ipl-logo

Blindness In Ernest Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

955 Words4 Pages

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 lateone night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people aroundhim, and uses his deafness as an image for his separation from the rest of the world. Near the end of the story, the authorshows us the desperate emptiness of a life near finished without the fruit of its labor, and the aggravation of the old man 'srestless mind that cannot find peace. Throughout this story stark images of desperation show the old man 's life at a pointwhen he has realized the futility of life and finds himself the lonely object of scorn.The most obvious image used by …show more content…

The old manknows this and recognizes that he is completely cut off from the sounds that he probably had not thought much of as ayoung man. In this cafe so late at night he is not missing much. In fact, he might prefer to miss the conversation abouthim between the two waiters. The younger waiter is repulsed by the old man. He says, "I wouldn 't want to be that old. Anold man is a nasty thing." The same thing may have been said by the old man when he was young. One might evenconjecture that the old man chooses to be deaf rather than to face the nastiness of caducity and hear the words of disdainspoken by his juniors.Another tool used by Hemingway in this story is the image of Nothing. Nothing is what the old man wants to escape. Theolder waiter, who sometimes acts as the voice of the old man 's soul, describes his adversary:"It was all nothing, and a man was nothing, too...Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada y puesnada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada nada be thy name thy kingdom nada they will be nada in nada as it isin nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nadabut deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee..."The Nothing is a

Show More
Related
491 Words | 2 Pages

What kind of world do we live in? In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, the reader learns how Jews were treated during the Holocaust, how blind the world was, and how survivors’ lives were forever changed. This book goes through many optical and is a really good book to read and learn about all those things. What would happen if society knew what was actually going on in the world?

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, the theme of blindness to reality is explored through the actions and dialogue of the people of Sighet, a town located in Northwestern Romania, prior to and during German occupation during the second world war. Prior to the Germans arriving, the people of Sighet express disbelief that Germans would occupy such an out of the way town, or bother with them at all. The population refuses to believe the horrors and atrocities they have heard of taking place in other communities within Nazi-occupied territory, and, when the Nazis finally do arrive, the people of Sighet remain optimistic. Wiesel describes the Germans and their steel helmets with the death’s head emblem, just before writing about the positive nature the Nazis displayed in their dealings with the local community. Here we see that despite his misgivings and fears, and the blatant physical display of the sinister

Read More
861 Words | 4 Pages

This is an allusion to Hemingway’s quote about

Read More
842 Words | 4 Pages

He hopes that after taking his First Communion he will be free from all of the questions in his mind, but is disappointed by the lack of answers God gave him. As he questions his belief in God, Antonio is introduced to the consoling pagan god, the Golden Carp. “The Golden Carp,” I whispered in awe. “I could not have been more entranced if i had seen the Virgin, or God himself… I felt my body trembling as I saw the bright golden form disappear. I knew I had witnessed a miraculous thing, the appearance of a pagan god…

Read More
739 Words | 3 Pages

Hemingway sets the story environment at a train station, with two very different sides of the tracks. This setting is interpreted as a metaphor for the choice at hand, an interpretation of life or death. One side reflecting a dry harsh area, with no trees, and devoid of life, on the other side of the

Read More
626 Words | 3 Pages

This passage describes how nothing

Read More
467 Words | 2 Pages

Colin Ritter Mrs. Gosser Literacy 3 31 January 2023 Identity Something that really affects the identity of a person is where a person lives. In the memoir Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson she explains what it was like as a kid in the 1960s during racially discriminating times. Jacqueline is a little girl that grew up in the 1960s, who really struggled to find out who she was/wanted to be. She has moved several times from Ohio to South Carolina and then to New York. She likes to write, imagine and make up all sorts of crazy stories about her life.

Read More
1144 Words | 5 Pages

“The London clay come in” is also personified, as if it suggests that the clay can come in as if it had a mind of its own. Imagery is also used in the fourth and seventh stanzas. “maggots in his eyes” and “...now his finger-bones Stick through his

Read More
1037 Words | 5 Pages

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, describes the spectacle of an angel that falls into the yard of a village family. Told by a third-person narrator, a unique character is discovered outside of Elisenda’s and Pelayo’s home. They precede to place him in a chicken coop on display for all of the village to see. The old man is an attraction that people travel near and far to observe. The atrocious conditions in with the decrepit angel lives in are a direct result of the village peoples’ scorn for oddity.

