A Clean Wel Lighted Place

1)
Q: Describe the setting. Why is the idea of a well lighted place so significant to the short story?


A: The setting is 3 men (1 old man, one young waiter and one old waited) in a cleas well lighted cafe very lateat night. the old man is drunk and the young waiter wants togo home. A clean well lighted place is significant in this story because as the old waiter says there are many bars and bodegas that are open all night but a clean well lighted cafe has a way of improving the quality of life as opposed to al of the darkness that we encounter in our everyday lives. "each night i am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe." (a clean well lighted place, 5)


2)
Q: why are the characters nameless?


A: I beleive that the characters are nameless because the author felt that it wasn't an important enough detail to add a distraction away from the lesson he was trying to express.


3)
Q: What is the connection with the old man and the old waiter? What is the purpose of the young waiter in the story?


A: the old waiter has been arround long enough to appriciate a "clean well lighted place" as more than just a cafe. The old man is sad and spends his time in the bar (just like the waiter) and the old waiter respects that the cafe may be the old mans only place of comfort. The young waiter was in this story to provoke the activity of the old waiter so that the lesson was effective.


4)
Q: What is the plot?



A: Two waiters having a series of conversations about an old man who frequents their elegant cafe. The young waiter is very rude and pushy with the old man while the older waiter is patient and understands the mans lonliness and his need for a clean well lighted place.As the place closes for the night , the old man is sent home, and the older waiter begins to face a crisis of his own. Making it through the long, dark, lonly hours of the night, he finds a sense of purpose to his life in a world that is seems to be 'full of nothing'.



5)
Q: What is the theme?


A: The rising action in this story is when the old man orders his first brandy, and signals for a little more. The conflict in this story is between the young waiter and the old man, the young waiter doesnt respect the old mans wish to stay because he is tired and impatient, and he kicks the old man out. The complication was that the old man was drunk and the young waiter wanted to go home. the climax is when the young waiter kicks the old man out. The falling action is when the old waiter has a glass of water and tries to have a conversation with the barman.

6)
Q:some info on hemingway


A:
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969 -----

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html