A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, By Ernest Hemingway

How has your understanding of the concept of belonging been shaped by the representation of relationships and events that you have encountered in the texts you have studied for the Area of Study: Belonging?

This passage, from Chapter Eighteen, is an interior monologue in which Robert Jordan describes his earlier idealism about the war, which the realities of warfare have long since crushed. The passage gives us a glimpse of what may have caused Robert Jordan to leave his life and job in the states to volunteer to fight in a foreign war: he sought something to believe in “wholly and completely” and also sought communion, an “absolute brotherhood” with other people. But his disillusionment with the “bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife” he sees in the Republican cause and its leaders foreshadows his current opinion that the leaders have “betrayed” their people. The religious vocabulary Hemingway uses, such as “crusade,” “communion,” “consecration,”

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” declares National Rifle Association 's President Wayne LaPierre. But, does this statement really hold true on college campuses? Considerations of allowing a student or others to conceal and carry a firearm on college campuses causes a tremendous amount of controversy in the U.S.. The heated debate surrounding campus carry began after the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech reported Dennis A. Henigan, former Vice-President of the Brady Campaign and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The older waiter is the prime example of Hemingway’s idea of a hero as he does not need to deceive himself into thinking that everything is okay because he has already accepted his situation as it is. This acceptance allows him to face the “nada” of his life without any opium, unlike the younger waiter who is unhappy with his situation and always tries to change it by closing up the café before three o’clock and saying that he’s “not lonely [because he has] a wife waiting in bed for [him]” (“Light”, 289). The younger waiter “[has] everything” but is still not pleased with his life, unlike the older waiter (“Light”, 290). In contrast, the older waiter lacks “everything but work”, yet still finds tranquility in his life and helps other people, like the old man in the café (“Light”, 290). He understands and still accepts his situation, unlike the other characters in Hemingway’s stories, which Ernest Hemingway believes to be admirable and heroic. Because he does not need an opium to live with his situation, Hemingway paints the older waiter as a hero and demeans the use of opiums as

Heroes, in the time of the ancient Greeks they believed a hero was someone with a divine parentage, but only on one side of the parentage. Their divine parentage gave them different ‘powers’, such as superhuman strength, and the right to act outrageously. One would think that with a godly parent one would be better off, but sadly these heroes or demi-gods had impossible hardships to face in their daily lives. Some of these heroes were Odysseus, Achilles, Herakles, Perseus, Theseus and the heroine, Atalanta.

Googe 1 Avery Googe ENC 1101 Professor Alling April 19, 2015 Jaws When most of the world hears the iconic song from the movie Jaws, their mind automatically shifts to images of giant sharks and severed limbs. Thanks to the film, many people boycotted beaches and mothers strictly kept their children away from open waters; triggering a massive cloud of fear and ignorance that would consume most, if not all, of the world. Jaws coated the general public's perception of sharks with a curtain of blood and fear, vilifying them for decades to come. With the films debut in 1975, it kick-started a tidal wave of mass hysteria and paranoia, and as a result the public's attitudes on sharks plummeted as fast and as deep as the titanic.

Although both men stare into the Absurd, they engage it and manage to find their own meaning. Neither men give up, despite life fighting against them. Both men come out of their conflict reborn with new inner meaning and purpose, suffering existential angst to reach their rebirth. On one side of both novels, Hemingway creates characters that have meaning within themselves. These characters both wish for purpose, both renew themselves in the face of death, and both have a sense of meaning found within and without themselves. These are all basics tenets found in existentialism and clearly demonstrated in both

Furthermore, the image of the old man struggling up the hill with his mast across his shoulders recalls Christ’s march toward Calvary. Even the position in which Santiago collapses on his bed—face down with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up—brings to mind the image of Christ suffering on the cross. Hemingway employs these images in the final pages of the novella in order to link Santiago to Christ, who exemplified transcendence by turning loss into gain, defeat into triumph, and even death into renewed life.

