A Clean Well Lighted Place Hemingway

Fear is a human instinct, causing anxiety, wonder and paranoia. Controlling our every move, fear eats away from humanity, and is heightened by the events surrounding our lives. A clean, well lighted place highlights these themes by addressing major events that occurred at the time. At the time of the story’s publication, Hemingway was surrounded by an uncertain world, one without war or peace, only with fear. During this time, Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, withdrawing from the league of nations and emplacing increasingly harsher laws against Jewish citizens that eventually lead to cruel concentration camps.The rise of industrialisation and technology was also growing, leaving many in angst of it’s effect on society. This period of uncertainty
Further, the loneliness of the man indicates the sadness created by the overpowering force of technology and the risk it presents to human experience and connection. The author displays that while many struggle with despair, they all struggle alone. This fear is further highlighted through the use of irony when the reader discovers that “the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf…and at night it was quiet”. This contradicting statement emphasises the worries and anxious attitudes that all individuals in society have as even the deaf man can hear them. Through this Hemingway reflects and comments on society’s fears towards the rise of technology and its threat to humanity. Later in the text, the reader see’s a fear in life itself when the idea of existentialism is proposed. Hemingway suggests that humanity and an individual’s life is ultimately pointless in the never-ending passage of time and that this void in their life cannot be fulfilled with the belief of any religion that seeks to provide meaning and purpose. This realisation is displayed through appropriation and biblical allusions when the old waiter substitutes the Spanish word, nada (meaning nothing) into