Hemingway essay grader7/1/2023 In existentialism, the individual is the unit of existence and the majority of existentialists reject the existence of a higher power, creator, or “God,” and they are scornful of organized religion. In this way, they become “authentic” individuals by following their own principles. They must impose their own systems of values and beliefs on themselves and overcome feelings of despair and angst to live by their own values. Existentialism derives from the belief that existence is inherently meaningless and that individuals are solely responsible for giving meaning to their own lives. The bases of Hemingway’s philosophy in this story are existentialism, a philosophical system originated in the 19th century by Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and given full play in the post WWI years by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and nihilism, a related philosophical system popularized primarily by Nietzsche. Life is inherently meaningless and leads inevitably to death, and the older one gets, the clearer these truths become and the less able one is to impose any kind of order on one’s existence or maintain any kind of positivity in one’s outlook. Through the thoughts and words of a middle-aged Spanish waiter, Hemingway encapsulates the main tenet of his existential philosophy. It clearly expresses the philosophy that underlies the Hemingway canon, dwelling on themes of death, futility, meaninglessness, and depression. “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” is Hemingway’s paean to a type of existential nihilism, an exploration of the meaning, or lack thereof, of existence. He muses on the possibility that his depression is just due to insomnia. He realizes again that he misses his own café, and predicts that he will have difficulty falling asleep. He notes to the barman that the bar is unpolished, and then he wanders out. He wanders into a bar and orders a small cup of wine. What he needs, he says, is light, cleanness and order, an environment like the café where he works, to get him through each day. God, he implies, is a nothing, and recites the Lord’s Prayer, inserting “nada” in strategic locations. Life, he muses, is a great nothing and a man is a nothing as well. He reveals that he is reluctant to close up the café each night because when he is alone he feels the presence of a great void, a nothingness of which he is afraid. The middle-aged waiter goes to a bar and begins a string of introspective musings. The two waiters part and the younger one goes home. The middle-aged waiter says he and his colleague are indeed different, and that he himself lacks everything but work. The young waiter boasts that he has everything: youth, confidence, and a job. The middle-aged waiter says he understands the old man’s reluctance to leave, and that he is always hesitant to lock up because someone may “need” the cafe because it is clean, well lighted, and overshadowed by the leaves of trees. The two waiters close up the café and the middle-aged one again rebukes the other, saying he should have let the old man stay. The other one, a middle-aged man, defends the old man, saying that he stays so late at the café every night because he has no one to go home to.įinally, the young waiter refuses the old man’s order for another drink, and the man pays and leaves. One of the waiters is younger than his colleague is, and expresses impatience to close up the café and get home to his wife. The two waiters discuss their customer further, saying his niece found him hanging himself and cut him down to save his soul, and that without a wife he must be lonely. The old man asks for another brandy and one of the waiters brings it to him. They discuss the fact that he tried to commit suicide the week before, but that it could not have been over anything important because he had plenty of money. Two waiters in a café in Spain keep watch on their last customer of the evening, an old and wealthy man who is a regular at the café and drinks to excess.
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