Ernest Hemingway's short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," first published in 1933, is written in his characteristic terse style. It is the story of two waiters having a conversation in a café, just before closing up and going home for the night. They cannot leave because they still have a customer. One is anxious to get home to his wife, while the other sympathizes with the old man sitting at the table. Without realizing it, they are discussing the meaning of life.

Many authors, critics, and everyday social readers define Ernest Hemingway as the prime example of 20th century American literature. Hemingway’s works transcend time itself, so that even readers today analyze and criticize his works. His works, of course, have drawn praises and animosity from all corners of the globe. Critics often applause Hemingway on his short simple prose, for which many people recognize him for. His writing builds upon the masterful usage of “short, simple words and short, simple sentences” (Wagner, 3) to create clear and easy to

Hemingway's world is one in which things do not grow and bear fruit, but explode, break, decompose, or are eaten away. It is saved from total misery by visions of endurance, by what happiness the body can give when it does not hurt, by interludes of love which

      Hemingway's second portrayal of symbolism that a reader may distinguish is the café itself.  The café represents a sanctuary of the evilness of the world.  The namesake of the short story is a clue for the reader to see that the café would represent some form of an asylum not only from the elements of nature, but also safety from evil.  An example of the usefulness of this sanctuary is how the deaf old man uses the café as a safe-haven to be to himself after the incident where he almost succeeded in committing suicide and enjoys the comfort the café gives.  The old waiter represents in the café the kindness and caring that the café should provide; whereas the younger waiter is more of a materialistic character.  He clearly displays shallowness and selfishness.  Arthur Waldhorn writes that the older waiter helps keep the light on a little longer at the café for those, who like himself, 'do not want to go to bed.' (P 28)  The younger waiter is a protagonist in attitude of the older waiter.  The philosophy of Nihilism is brought into this theme when the older man recites the Lord's Prayer but substitutes the word "nada" for every noun in it.  Nihilism is brought onto a larger scale because it is very evident that there is nothing to believe in, even as a

In the story “A Clean, Well- Lighted Place” by Earnest Hemingway begins with the main character and his co-worker in a café. The two are analyzing, and discussing a deaf, drunk Oldman, who is their last customer of the day. As the deaf old man insists on having more whiskey, the main character informs the young waiter as to why and how the old man tried to commit suicide. They began to converse about the Oldman’s depressed life. The younger waiter is in a rush to go home to his wife, while the older waiter is patient and he stands up for the Oldman, being able to relate to him. Hemingway’s sentence structure and writing style represents the comparison and contrast between setting, people, and objects, along with emphasizing how it is to have and be nothing.

It shows what there is. It does not search for what there might be. The old man sits in the shadow and looks down. Joyce's character carries a chalice of faith through a maelstrom of mundane chatter (228). Hemingway's sips a glass of brandy. To him, the mundane is not a distraction on the way to higher awareness, it is all there is. If one does not like it, one may numb themselves to it, or one may quit it. This old man will not listen to myths of meaning and comfort. He has gone deaf, perhaps out of not wanting to hear any more empty promises or stories that fail to hold up. Joyce's boy has had his first crushing disappointment. Hemingway's old man has had his last. There is no more looking up for him. His drink, his regular café, these are his comfort and his refuge.

Killinger continues to highlight the presence of “the bifurcation of life into the authentic and the unauthentic; the moment of existential choice, in which a man decides to be either authentic or unauthentic; and in nontheistic existentialism, the exaltation of a humanistic ethic and the transmutation of aesthetics to the level where it becomes confused with ethics and a low kind of spirituality.”, all of which are “elements vital to existential thought”, present in Hemingway’s writing (Killinger, 1960). Killinger also brings to attention Hemingway’s preoccupation with death and its presence as the reoccurring theme in all his work. This has also been noted by other critics. In Essays in Criticism (Cash Jnr., 1951) Cash