Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place" is a story based around a small cafe, with its two waiters, its single patron, and the events that take place just prior to its closing and soon thereafter. The patron who keeps the two waiters until closing is an elderly deaf man who attempted to commit suicide the week before. The old man's attempt to kill himself was thwarted by his niece, who is his caretaker assumedly since his wife either died or left him and he turned to the bottle for support.

In the story, the idea of doubt is perceived as shadow and is seen throughout the entire story "...The tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that move slightly in the wind"(104). This perhaps depicts the doubt that the old man has and by placing himself in the shadow he is expressing t

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s his own choice to be removed from society.

Images of faith and doubt are consistently referenced to throughout the story most notably when the older waiter stated, "What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nothing and then nothing."(107). This quote shows the waiter's doubt in life itself and his despair. His feelings of being lost in an eternal loop of nothing seems to drive him near mad by his continuous use of nothing, as if to say his life is nothing. When asked of his fears to return home before the usual hour the younger waiter replied "Are you trying to insult me...I have confidence. I am all confidence"(106). His apparent trust in his wife not to cheat and his rant on his confidence, to me shows his unrivaled faith.

The cafe is a "clean, well-lighted place". It is, as the title implies, lighted and an escape from the lingering darkness that surrounds the cafe and infiltrates the near-by bodegas "...(In the bodegas) light was needed and a certain cleanliness and order" (107). The light symbolizes comfo

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Approximate Word count = 902
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)