[In the following essay, Hurley takes issue with Hagopian's attribution of the some of the dialogue in the story, maintaining that the dialogue should be “consistent with the characters as revealed elsewhere in the story.”]

John V. Hagopian's emendation of the much-disputed dialogue of Hemingway's “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” establishes that it is the older waiter, not the younger waiter, who knows of the old man's suicide attempt.¹ Each of the waiters' statements can now be identified unequivocally, except the controversial second exchange concerning the soldier and the girl. This passage, made more difficult by the omission of all explicit identifying tags, must be attributed correctly if the waiters are to be viewed as separate character types. But despite the lack of identifiers, the text contains several patterns that differentiate the speakers of this crucial exchange and maintain the waiter's distinctiveness, which, according to the older waiter's remark to his colleague, “‘We are of two different kinds,’” is what Hemingway intended.

Professor Hagopian's solution to the problem of the dialogue, since adopted by Scribner's,² is to move the words, “‘You said she cut him down,’” to the preceding line, thus:

Younger Waiter: “A wife would be no good to him now.”

Older Waiter: “You can't tell. He might be better with a wife.”

Younger Waiter: “His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down.”

Older Waiter: “I know.”

This exchange, the only logical guide to the correct attribution of the opening dialogue, indicates that it is the older waiter who knows about the deaf old man's suicide attempt. The first exchange, then, can be attributed as follows:

Older Waiter: “Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

Younger Waiter: “Why?”

Older Waiter: “He was in despair.”

Younger Waiter: “What about?”

Older Waiter: “Nothing.”

Younger Waiter: “How do you know it was nothing?”

Older Waiter: “He has plenty of money.”

Critics, unable to match with confidence the lines of the first and third exchanges with those of the second, are divided over the attribution and interpretation of the second exchange. William Colburn, who early called attention to the confused dialogue, stated what was then the prevailing view: “No doubt most readers will agree that the older waiter should be the one to feel that money and a wife in bed are not enough and that he should be concerned that the soldier with the streetwalker will get into trouble” (p. 242). Several years later, Joseph F. Gabriel reiterated the view: “It is generally assumed that it is the older waiter who expresses fear that the soldier and the girl will be caught …” (p. 543). This reading, though correct, is difficult to confirm because of the omission of identifying tags.

Professor Hagopian, ignoring earlier opinion, altered the general view by attributing the opening line of the second exchange, “‘The guard will pick him [the soldier] up,’” to the younger waiter, with the gloss, “a bit of Schadenfreude, quite consistent with his remark to the deaf old man ‘You should have killed yourself last week’” (p. 144). “The younger waiter,” Hagopian adds, “wants everybody to get off the streets, including the old man, so that he can go home to his wife. It is he who is keenly aware of the time, who complains that he never gets into bed before three o'clock, and who is impatient …” (ibid.). To the older waiter Hagopian assigns the line, “‘What does it matter if he gets what he's after?’” with the gloss, “consistent with his indifference to the usual social norms, with his nihilism, and with his awareness of the value of youth and confidence …” (p. 144). David Lodge and Warren Bennett, the latest contributors to the controversy, accept Hagopian's attribution of the waiters' second exchange; but the text supports only one interpretation—the former.

Joseph Gabriel's contention that “there are two equally good ways of reading the dialogue” (p. 543), though a compromise between the opposing opinions, is contrary to Hemingway's intention of delineating two distinct characters. As the story unfolds, Hemingway distinguishes between the main characters with the following tags: “the younger waiter,” “the older waiter,” “the waiter who was in a hurry,” “the unhurried waiter,” and “the waiter with a wife.” Unfortunately, these tags do not apply to the passage in question; but Hemingway does provide a consistent set of patterns in differentiating between the waiters, which, when taken with the context, enable us to resolve the controversy over the second exchange.³

The attributions of the first and third exchanges, now generally unquestioned, reveal a simple pattern: the younger waiter asks the questions and the older waiter provides terse answers that, as we shall see momentarily, have meanings known only to himself.⁴ This pattern is maintained in the disputed speech, attributable as follows:

Older Waiter: “The guard will pick him up,” one waiter said.

Younger Waiter: “What does it matter if he gets what he's after?”

Older Waiter: “He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago.”

In addition to maintaining the question-answer pattern in the first three exchanges, Hemingway employs a second pattern of distinguishing between the waiters that further supports this attribution. The opening line of the first exchange, ascribed to the older waiter, reads:

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

The opening line of the disputed exchange reads:

“The guard will pick him up,” one waiter said.

These lines, in close proximity in the text, have much in common. Both are similar structurally; both initiate the exchange and express compassion, first for the old patron, and then for the young soldier; and both have the “one waiter said” tag, used nowhere else in the story. These parallels are purposeful and enable us to match the speakers of the second exchange with those of the first and third. The older waiter, who unquestionably speaks the opening line of the first exchange, should be attributed with the opening line of the disputed exchange.

Hemingway, employing the “one waiter said” tag to refer to the older waiter, utilizes a similar device to designate the younger waiter. Except when explicitly identified, the younger waiter is referred to simply as “the waiter.” In the scenes where the men appear together, the designation “the waiter” is used seven times to refer exclusively to the younger waiter, and is used to refer to the older waiter only after he is alone and cannot be mistaken for his colleague.

