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A clean well lighted place by Ernest Hemingway is the ultimate story about the deep human struggle to find one's inner place in a vast all-encompassing world. This spiritual inner place is one which can only be accessed through a physical place which is conducive to a higher state of spiritual being. This need to find one's personal place in the world stems from the fact that humankind is so exceedingly vulnerable and insignificant. Thus people create a place which brings sense out of the senseless.
For some to find this place in order to elevate themselves from the madness of a completely arbitrary world and create some sort of meaning, they turn to God. For these people a house of worship is the ultimate place to access this meaning. Through this place, they become an essential part of the human race through their trust and reliance of a higher power. The above insight lends substantial evidence to whom the real protagonist of this story would be. The protagonist is not a literal character, but rather the actual place itself.
Hemingway is relaying the message that a place emanates a significant influence. Depending on one's surroundings he might evolve into the worst criminal or the greatest saint. This does not negate the fact that it is up to the person himself, too, for the way he ultimately becomes, but nonetheless a powerful factor of how one turns out is based on his physical surroundings. A child who is raised without the necessary conditions for health and growth may grow up to be retarded or have severe developmental problems. This reiterates the point that our surroundings are responsible for a huge part of what people turn out to be, no only in behavior, but physiologically as well. Hemingway chose his title for us readers to comprehend the most significant aspect of the story.
The second most significant division to this story after place, would be time. Hemingway is showing the importance of setting. Just like the place with its bright lights and cleanliness is an essential part, so too is the time, at night. Physical surroundings are a reflection of mental and spiritual states. The cleanliness the old man likes is to ensure that his mind is still free and clean from the clutter that humans face on a daily basis. Clean usually conjures up to the mind a figurative cleanliness which reflects the literal cleanliness.
Clean is associated with all that is pure and upright, as opposed to wicked and corrupt. The old man is clean. "He drinks without spilling. " He is a quiet refined man who even when drunk retains a certain element of refinement, an accurate portrayal of who he is. The light is a contrast to the darkness of night. It is a perfect combination: light at night. The lightness at night negates the mysterious evil characteristics of night and all that is left is the characteristic of quietness at night. It is the quietness which is most conducive to a higher quality of thought and of feeling life for the pleasure of life and living itself.
This is the time when every sound can be heard distinctly and clearly, when everything seems to be moving slower and the world is calmer and more evenly paced. Night is a time of trusting instincts and intuitiveness. One has a greater understanding of his environment and feels the quiet as peaceful and serene. Emotions are more awake at night. DUring the day people are numbed by the constant barrage of distractions and pressures.
At night is the only time when people can truly feel; it is a time of passion. The direct result of the above mentioned setting: cleanliness, bright lights, quietness, and solitude is the dignity which man is in constant search of. This dignity in turn gives over to man a sense of freedom. The old man gravitates to the cafe because of this freedom which he receives as the end product of his new-found dignity. He is free to truly be his own self, with no outside pressures or distractions. He is free to think and do as he pleases in his own self-defined place.
And on a more philosophical note, he is free from the shackles of a man bound to the temptations of a lower existence. He becomes at one with his soul at this small small seemingly insignificant cafe. Wine, and specifically getting drunk may be an allegory to a deep spiritual exercise where he is back to himself, in the truest sense of the word. It numbs him so much until he can feal, see, and hear the real beat of life from a outer-worldly dimension without the aid of his literal ears, eyes, and mouth.
The old man had previously decided to commit suicide. Attempting to commit suicide demonstrates to us that this was a man on the brink of ultimate despair, who no longer wished to live. His life was one of misery even though he had great materialistic assets. He had "plenty of money, " and yet still tried to commit suicide. This portrays the old adage that money is not everything and what really matters is a sense of worth and some meaning to offer salvation to the hordes of people who sojourn here on earth.
The man eventually finds this cafe to defeat the hopelessness and despair he was feeling in his life. The young waiter is almost callous in the way he treats the old man. "I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week. " This shows a sarcastic side to the young waiter who is insensitive to people whom he does not understand and can not relate to. The clean well lighted cafe is a contrast to the "bodegas open all night long, " where the young waiter thinks he ought to be.
The night is usually synonymous with mysterious acts of violence and immorality, a time when everything is permitted because all is dark and nothing is seen. The old man, though, looks at night through different lenses. He chooses the cafe instead of bars and bodegas because he sees the night as a quiet time to truly be alone and "meditate, " to bring dignity and quality to his life through the quietness which leads to a more subconscious thinking and feeling of the emotions. The older waiter's prayer, in which he identifies with the old man and substitute nada instead of God, leads to the conclusion that this man as well as the old man are atheists.
The old waiter's final portrayal of the world is nothing but a bunch of arbitrary people with arbitrary things happening to them. In order to escape from that arbitrary world he needs a stable place which he knows he can rely on, in any time or in any situation. This place is the cafe. It is always there, it never leaves, and so he can feel comfortable here, knowing that even when all else fails, and there is nothing and no one he can trust, he still has this cafe open for him. In conclusion, people universally long for a spiritual place where they can accomplish two goals: be their selves and live with dignity. Some people do not understand this need and therefore go to bars and nightclubs in substitution for what they are really lacking.
They assume that they are fulfilling a need of theirs, without realizing that they are only covering up a much deeper need which may be temporarily fulfilled through partying. As people age, though, they realize that partying was just a substitution for the lack of personal space that people not only desire, but need as well. Eventually most people find this personal space in a house of worship. Others turn to clean well-lighted cafes.
After all, it is nothing more than insomnia.
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Research essay sample on Spirituality In Solitude A Clean Well Lighted Place
