of consciousness abruptly shifts to the Lord’s Prayer, substituting keywords with “nada” (291), reflecting the Modernist idea that prayer and religion are meaningless. The purpose previously found in organized religion is gone, so life remains meaningless, and disillusionment surrounds the old constructs of society.

The integration of Spanish also suggests that the story takes place in Spain. Hemingway lived in Paris in the 1920s and visited Spain frequently throughout the decade, eventually going on to cover the Spanish Civil War as a journalist from 1937 to 1938. The 1930s were a time of political transition in Spain. The Second Spanish Republic was created in 1931, ending centuries of monarchic rule, and a new constitution was written in 1931 that made Spanish society more equal and secular. This transition led to political tension, both between leftist factions, who disagreed on how to shape the new republic, and emerging fascist parties.

By 1933, the year this story was published, right-wing and fascist parties had political control, and violence was a daily occurrence in Spain. These tensions erupted when Francisco Franco led a coup against the newly-elected left-wing government in 1936, sparking the Civil War and subsequent decades of fascist rule in Spain. The violence and fear of this era are alluded to in the story when the waiters reference the nearby guards, and this political tension contributes to the more general feelings of bleak instability that Hemingway tackles as a Modernist.

The desire to escape this “nada” and his resulting insomnia motivate the waiter—and the “many” like him—to seek comfort in clean, well-lighted places like the café. Without religion or other meaningful places, the café is a vestige of the old world, different from the bars and bodegas. It provides a place to go for “all those who do not want to go to bed […] who need a light for the night” (290), and a refuge for those who are overwhelmed by “nada.” In short, it is “order” in a world full of chaos. Yet, just as the old man must return home each night, the café must be shut down and the lights shut off, highlighting that escape from the existential crisis of the time is ultimately impossible.

While the bar the waiter attends later is bright, it is not clean; thus, it is also not the escape he needs. It does not provide the order of a clean, well-lighted place. At home, he tells himself that this general sense of discomfort and disillusionment is mere “insomnia” (291) that will go away with daylight, though this final assertion—and the community of other sufferers that the older waiter imagines—comes across as a vague hope rather than a concrete truth.