A Clean Well Lighted Place Analysis

In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the author writes with vivid imagery to create a setting for the reader. Dark and light imagery are very prominent throughout the novel. The author develops a theme of danger and safety through the use of light and dark imagery.

In the novel Night, the word night ironically is a motif, appearing again and again throughout the novel. One of its many appearances occurs near the beginning of the novel when Elie and his family are going to move into a smaller ghetto. “It was to be the last night spent in our house.” It next appears on the train when they hear that Aushwitz will be their last destination and that conditions were good. “Suddenly we felt free of the previous nights’ terror.” Another appearance I will share happens when Buna is being evacuated and they must march to a new camp. “It seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side.”

Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Here we Aren’t, so Quickly” is a unique piece of writing that manages to describe an entire life in a matter of pages. Rather than using strict ages, the passage of time is shown through important milestones in the narrator’s life such as marriages, deaths, and births. By examining these events the reader can detect three distinct time periods in his life: youth, middle age, and old age. There are subtle changes in the protagonist during each time period, which showcase his maturation and provide evidence of his character growth.

America is built upon the ideal that every citizen has an equal opportunity to success and prosperity through hard work and dedication. This is also known as the American dream. Many authors have speculated what is most important in grasping the American dream and through reading these stories it can be determined that success, happiness, and freedoms all play an important role in attaining the American dream.

In the case of Jacob Lawrence, his personal style brought the African-American experience to life using contrasts between dark and vivid colors. Nonetheless, two examples of some of his most known paintings include “ The Builders, The Family” and “This is a Family Living in Harlem”. While both paintings are similar in that they both show strong family unity in the African Culture, they are different in the setting where each of the paintings are taking place.

In the short story “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a relationship unfolding, a complex relationship difficult to understand. The relationship is revealed by a conversation between a man and a woman, a topic of conversation that people rarely discussed in the period that the story was set. After researching interpretations, it is consistently said “She is pregnant, and he wants her to have an abortion” (Weeks 76), to which I agree that this conversation is about abortion. With the man seemingly pushing the topic and the girl hesitant and questionable, it is unsure as to the result of their conversation. However, it is my belief that she chose to follow her heart and not get the abortion.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", gives us a rather bleak but fair outlook on the world. Ernest

The book talks about the lives of restaurant workers that live on low wages and work in poor conditions such as unsanitary work areas, low respect and prone to discrimination. There are also cases in the book where immigrants are also discriminated and work in America to low wages and have a hard time to support their families. It is revealed in the book that many restaurants do not care for the health and welfare of their employees. Restaurants discriminate and put white workers on better jobs than those of different color where they are put on the worst jobs and treated badly. The author also explains how those who work

“Paying your dues quietly is how to move up in a kitchen,” says Jonny Arévalo, who worked at several Boston restaurants, including Bennigan’s, for nine years. “Then some other poor guy takes your place.” Talking to another restaurant worker allows for the author to build on his editorial and be able to talk about the struggles workers can face in order to get by and earn a decent amount of money to be able to live

Relationships are the core of everything we do in life. We love someone, so we do something for them; we value someone 's opinion, so we respect them; we dislike someone, so we avoid them. Relationships cause people to act on their emotions which impact how and why they do the things they do. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is about a couple trying to come to a conclusion on a delicate matter. While the man strongly promotes his opinion the girl is hesitant but wants to do whatever will make him happy. The struggles presented between these two characters bring to light issues in human relationships that weigh into everyday life. Hemingway’s short story reveals to readers how relationships affect communication, decision

Ernest Hemingway’s characters are frequently tested in their faith, beliefs, and ideas. To Hemingway’s characters, things that appear to be grounded in reality and unmovable facts frequently are not, revealing themselves to be hollow, personal mythologies. Hemingway shakes his characters out of their comfortable ignorance through traumatic events that usually cause a certain sense of disillusionment with characters mythologies, moving them to change their way of life. His characters usually, after becoming disillusioned, respond with depression, suicide, and nihilism. However, this is not always the case. Some characters break the mold and, instead of treating disillusionment with hostility, step back into the illusion in which they once lived

If taken literally, Hemingway’s story is one in which very little happens. The story takes place in a train station in Spain where a couple argue about a vague event over drinks. From the very start of the short story, there is an overbearing uneasiness felt in the text as the unnamed male and the girl, Jig, hold what seems to be—on the surface—an innocent conversation. By using a limiting third person point of view that consists mostly of dialogue, Hemingway creates an obstacle in the way of understanding as there is no clear insight to what is going on inside of either party’s head. The conflict that the pair seem to be discussing is never named and it becomes the metaphorical elephant in the room much like the white elephants that Jig sees in the mountains.

There is something other than Insomnia that kept the older waiter from wanting to go to bed in Ernest Hemingway’s, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” In fact, when the older waiter went into his “Nada” make ship prayer he shows what it is that keeps him awake at night. Beyond that, he also understood the older gentlemen’s need for the ‘clean, well-lighted place” the café provided. And finally, there was what the café meant to both the older waiter and the elderly gentleman.

The novel, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, describes the life of some people from the Lost Generation in post-World War I Europe, but mostly in Paris, France and Pamplona, Spain. This novel rotates around Jacob, or Jake, Barnes’, the narrator’s, life; which mostly includes drinking with his friends, Robert Cohn, a Jewish man who is often verbally abused by his “friends”, Ashley Brett, an attractive woman who Jake is in love with, Bill Gorton, a good friend of Jake’s, and a couple others. Their life in dull Paris seems to revolve around spending money and drinking, but when they go to colorful Pamplona, Spain, they have an amazing time during the fun-filled fiesta. Ernest Hemingway uses the “iceberg theory” when he presents Jake Barnes to the reader; he does not directly tell you a lot about Jake, but through Jake’s thoughts and emotions, one can tell that he was injured in the war, he is not a very religious person, he would rather do what he loves, instead of what he must, and he does not like to be honest with himself, despite the fact that he is one of the more honest characters in the novel.

At the beginning of the poem, Neruda states “I can write the saddest verses tonight,” a line which is repeated two other times and is the same as the title of the poem itself. The repetition of these lines helps establish both the mood of the poem, sadness and sorrow, and in the emphasis of the idea that this is the moment for Neruda to fully express his own feelings. This mood is further established in the beginning of the poem, in the form of imagery, where “the night is full of stars, twinkling blue, in the distance,” creating an image of luminous and shining stars that are able to emit light and be seen from. However, it also begins to hint at the idea of isolation and separation, foreshadowing to what would be seen later in the poem.