A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

This moring I read Ernest Hemingway's short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. This is a very short story- only a few pages long. As is typical of Hemingway's work the meat of the story is not in what is said, but in the questions and thoughts that are raised in the reader. For me this particular story bred thoughts of aging and my own position in the arch of maturity.

Hemingway's story opens with an old man drinking in a cafe late at night. He likes the cafe at night because it is quiet. The majority of the story is a conversation about the old man that two waiters have, one young and the other older. The younger waiter simply wants the old man to leave so that he can close up the cafe and go home to bed. The older waiter is far more empathetic with the old man. He is concerned about the lonely life the old man lives and the fact that he had tried to kill himself the week before and he understands why the old man stays late in the clean, comfortable cafe. The young waiter doesn't think of the man as being a person, instead he only sees the old man as being a hinderance to his happiness. The older waiter seems to see himself as being not too terribly distant from the position of the old man.

I was reminded of the seven ages of man speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It. The melancholy Jaques maps out seven stages of life, each having its own distinct characteristics. While I don't think that you can delineate the stages of life as clearly as Jaques does, I do believe that they exist and I see these stages of life being lived by the people I know. I think A Clean, Well-Lighted Place reveals the idea that people are more apt to understand those who are in a stage that is close to their own. I, myself, have been accused, by my younger sister, of "crossing over" to adulthood. While this is true in some respects I don't think I've completely left my younger years behind. I remember thinking the way those who are younger than me do, but I very much enjoy my, perhaps, more mature way of thinking.

Anyway, just some thoughts.