A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ernest Hemingway
- First Published: 1933
- Type of Plot: Naturalistic
- Time of Work: The 1930's
- Setting: Spain
- Principal Characters: An older waiter, A younger waiter, An old man
- Genres: Short fiction, Naturalistic literature
- Subjects: Suicide, Obsession, Death or dying, Waiters or waitresses, Life, philosophy of, Old age or elderly people
- Locales: Spain
The Story
Two waiters in a Spanish café are waiting late one night for their last customer, an old man, to leave. As they wait, they talk about the old man's recent suicide attempt. The younger waiter is impatient to leave and tells the deaf old man he wishes the suicide attempt had been successful. The young waiter has a wife waiting in bed for him and is unsympathetic when the older waiter says that the old man once also had a wife. The old man finally leaves when the younger waiter refuses to serve him further.
The older waiter argues that they should have allowed...
[The entire page is 1311 words long]
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