A Clean, Well-lighted Place——A Glimpse of Hemingway——Spokesman of “Lost Generation”
... a lot of sex in his books shows that he liked to shock people. When his publisher asked that he change some words and make his books more acceptable to people, Hemingway refused, then was forced to compromise. Hemingway's style came from his background as a journalist, where he was taught to make stories short and informative, as most articles in newspapers are. When he made the move to writing he brought this style along with him and incorporated it into his various stories. Instead of using 20 pages to describe one person's odor or something along those lines, Hemingway would finish an entire story in a small amount of space. But what set him apart from the rest was his ability to use such few words, and still get the reader to know what he was talking about. A、”Hero & Code” Hemingway is known to focus his novels around code heroes who struggle with the mixture of their tragic faults and the surrounding environment. The phrase, "Hemingway code hero" originated with scholar Philip Young. He uses it to describe a Hemingway character who "offers up and exemplifies certain principles of honor, courage, and endurance which in a life of tension and pain make a man a man." Traits of a typical Hemingway Code Hero are a love of good times, stimulating surroundings, and strict moral rules, including honesty. The Code Hero always exhibits some form of a physical wound that serves as his tragic flaw and the weakness of his character. In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises Jake Barnes is the character who maintains the typical Code Hero qualities; while Robert Cohn provides the antithesis of a Code Hero. It's important to note the difference between the "Hemingway hero" and the "Hemingway code hero." Some people have fallen into the habit of using these terms interchangeably. The "Hemingway hero" is a living breathing character essential to the story's narrative. Nick Adams is an example of a "Hemingway hero." The "Hemingway code hero" is often times a living breathing character as well, but he doesn't always have to take a human form. Sometimes the "Hemingway code hero" simply represents an ideal that the "Hemingway hero" tries to live up to, a code he tries to follow. An example of the "Hemingway code hero" (in human form) would be white hunter Robert Wilson from "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." To simplify the theory some, Earl Rovit developed a unique naming system. He refers to the "Hemingway hero" as the tyro and the "Hemingway code hero" as the tutor. Hemingway himself defined the Code Hero as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful." The Code Hero measures himself by how well they handle the difficult situations that life throws at him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a person faces death. The Code believes in "Nada," a Spanish word meaning nothing. Along with this, there is no after life. The Code Hero is typically an individualist and free-willed. Although he believes in the ideals of courage and honor he has his own set of morals and principles based on his beliefs in honor, courage and endurance. A code hero never shows emotions; showing emotions and having a commitment to women shows weakness. Qualities such as bravery, adventuresome and travel also define the Code Hero. A final trait of the Code Hero is his dislike of the dark. It symbolizes death and is a source of fear for him. The rite of manhood for the Code Hero is facing death. However, once he faces death bravely and becomes a man he must continue the struggle and constantly prove himself to retain his manhood. B、Under the ”Ice-berg” After the publication of his last major work, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway explained his "iceberg" theory of fiction writing in a Paris Review interview: If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. It is indeed of use on several counts to the Hemingway reader to approach any Hemingway story with an understanding of this "iceberg" theory, the principles of aesthetics that it embodies, and the assumptions about life that it entails. The stories, if read carefully, will reveal these assumptions, but to bring them to a work in advance often provides the key that unlocks what may at first appear to be the mystery of a Hemingway story, revealing the fourth and fifth dimensions that he usually achieves. What is below the water level of the Hemingway iceberg? First, there is a conviction that man's awareness of death is one of the guiding forces in life. Beneath every surface activity, then, is the awareness of death. There is also the notion that conventional and traditional ways of coping with the fact of man's mortality are based on romantic illusions which cause one to avoid thinking about the central fact of existence: that one must eventually die. It is with man's attitudes toward life in the presence of death that Hemingway is most concerned. The surfaces of his stories, the tips of the icebergs, most often show individuals whether in war, in the bullring, in a big-game hunt, or in some other life-threatening situation--dealing either gracefully