Voltaire, one of the greatest philosophical minds in history, once said ,“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.” The imminent fate of death has plagued humanity since the dawn of time and has always been the source of an endless plethora of questions with no answers. These questions become more and more badgering to men as they approach the twilight of their life. Different attitudes have been taken towards the face of mortality and some of these philosophies have become the center of important pieces of literature. Such literature like “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, place old age as a source of fear, a crippling demise that is joined with loneliness the closer it gets to death and can only
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Both characters in the pieces explore the fear of death that comes with old age and present the choices of either accepting death or trying to escape it.
The reality of old age has always been accompanied with the hard truth that it is a time of loss, decline and stigma. Old people are mostly interpreted as a hindrance to society with nothing left to offer, a mere shell of their former selves.This same idea can be seen in Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”. He evokes that atmosphere of despair and loneliness through stylistic techniques such as dialogue and interior monologue that render interactions between old and young characters who reflect on the nature of age and the inevitability of death. The old man is characterized by despair as the waiters make it known he attempted to commit suicide. This is combined with symbols such as sitting in the shadows as he avoids light. Light can represent truth, companionship, and life and the emphasis of the old man never sitting in the light represents the lack of all these values as he becomes older. Although this heavy burden of …show more content…
The concept of time has been around since the dawn of the ages and has since seemed to control humanity. A person might describe time as a hand on a clock that moves along minute by minute, validating each change as a sequence of time, while others look at time as a way to measure our lives and the things we accomplish with the giving time. The contrast of the sentiment towards time between old and young people is seen in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” which shows how time is valued most by the young waiter, but not by the older characters. They are near the end of their lives and seem to not keep track of time while the young waiter is always impatient and does not acknowledge how he has more time than his counterparts. The old man and waiter seem to speed up their own time by spending it idly while the narrator from “Sailing to Byzantium” recognizes this and instead battles against time to cheat death. This might be due to the speaker’s feeling of not achieving much throughout his life as he wants the sages to appear and take him from his body into an existence outside of time like a piece of great art in order to be able to gain more time. The narrator again wishes to exist in the “artifice of eternity” like the sages who are immortal since they are frozen in time in the painting. Time is the enemy in both literary pieces, but while the old man tries to pass it and even speed it up by trying to
Both characters in the pieces explore the fear of death that comes with old age and present the choices of either accepting death or trying to escape it.
The reality of old age has always been accompanied with the hard truth that it is a time of loss, decline and stigma. Old people are mostly interpreted as a hindrance to society with nothing left to offer, a mere shell of their former selves.This same idea can be seen in Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”. He evokes that atmosphere of despair and loneliness through stylistic techniques such as dialogue and interior monologue that render interactions between old and young characters who reflect on the nature of age and the inevitability of death. The old man is characterized by despair as the waiters make it known he attempted to commit suicide. This is combined with symbols such as sitting in the shadows as he avoids light. Light can represent truth, companionship, and life and the emphasis of the old man never sitting in the light represents the lack of all these values as he becomes older. Although this heavy burden of …show more content…
The concept of time has been around since the dawn of the ages and has since seemed to control humanity. A person might describe time as a hand on a clock that moves along minute by minute, validating each change as a sequence of time, while others look at time as a way to measure our lives and the things we accomplish with the giving time. The contrast of the sentiment towards time between old and young people is seen in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” which shows how time is valued most by the young waiter, but not by the older characters. They are near the end of their lives and seem to not keep track of time while the young waiter is always impatient and does not acknowledge how he has more time than his counterparts. The old man and waiter seem to speed up their own time by spending it idly while the narrator from “Sailing to Byzantium” recognizes this and instead battles against time to cheat death. This might be due to the speaker’s feeling of not achieving much throughout his life as he wants the sages to appear and take him from his body into an existence outside of time like a piece of great art in order to be able to gain more time. The narrator again wishes to exist in the “artifice of eternity” like the sages who are immortal since they are frozen in time in the painting. Time is the enemy in both literary pieces, but while the old man tries to pass it and even speed it up by trying to