A Clean Well-Lighted Place

Words: 869
Pages: 4

“A Clean Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway is a simple title with a long meaning. Through the story there are three main characters; the two waiters and the old man. The story is told by a narrator instead of one of the actual characters. In the story the narrator is telling the story, in which it is a general oversee and judgement on all the characters and the setting versus if it would have been from a character's point of view.

The story first portrays the background of the old man. When we hear ‘old man’ we generalize him being around 60 to 70 years old, with gray hair, wrinkly skin, and can hardly walk. The old man in the story is deaf and a drunk but “, he’s a clean drunk,” (p.153) as the older waiter points out. As talked about in class, a clean drunk is where the person can be drunk, but the person continues to keep on
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With the condition he has the story wouldn’t have any dialogue in it, in which the author Ernest Hemingway would strongly dislike. The story would just be personal judgmental thoughts from the old man. If he told the story, he would judge people on their appearance and how the others move, because that is the only way the old man can perceive others. When the waiter cuts him off of drinking, the old man doesn’t get upset, he just accepts the fact that the young man isn’t going to give him any more brandy that night. The two waiters never really talked about how the old man was when he was really drunk, in which a drunk old man could be very judgmental towards others and he could hold onto his own perspective by not seeing things how they truly are if he were to tell the story. The story being told by the old man himself, personal opinion believe it could either be a boring long all of his personal thought or a story that is told by an old drunk angered