In the story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” it takes place in a bar where the main three characters are the old man, the older waiter, and the younger waiter. What separates this story from all the other Hemingway stories is the obscurity in its dialogue, with not ever truly knowing who is saying what line for most of the story. While many like to argue that Hemingway’s story “A Clean Well Lighted Place” can’t be held to the standards of other fine literature due to the obscurity in dialogue in reality it makes more intriguing than most literature due to its expanding messages depending on who you believe is speaking during certain dialogues which allows for deeper analysis on the piece. In most stories physical dialogue obscurity is considered a flaw since it doesn’t allow for the reader to understand the story itself; in this instance the lack of clarity in dialogue allows for multiple messages to be interpreted in the story depending on who the reader believes is talking. One of the messages that Hemingway is trying to emphasize is the reality of following the path of a Hemingway code hero, which is shown through the characterization of both the patron and the staff in the bar.

Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is a “killer story” in that there is a death in the story. What makes this different from so many other stories in the course is the death is off-screen and is only mentioned once and never more; however, there is the mention of “‘Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said. “Why?” “He was in despair.”…”He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.” “He had a wife once too.”’.(Hemingway 1933) which is extremely important in the context of the book simply put he lost his wife is now currently 80 and doesn’t have much more to his character than his code of conduct, which at the end of his life only serves as a reminder that the nothingness is soon to claim him too. To begin to analyze the book, a few things must be known beforehand: what is a Hemingway code hero, what is the significance of this attempt of suicide, and what is the belief of nihilism? To start, “he will devote himself to all types of physical pleasures because these are the reward of this life. It is the duty of the Hemingway hero to avoid death at almost all cost. Life must continue. Life is valuable and enjoyable. Life is everything. Death is nothing. With this view in mind it might seem strange then to the casual or superficial reader that the Hemingway code hero will often be placed in an encounter with death”.  The fact someone who carries themselves with this philosophy tries to kill themselves is meant to show how low that person has truly sunk. And finally, with nihilism, it’s the belief nothing truly matters in this world, and we come from nothing and return to nothing. At the end of the story we see what it truly is to be a Hemingway code hero: the older waiter understood the old man and decided to let him stay at the bar much longer, whereas the younger waiter wanted to kick him out multiple times over the course of the story. Putting this into perspective, those who follow the lifestyle are often never going to be understood by the public and will be dismissed, and only a select few will empathize with your psyche, and at the end you will only have the mentality, and some not even that.

In Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” the characterization of the older waiter is meant to show the reality of what it means to be a Hemingway code hero. In the story the older character is also meant to show the solidarity that code heroes have with each other; it ends up going deeper into the solidarity that all Hemingway code hero characters face, even among fellow code heroes. “It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing, and a man was a nothing too. It was only that, and light was all it needed, and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it, but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name, thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada” (Hemingway 1933). So while the older waiter understands the old man and the reason why keeping the bar open is good for him, he still follows the code, and so he wouldn’t understand why he tries to kill himself; this in turn doesn’t change the good the older waiter did for the old man. At the end of the day, the old man is still alone and isn’t understood and is living the last bits of his life in a world that doesn’t have much more to offer him due to his want of death and is forced to soon depart into the nothingness he believes in and rightfully fears. David Kerner also took his own meaning from “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” stating, “Because the older waiter could not think that anyone with ‘plenty of money’ can have no reason to kill himself, Bennett is forced to construe ‘Nothing’ as the later ‘nada.’ But a premature, ambiguous ‘Nada’ here, followed by an equally unenlightening, mocking deflection of the appeal for an explanation, would make the whole passage pointless. ” Further going into the message, the Hemingway code heroes still remain alone even if they are with those who are like them; due to everyone being at a different point in their life, the change in experiences keeps them perpetually alone, with the last thing they keep being their mentality, which only creeps on them as the passage of time makes the idea of returning to nothingness more of a reality with each and every passing day. 

In Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” the character of the young waiter is meant to show the isolation that all Hemingway code heroes face due to the general public simply living the way they do. During the first interactions the waiters had with each other, you can see what the younger one thinks of the old man by simply saying, “You should have killed yourself last week,” he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. “A little more…” “I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o’clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?” “He stays up because he likes it.” “He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me” (Hemingway 1933). From this one interaction the younger waiter already has a distaste for the old man and doesn’t understand why the older waiter is letting him stay late, much like the public to the regular man. If any other person was there or it was only the younger waiter who was there, the old man would have been kicked out, and he would be alone to navigate the nothingness of the night, which the code hero must avoid and stay wary of every night. By this basic interaction there already is a separation between the Hemingway code hero and the general public, a separation that forces them to be solitary and stable to keep their precious life safe, and once the hero loses all else that means something to them and they are to face the night alone, many of them slowly lose their way, as seen with the old man attempting to kill himself. “No more than Hemingway does the waiter here connect this atheism with suicide. Rather, he is raising the question, What are we (the human race), now that the God who marks the sparrow’s fall is gone and we are no longer immortal? The answer, “a man was nothing too,” means we are only another kind of animal, so that our “place” now is merely a refuge, a sort of wildlife sanctuary, like the café for the old man. The symbolic meaning of this refuge is not the older waiter—he is too modest (“it is probably only insomnia”); behind him, it is Hemingway who is suggesting that religion and every other kind of home we carve for ourselves out of this harsh cosmos that doesn’t know we are here—is no more than such a refuge.” (Kerner 1998). From this point of view we get that the nothingness that the code heroes believe in is still stemmed from the idea of an unknown, which only serves to divide the people more into deeper isolation with each hero going their own path to seek from refuge some more focused on the emptiness of space and the meaning of that among humans others go on the religious aspect of not one religions being entirely correct or even slightly correct, and the old man seeking refuge from the “nothingness” in a bar which could have rejected him if not for the older waiter pans out to how alone a code hero truly is, even to escape the “nothingness” they themselves are only surrounded by those who give the same comfort at the “nothingness” they run away from.

  To tie all of this together, Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is a story that goes beyond the limits of a story and serves as guidance to those who read it to understand the life of a Hemingway code hero, the isolation and complete loneliness that follows them around, and that they can’t truly escape, which is the reality of their life, and further emphasizes the characterizations of each main character in the bar, from the code hero that’s aged to a younger code hero, all the way to the society that will never truly understand them.

Citations

“Shibboleth Authentication Request.” Cuny.edu, 2025, research-ebsco-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/c/7o7b7t/viewer/pdf/2b7taqgbbz. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Clean Well-Lighted Place. Mankato, Minn., Creative Education, 1990.

The Hemingway code hero page 121 course packet

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