A Clean Well Lighted Place Setting Analysis

Hemingway’s Carefully Chosen Settings:
How Hemingway Creates an Argument and Masters the Short Story
Hemingway was the master of the short story, an otherwise impossible form of writing, because he was able to use all the literary devices as his disposal to make every single word work for the story, which stopped his short stories from running on into novellas. Indeed, the way Hemingway uses devices like setting is startling in his short stories because he does more than set the scene – he uses them to facilitate his argument and support his characters. The following essay will explore the way Hemingway uses the setting device to further his argument in the short stories ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ and a ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’ in order …show more content…
The overall message of the story is that life is somewhat meaningless and that the protagonist, both his life and existence, mean nothing. Hemingway uses the setting to make his point here because whereas he could have placed the man in a battlefield or in the middle of a crowded city, in which case his argument would have been juxtaposed with the idea that a person is insignificant but still one of many, the café setting used in this setting is isolating to its core; the street was dusty, the café is quiet, and the two waiters are not so much characters as spectators of the man’s lack of existence. Indeed, the setting is important because as one waiter says “He can buy a bottle and drink at home”, and if the old man had been drinking at home, isolated in his sitting room, the theme of meaninglessness would have been lost because the old man would have been purposefully isolated, which would have made the idea of a meaningless life sad instead of merely a fact of life. Additionally, if the man were drinking alone at home, there would have needed to be some explanation of why he was alone at home – where is his family? Where are his friends and neighbors? Will anyone come to call on him and relieve him of his loneliness? In the café, the old man is surrounded by spectators in a bright, pleasant place with the barman and the waiters and the occasional passersby. It is clean, the lights are on, and it should provide temporary solace to patrons, but it does not defeat the darkness and meaninglessness that underscores the human