or in a cowardly way with death or nada. III、Hemingway’s A clean, well-lighted place Much-anthologized short story by Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner's Magazine in March 1933 and later that year in the collection Winner Take Nothing. Late one night two waiters in a cafe wait for their last customer, an old man who has recently attempted suicide, to leave. The younger waiter, eager to get home to his wife, turns the old man out, but the older waiter is sympathetic to the human need for a clean, well-lighted place, an outpost in the darkness. The story is a powerful existential statement about the insufficiency of religion as a source of comfort, and it contains an often cited version of the Lord's Prayer that substitutes the Spanish word nada ("nothing") for most of the prayer's nouns. 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 if 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 without the fruit of its labor, and the aggravation of the old man's restless mind that cannot find peace. Throughout this story stark images of desperation show the old man's life at a point when he has realized the futility of life and finds himself the lonely object of scorn. A、 Interpretation "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," which comes four years after A Farewell to Arms, shows Hemingway's attitudes toward the central dilemma of initiation shifting, moving more in line with the "wise-man" characters such as Count Mippipopolous in The Sun Also Rises and Count Greffi in A Farewell to Arms. The dilemma, however, which is still the necessity of living life fully and stoically accepting the reality of death, has not changed; only Hemingway's perspective is in the process of changing. On the surface, the story's situation is simple: it is near closing time in a cafe; there still sits drinking an old man who comes every night to drink, a man who the week before had tried to commit suicide. The young waiter has no sympathy for the man and denies him a last drink in order that he may close the cafe and go home. The old waiter sympathizes with the old man, understanding how important it is that a clean, well-lit cafe be open as late as possible for those who might need it. The shift in Hemingway's perspective suggested subtly in the story's dramatic structure, in which Hemingway often, and quite consciously, omits the dialogue guides, forcing the reader to decide whether the speaker is the young waiter or the old waiter. When one becomes aware of what Hemingway is doing in showing the two very different attitudes, however, the dialogue guides are unnecessary. Their omission becomes part of the iceberg, "the part you can omit and it only strengthens your iceberg." The young waiter cannot understand the old man's despair: "He has plenty of money," the young waiter says. When asked by the old waiter the reason that the old man tried to commit suicide, the young waiter replies that it was "Nothing," an answer which is right, ironically. The young waiter does not understand the "nothingness" concept that is affirmed in the old waiter's "Our nada who art in nada" monologue, which indicates his degree of sympathy for the old man. Through the old waiter, who lives his life honestly and cleanly, Hemingway suggests that a life lived with an awareness of death at the end--in other words, with a recognition of nada at the core--will have moments of despair. For those moments, experienced by Jake in The Sun Also Rises, by Catherine in A Farewell to Arms, or the old man in the cafe, the only anodyne is a light bulb at night, a dry place out of the rain, or a clean, well-lighted cafe, in that order. In the stories and novels through 1933, the date of publication of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," there is a distance between the code heroes and the thing itself, death. True, death is very near to the heroes in such stories as "The Killers," where Ole Andreson is literally waiting to be killed; but this situation and situations like it are generally viewed from the perspective of a Nick-like character; by one whose days are not yet numbered, or they are seen by people such as Frederick Henry, who is watching death actually happen to other people. In "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," the code hero moves a step closer to death, finally embracing the thing itself. 1、 Solitude、Loneliness、vacuity The Hemingway hero is a restless man, doesn't like the night, often will sleep through the day and stay awake during the night. The darkness of the night represents nothingness, the state in which things will be when one is dead, absolute oblivion. Darkness and sleep must be avoided, for in these states there is nothingness, "nada." Hemingway's discourse on "nada" is his way of exploring the darker side of his spiritual self. In the story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” a waiter meditates on the nature of his fear of the darkness. What did he fear; it was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew only too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. What does light signify in the story? The idea of a well-lighted place is of great significance