Ernest Hemingway Masculinity

Disillusionment, death, and a general feeling of malaise are recurrent themes throughout Ernest Hemingway's stories. While Hemingway sometimes drifts into a philosophy of nihilism, there also shines a sense of dignity in the acceptance of such pessimism; as it is especially displayed in the short, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". This story proposes that as people may feel complacent in their youth, they will inevitability decline into an undesirable life of loneliness and dissatisfaction. However, Hemingway attempts to instill his view of masculinity while coping with these dreadful feelings in a specific way. Like in other works by Hemingway, such as The Sun Also Rises, he portrays masculinity with an emphasis that encourages others to not question their identity. Hemingway uses literally elements of setting and characters of this story to reveal these themes.
The story shows us three main characters that have distinct perspectives concerning life. It begins with a salient description of an old man sitting in a café, in the shadow cast by a nearby tree against an electric light. This specific description has an unambiguous purpose in the story; it is a metaphor that immediately
Hemingway presents the characterization of the old man and the waiter in an intentional way that never specifies exactly what their age is. This leaves an open interpretation for the reader to reflect about what age means to the