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

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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

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