to this short story. It illuminates the connection between the old man and the older waiter, both of whom favor well-lighted places especially at night. A well-lighted atmosphere is an atmosphere in which the old man and older waiter can escape their loneliness. In the darkness of the night, the men are more vulnerable to thoughts of suicide and despair. Darkness and sleep must be avoided, for in these states there is nothingness, "nada." The idea of "nada" causes the older waiter to contemplate suicide, to question whether or not the example of the old man is one in which he should follow. He doesn't follow the old man's example, and then, judging from the last sentence of the story, feels the need to make excuses for his cowardice. The old man and the older waiter have nothing to go home to except darkness. The younger waiter, on the other hand, has a wife to go home to, and is therefore anxious to close up the café. When he refuses to refill the old man's brandy, the older waiter wonders what difference an extra hour would make. The older waiter can empathize with the old man and understands his attraction to a clean, well-lighted place. On some level, the younger waiter may also understand why the old man prefers drinking in a clean, well-lighted place to drinking at home, but his concern for himself takes precedence over his concern for the old man. After all, he is young and has confidence. With such confidence, it seems slightly strange that he would be rushing home to his wife. A confident man must know that his wife will be waiting in bed for him regardless of how late the hour. The pervading metaphor in this story is, predictably, the clean, well-lighted place. To Hemingway, it was much more than the physical darkness that frightened him—it was the symbolic darkness of reality. Hemingway was a modernist, a realist, and a philosopher. He believed the ultimate purpose of life was to discover such a clean, well-lighted place to escape from the darkness of the world—the dark truth that life is without truth or meaning So light represents any device man uses to distract himself from the darkness. The story’s image of the lighted café in the sea of dark nothingness perfectly symbolizes Hemingway’s nihilistic view of a world with no hope, no solace, no escape save that man creates for himself. 2、 Main character Old Man: The elderly, deaf gentleman who drinks gracefully near the back of the café, outside, is the main subject of discussion for the waiters, who are starting to close up for the night. The waiters gossip with one another about the man’s attempted suicide the previous week, and speculate about other aspects of his life. It seems the man drinks at the café every night, alone, to pass the time in a clean, well-lighted environment. Young Waiter: The young waiter is impatient with the old man, hoping to return home to his wife by a decent hour. He doesn’t understand how important it is to offer such a clean, well-lighted place to his customer. Older Waiter: The veteran waiter, like Hemingway, understands the deeper things in life, believing strongly that he must keep the café open in order to let others stay in the light, as he wishes also to remain in the light. Unable to bear the darkness of his world, the waiter walks the streets late in the night, not being able to sleep until morning. The old waiter and the young waiter are in opposition. They stand on either side of one of the great fences which exist in the world for the purpose of dividing sheep from goats. The young waiter would like to go home to bed, and is impatient with the old drinker of brandy. The old waiter is reluctant to see his own café close—both because he can sympathize with all the benighted brethren, and for the very personal reason that he, too needs the cleanness, the light, and the order of the place as an insulation against the dark. The unspoken brotherly relationship between the old waiter and the old patron is dramatized in the opening dialogue, when the two waiters discuss the drinker of brandy as he sits quietly at one of the tables. What links the old waiter and the old patron most profoundly is their brotherhood in arms against the beast in the jungle. B、 Contemporary critics In A Clean Well-Lighted Place, there is not much American Dream, Individual in society, or Nature and the land. The only theme in this short story is Psychology of the Individual. This comes at the end of the story when they discuss the nadas. The nadas, pertaining to nothing, and nothingness, these people discuss their fear of nothing, the clean well-lighted café that the waiter works in is like a refuge for those that have no where to go, and need some, not nothing. The Hemingway hero does not make its appearance quite as obvious as it did in the novel. The older waiter would be the stereotypical hero in this short story because of wanted to help people escape from nada, just like he wants to. He is trying to help others as he helps himself. This portrays the deep and sorrowful emotions by having a place for the lonely people to go to. (Literary Companion, 37, 38) “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name, thy Kingdom nada, thy will be nad...