“A Clean Well-Lighted position” by Hemingway

In Ernest Hemingway's short article, "A Clean Well-Lighted Place", the notion of nada is the centered and most important theme. As described by Carlos Baker, Nada is "a Something called not anything which is so gigantic, awful, overbearing, inescapable, and omnipresent that, one time skilled, it can never be disregarded" (Baker 124). It is a metaphysical state that symbolizes the chaos in everyone's lives. Some people have it more than others and some deal with this idea differently than others. Either way, nada is an uncontrollable force that should never be forgotten. Steven Hoffman, accepts as true that "the only way to approach the Void is to evolve a very special mode of being, the solid manifestation of which is the clean, well-lighted place" (Hoffman 176). This cafe is a warrior against this nothingness. The place is clean, pleasing, and orderly. There is no music. It is a plain and simple refuge against the lonely, dark world that waits outside (Hemingway 256). However, this cafe must close at some time or another thus proving that the cafe isn't enough to combat the nada. It is not even a place but an artificial, man-made building that tries to fight against this real idea of Nada.

Hemingway says," What did he fear? It was not worry or dread. It was a not anything that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too...Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all..." (258). The character that has been in contact with the nada for quite some time and has not yet learned how to deal with it the right way is the old man. He is said to be eighty years old, virtually death, and recently widowed (257). The ...