The context of the controversial scene, together with these distinguishing patterns, indicates that the initial line of the second exchange, “‘The guard will pick him up,’” should be attributed to the older waiter, and the line, “‘What does it matter if he gets what he's after?’” to the younger waiter; and not the other way around. As Carlos Baker observed (p. 124), the waiters' first exchange dramatizes the unspoken bond between the older waiter and the old man. The older waiter, recognizing the old man as a fellow-sufferer, is reluctant to close, because he, too, needs the light, cleanness, and order that the café provides against the dark. In the next scene, the older waiter extends his compassion for the old patron to embrace the young soldier, since he perceives in them, and himself, a progression in despair that moves from youth through middle age to old age.⁵ The despondent old man is what the others may become. The younger waiter, unconcerned with the old man and the soldier, is simply concerned with going home to his wife.

That the older waiter, the old man, and the soldier are all of a kind is further exemplified by the metaphor of light and something clean or polished in the line, “The street light shone on the brass number of his collar.” The soldier, on the street past the curfew hour, is disillusioned with the military just as the older waiter and the old patron are disillusioned with the world; and just as they find a momentary stay against nothingness in a clean, well-lighted café and a drink, the soldier finds a momentary respite in relations with a girl.⁶

In this scene, the younger waiter does not recognize the implications of the older waiter's remark, “‘The guard will pick him up.’” With a wife waiting in bed for him, the younger waiter queries, “‘What does it matter if he gets what he's after?’” Actually, the older waiter, knowing that the soldier might be better off with a girl just as the old man might be better off with a wife is not concerned that the soldier “gets what he's after” but that “the guard will pick him up.” The older waiter realizes that sex, even with a streetwalker, is an interpersonal relationship, more desirable by far than nothingness.

Finally, critics who would reverse the attribution of the second exchange misinterpret the younger waiter as well as the older waiter. The younger waiter's interest in money and sex is normal and does not make him a “callous materialist.” Nor does he derive pleasure in thinking the soldier may be picked up or in hastening the old patron from the café. He even agrees with the older waiter that buying a bottle and drinking at home is not the same. With “youth, confidence, and a job,” the younger waiter has “everything,” and, as yet, is unaware of the despair surrounding his colleague and the old man. Hemingway himself indicates that the younger waiter “did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.”

In summation, the older waiter's remark to his colleague that “‘We are of two different kinds’” and the explicit identifying tags express Hemingway's intention of delineating the waiters as distinct character types. As such, the dialogue of the disputed second speech should be read in a way consistent with the characters as revealed elsewhere in the story. The several patterns employed to distinguish between the waiters, taken with the context of the dialogue, suggest that the lines which express concern for the soldier being picked up should be attributed to the older waiter, and the line that deals with the soldier having relations with the girl should be attributed to the younger waiter. And not the other way around.

Notes

1. John V. Hagopian, “Tidying Up Hemingway's Clean Well-Lighted Place,” Studies in Short Fiction, 1 (1964), 140-146. In addition, see: Robert Penn Warren, “Ernest Hemingway,” Kenyon Review, 9 (Winter 1947), 1-28; F. P. Kroeger, “The Dialogue in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” College English, 20 (Feb. 1959), 240-241; William E. Colburn, “Confusion in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” College English, 20 (Feb. 1959), 241-242; Otto Reinert, “Hemingway's Waiters Once More,” College English, 20 (May 1959), 417-418; Joseph F. Gabriel, “The Logic of Confusion in Hemingway's ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” College English, 22 (May 1961), 539-546; Edward Stone, “Hemingway's Waiters Yet Once More,” American Speech, 37 (1962), 239-240; Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 3rd ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 124; Sheridan Baker, Ernest Hemingway: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967), p. 87; Warren Bennett, “Character, Irony, and Resolution in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” American Literature, 42 (1970), 70-79; David Lodge, “Hemingway's Clean, Well-Lighted Puzzling Place,” Essays in Criticism, 21 (1971), 33-56; and Charles E. May, “Is Hemingway's ‘Well-Lighted Place’ Really Clean Now?” Studies in Short Fiction, 8 (1971), 326-330.

2. Hagopian does not speculate how the words came to be misplaced, only that “all the texts to date have merely perpetuated a typographical error” (p. 146). Charles Scribner, Jr. indicated to me in a letter that the confused dialogue in the original version of the story “was unquestionably the result of an error,” but “whether this error was made by the author or a typist, or a typesetter we cannot tell because we do not have the original manuscript.” Mr. Scribner adds that “in editing other works of Hemingway's (e.g. Islands in the Stream) I have noted more than one place where he ‘skipped a beat’ in a long passage of dialogue in which the speakers are not identified. Accordingly, I feel all the more confident in having changed the text [of ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’] as we have.” I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Scribner for his assistance.

3. Warren Bennett established that the older waiter knew of the old man's suicide attempt through Hemingway's use of several other patterns: the “serious question, verbal irony by the older waiter, a dropping of the subject, and then a serious reply” pattern (p. 72), and the younger waiter's use of the word kill (p. 71).

4. Professor Hagopian's contentions that “all the questions demanding answers are uttered by the young waiter” and that “the older waiter never seeks information from the younger, all his questions being purely rhetorical” (p. 144) need to be refined. The older waiter's response to the younger waiter's “‘What did he want to kill himself for?’” is “‘How should I know,’” “which is not a question at all (the text has no question mark), but a statement; and the older waiter's “‘Why didn't you let him stay and drink?’” “is not a rhetorical question, nor is it so construed by the younger waiter who answers, “‘I want to go home to bed.’” Hagopian, however, was aware that the pattern of the waiters' dialogue provides a clue to the attribution of their speeches.

5. William B. Bache, “Craftsmanship in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” The Personalist, 37 (Winter 1956), p. 64.

6. For this interpretation of the second scene, I am indebted to Warren Bennett, p. 77.