Comparing The Winter Evening Settles Down And A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

T.S. Eliot's poem "The Winter Evening Settles Down" and Ernest Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," both share the same theme of the alienation of the individual from society. It is the moods of desolation and despair, loneliness and struggle that reflect both authors' observations of the individual alienated from society. In his poem, Eliot reveals the first clue to the mood of the poem in his first line.
The winter evening settles down
The word winter might symbolize roughness, coldness and lifelessness. Here, Eliot is not in one of his happy moods, having referred to winter in the very first line. The word following winter is the image of evening, which symbolizes night, the approach of darkness. In the first line, Eliot establishes some type of dreary tone, as if suggesting that this "winter evening" is here to stay from now on. The poet writes other
symbols that give a meaning of the boredom and dreariness of life. For instance:
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
The image of burnt-out days might suggest that people are "burnt" out from all their strength just like a cigarette butt. The other image, smoky days, suggests difficult times or poor living conditions.
The grimy scraps
This image suggests waste, and therefore wasted lives.
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The image vacant says it al; the emptiness in the lives of people, the emptiness of meaning, and the emptiness of purpose.
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
The broken blinds suggest people that are unable to pull themselves together and therefore they have broken lives.
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
This image symbolizes the loneliness of man. As seen above, Eliot creates a mood of desolation and loneliness through diction and imagery. He uses words such as, "burnt out," "gusty," "grimy," "vacant," "broken," and "lonely," to help set the central theme. Now, Ernest Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," shares the same theme as the poem above. The theme of the story is man's search for light and refuge when life begins to lose meaning and purpose. The essential image used by Hemingway is that of the contrast between light and dark. The café is a "Clean, Well-Lighted Place," which serves the old man and waiter as a refuge from the darkness of the
night. Another vital image in the story is the old man's deafness. "…the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he could feel the difference." This quote reveals that the old man's deafness serves as a constant reminder to him of his separation from the world. The old man suffers this type of isolation because he knows that he is completely cut off from the sounds that he probably had not thought much during the night time; and therefore experience loneliness. Hemingway uses another important image of that of nothing. "It was all nothing, and a man was nothing, too…Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada y pues nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada be thy name thy kingdom nada…" This describes the old waiter's loneliness is empty. Even the first line reveals that even with the comfort of a man or God, this emptiness felt by them was unending. This unending emptiness felt by both the older man and waiter is proved by the old man's suicide attempt. "‘He hung himself with a rope,' -‘Who cut him down,' -‘His niece.'" Even when the old man tries to take his own life, his nice cuts him down withholding his death wish. Another example is when the old man tries to drown himself in whiskey, but that also fails to bring him some type of rest. Hemingway's short story is filled with images of despair. The contrasts between light and dark, youth and age are harsh and well described. Just like Eliot's poem, the mood of the story is described as a feeling that there is no escape from the depression of the winter years of life. T.S Eliot's poem as well as Ernest Hemingway's short story both conveys the same theme of loneliness and hopelessness. Although Eliot's poem only uses description, Hemingway reveals his theme through his use of characters and their search for light and refuge. This central theme is definitely a realistic story for reflects some of the people in our society today. Some people, mostly the elderly, question their purpose in life at a certain point in their lives. But above all, it teaches us how loneliness plays a huge role in today's society; and all we can do is learn how to embrace it.