Loneliness In A Clean Well-Lighted Place And Rain

Delusion and the inability to acknowledge the true loneliness that is of isolation will never lead to a positive pathway. For many, the isolation they face comes from the fear of opening up and letting their emotions out which eventually brings them down a path of suffering and misery. Ernest Hemingway and Merce Rodoreda were able to convey this message through their short stories, ‘A Clean Well-Lighted Place’ and ‘Rain’ as they revealed the consequences of one’s negligence of their isolation.

In ‘A Clean Well-Lighted Place’ Hemingway presents us with the nightly routine of a lonely, depressed and deaf old man with a history of attempted suicide in a cafe. He once had a family and now he is all alone. The old man’s routine showed him sitting
Rodoreda is trying to make the reader understand that trying to cope with the heartache of the past alone is no different from giving up on life. Negligence to your well being is not how your life should be lived. When a person does not take the initiative to seek support from those who are willing to listen is an act of self sabotage that will be of no benefit at all for the individual. Therefore, she finds herself lonely both physically and emotionally but is unable to face reality. This eventually causes Marta to enter a fantasy in China and Japan, “China suddenly exists when I think of it,” to distract her from the reality she must face. What further supports this is the symbolism of the decanter of cognac she grabs in the darkness, “I’ll get drunk.” Marta turns to alcohol to forget about all the troubling thoughts in her mind. Rodoreda shows that no matter how hard one tries to get through the misery of the past using these kinds of escape mechanisms, it will only make them feel more trapped in isolation. She clearly communicates to society that the life Marta is leading is the result of the inability to express one’s true emotions hence the lack of encouragement for