ENGLISH 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Free Indirect Speech, Ernest Hemingway
23 Jun 2018
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A Clean Well Lighted Place – Ernest Hemmingway
American writer from Illinois, known for novels and short stories
Served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy during WW1, was seriously wounded
Toronto (journalist for Toronto Star) Paris (met writers associated with Modernist
movement) Key West, Cuba, and Idaho.
Served as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and WWII and received the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1954
Making something of nothing
“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said. “Why?” “He was in despair.” “What
about?” “Nothing.” “How do you know it was nothing?” “He has plenty of money.” –
Omniscient narrator sparingly used, free indirect discourse
Others: This story is frequently interpreted as being about nihilism, or the philosophy that
human existence is meaningless, emphasizes the story’s focus on loneliness, suffering, and
“nothingness” in the places where one might expect something meaningful, like God or some
other source of salvation
I: Story is about trying to find places of salvation, places of peace in a world where religious
places are no longer offering that kind of thing to public. Sanctuary of social/public spaces,
spaces that have nothing to offer in terms of spiritual guidance but provide other things,
provide places to go, provide places to go to coexist with others, not to interact, but to be with
others, public spaces provide a space in which individuals can endure among humanity, be
part of human public, human social body in a way that requires nothing more than mutual
recognition of each other
The story makes nothing into something—an object worth seeing, recognizing, considering,
and dwelling with. The story is not about a lack of meaning in the world or in human
existence, but rather about the multitude of meanings that “nothing” or “nothingness” takes
on in certain contexts, including old age, war, and social isolation. When it concludes
famously saying all was nothing, etc, these words can be interpreted negative, try to think
about it, not as suggesting lack of meaning in world but statement about multiple meaning
that nothingness may take on, do things to us other than plunge us into despair and isolate us
from realm from realm
The narrator as “a nothing”
A lot of dialogue as they observe the only patron, an older man drinking brandy on the terrace
Told in the third person, but the narrator is not very present—long passages of dialogue in
which the narrator’s voice doesn’t enter at all; the longest passage of third-person narration
slips into free indirect discourse, the internal voice of the older waiter
Story uses the “omniscient narrator” only to withhold that narrator as a guiding authority—
mimics the “godless” world evoked by the older waiter’s reverie toward the end, in which he
substitutes the words “nada” and “nothing” for terms like “Father,” “heaven,” “Mary,” and
“grace” in traditional Catholic prayers— World where there is an omniscient power but
because that voice is so withdrawn, so unpresent for most of the story, it reproduces that
feeling that being in world where god is missing, in which god should be but isn’t
What is the café for—what kind of “light” does it offer?
The “clean, well-lighted place” of the title is defined in the course of the story through several
points of contrast
Domestic or “home” spaces contrasted with public spaces:
What is the difference between drinking at home or at cafe? Not about the drinking, but about
how one is situated in relation to other people—exposed to them, or isolated from them
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