Hemingway's A Clean Well-Lighted Place And Hills Like White Elephants

A Clean Well-Lighted Place and Hill Like White Elephants beautifully illustrated setting at its best.
In a Clean Well-lighted place, the setting is monumentally important due to the fact that it directly correlates to the theme and the fact that Hemingway does not give us much else to work with. Starting the story we find two waiters working late, one old and one young, in a nice, clean, and well-lit café. The author uses the setting throughout the story to elude to the contrasting characteristics of light and dark. The setting divulges deeper into the meaning of light and dark with the theme of loneliness. Loneliness can be found in the unclean, dark places which are expressed by the old waiter and the drunk man. As the story progresses the setting changes from the pleasant café to an unfriendly, lifeless bar that the old waiter spends his night at to attempt to prevent his inevitable loneliness. Overall the setting through the story displays the contrast between light leading to happiness and dark leading to loneliness.

The fact that Hemingway places it at a midway point hints at the fact that this is only the beginning of the relationship troubles. The girl in the story says the hills look like white elephants in the beginning of the story, but as the fight between the couple gets more and more heated her view of the hills change. She seems to be torn between the two landscapes that the author painted. This vacillates behavior toward the setting most likely symbolizes her choice to have the operation or to