A Clean, Well-Lighted Place | Survival through Irony: Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
Discussing the imagery, characterization, and theme of ‘‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’’ Annette Benert concludes that it is not in fact a story about nothingness but ‘‘a totally affirmative story’’ that dramatizes ‘‘the possibility . . . of man continuing to act, to feel even for others, to think even about metaphysics, to create (with a smile), to control and thereby to humanize both himself and his environment.”
‘‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’’ has with justice been considered an archetypal Hemingway story, morally and aesthetically central to the Hemingway canon. But its crystalline structure and sparse diction have led many critics to judge the story itself a simple one, either about nothingness, ‘‘a little nada story,’’ or about the author’s positive values, a story ‘‘lyric rather than dramatic.’’ I would like to suggest that it is in neither sense simple, but that the feelings and ideas which lie behind it are complex and are expressed dramatically,...
[The entire page is 2910 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Tell a friend about A Clean, Well-Lighted Place at eNotes.