Read More
917 Words | 4 Pages

“Cathedral” is a short and warm story written by Raymond Carver. The author portrays the story in the first person narrative. Carver presents the interaction between an unnamed couple and a blind man by the name of Robert, who is visiting them. The story is told by the husband, the narrator, who is a prejudiced, jealous, and insecure man with very limited awareness of blindness. This theme is exposed through Carver’s description of the actions of the narrator whose lack of knowledge by stereotyping a blind man.

Read More
601 Words | 3 Pages

In his essay “Here,” Philip Larkin uses many literary devices to convey the speaker’s attitude toward the places he describes. Larkin utilizes imagery and strong diction to depict these feelings of both a large city and the isolated beach surrounding it. In the beginning of the passage, the speaker describes a large town that he passes through while on a train. The people in the town intrigue him, but he is not impressed by the inner-city life.

Read More
908 Words | 4 Pages

America is built upon the ideal that every citizen has an equal opportunity to success and prosperity through hard work and dedication. This is also known as the American dream. Many authors have speculated what is most important in grasping the American dream and through reading these stories it can be determined that success, happiness, and freedoms all play an important role in attaining the American dream. The American dream is historically unique because everyone American has the right to it.

Read More
816 Words | 4 Pages

In “Acquainted with the Night”, it embodies the abyss of despair that the narrator finds themselves in. The poem centers on the qualities of the night, and the night’s defining characteristic is its never-ending darkness. The poem’s very title shows how deeply bogged down in darkness the narrator is; the speaker has, ironically, become friends with it. The motif of darkness manifests itself in other examples as well. The speaker writes, “I have outwalked the furthest city light,” showing that he or she has transcended the limits of a normal person’s misfortune and instead exposed himself to complete and utter desperation (3).

Read More
1138 Words | 5 Pages

The novel, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, describes the life of some people from the Lost Generation in post-World War I Europe, but mostly in Paris, France and Pamplona, Spain. This novel rotates around Jacob, or Jake, Barnes’, the narrator’s, life; which mostly includes drinking with his friends, Robert Cohn, a Jewish man who is often verbally abused by his “friends”, Ashley Brett, an attractive woman who Jake is in love with, Bill Gorton, a good friend of Jake’s, and a couple others. Their life in dull Paris seems to revolve around spending money and drinking, but when they go to colorful Pamplona, Spain, they have an amazing time during the fun-filled fiesta. Ernest Hemingway uses the “iceberg theory” when he presents Jake Barnes to the reader; he does not directly tell you a lot about Jake, but through Jake’s thoughts and emotions, one can tell that he was injured in the war, he is not a very religious person, he would rather do what he loves, instead of what he must, and he does not like to be honest with himself, despite the fact that he is one of the more honest characters in the novel. Ernest Hemingway does not directly let the reader know that Jake is injured in a special place; he allows the reader to interpret that from Jake’s thoughts and memories.

Read More
840 Words | 4 Pages

The battle that The Old Man fights with the marlin, as well as the daunting task of defending the marlin from the countless sharks that follow the skiff, are two points in the novel where Hemingway really conveys the sense of struggling and suffering. This is how Hemingway tries to convey an underlying theme of the constant struggle between man and nature, by depicting the struggle between The Old Man and the Marlin, against all odds. The Old Man considers the fact that capturing the Marlin is such a great task for him since the Marlin is trying just as hard to evade and escape from The Old Man’s reach. Throughout this struggle, The Old Man, who eventually becomes very fatigued, keeps telling himself to push through the pain and bear it like a real man would. He pushes past the faintness and dizziness he experiences, he pushes himself to see beyond the black spots in his weary vision and he pushes past the pain in his hands to catch the Marlin which puts up a great fight against this frail old man.

Read More

More about Blindness In Ernest Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Related Topics

Open Document