A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

1. The cafe takes place in a town in Spain or any other one that speaks Spanish. The time is around World War I when people shoud not be late in the streets, otherwise the guards would get them. The cafe was described as clean and pleasant. This setting can be interpreted as a security place where the old waiter and the old customer can find peace in an empty establishment and be comfort without any noise once it was late night with nobody else to disturb. "It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order."

2. They do not need name. Hemingway perfectly described the characters without a name because he wanted the readers see the differences between ages. 2 men were old living in the dark with nothing and nobody else waiting for them, while the younger waiter have a wife waiting for him, meaning he was starting his life with many hoping.

. The 2 old men lived their lives already. They have nothing else to expect from life, and nobody to wait for them when they go back home. They both are afraid to be home lonely, so they like to be surround people with a lot of light.

4. The conflict of this story is an old man who wanted to end his life because he is lonely, and doesn't like to be at home by himself.

The rising action is when the already tired younger waiter who goes to serve a drink to the old man who is the last customer at the cafe.

Complications: are the comparison between an old man and a young waiter, and the similarities between the old man and an old waiter. The old man was despair who tried to end his own life. On the other hand, the young waiter cannot wait to end his work and go home where his wife was waiting for him. Like the old man, the old waiter also did not like to go home and like to stay late at the cafe because both of them need light for the night .

Climax: Is when the old waiter starts to pray and explains why he has sympathy towards to the old man. As the old man, the old waiter has lived enough to understand the meaning of life where nothing is nothing.

Falling action: The old waiter would go home and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep.

5. The theme is about an old man who is "nada" nothing at the end of his life, he only wanted to be in order in a clean place. "It was nothing that he knew too well. It was all nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was ll it needed and a certain cleanness and order".

6. Ernest Hemingway Biography: (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. Ernest Hemingway was an established American journalist and writer. During his lifetime he wrote and had published about seven novels; six collections of short stories; and two works of non-fiction. He used to write about the darkness and pain people find daily, but without losing their dignity. Novels such as The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises put him as one of the top American writers.
1) As his character in the short story, Hemingway also had an example of suicide in his family. His father committed a suicide when him was only 12 years old, and Hemingway followed his father footsteps by ending his life too.
2) Hemingway's ways of life was to live deeply between the light and dark, exactly the same way his characters were in the novel. They wanted everything in order with secrets in their heart (dark) and their fears about life wanted light to not face the real life.
3) Like a soldier the minor character in the novel, Hemingway also was a soldier in the war.