AMERICAN LITERATURE-2013

THE LOST GENERATION The term Lost Generation refers to the writers and artists living in Paris after World War I. The violence of World War I, also called the Great War, was unprecedented and invalidated previous ideas about faith, life, and death. Traditional values that focused on God, love, and manhood dissolved, leaving Lost Generation writers adrift. They struggled with moral and psychological aimlessness as they searched for the meaning of life in a changed world. This search for meaning and these feelings of emptiness and aimlessness reflect some of the principle ideas behind existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement rooted in the work of the Danish philosopher Sren Kierkegaard, who lived in the mid-1800s. The movement gained popularity in the mid-1900s thanks to the work of the French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, including Sartres Being and Nothingness (1943). According to existentialists, life has no purpose, the universe is indifferent to human beings, and humans must look to their own actions to create meaning, if it is possible to create meaning at all. Existentialists consider questions of personal freedom and responsibility. Although Hemingway was writing years before existentialism became a prominent cultural idea, his questioning of life and his experiences as a searching member of the Lost Generation gave his work existentialist overtones. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. This generation included distinguished artists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald,[2] T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Waldo Peirce, Isadora Duncan, Abraham Walkowitz, Alan Seeger, and Erich Maria Remarque.

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ERNEST HEMINGWAY - BIOGRAPHICAL

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the GreekRevolution. During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls(1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat. Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.

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PLOT Two waiters are waiting to close up their caf for the night. They only have one customer left an old man, deaf, drunk, and seemingly peaceful. He's a regular at the caf, and the waiters seem to know all about him. Apparently, the old man attempted to hang himself the previous week, but was stopped mid-suicide by his niece. The older waiter and younger waiter debate the possible cause. Meanwhile, a soldier walks by with a young woman, presumably out beyond curfew. The waiters wonder idly if he will get picked up by the guard, but decide that it doesn't matter, as long as he gets what he wants from the girl. The old man asks for another drink, and the younger waiter goes to serve him, disdainfully commenting that the old man should have killed himself. Watching the old man from afar, the two waiters return to their conversation about his attempted suicide. The younger waiter thinks that old age is a terrible thing, but the older waiter disagrees after all, this particular old man is still clean and proper, even when he's drunk. The old man signals for yet another drink, but this time, the younger waiter refuses, saying that they have to close up for the night. The old man carefully pays and leaves, drunk but dignified. As the two waiters close up shop, they continue to argue mildly about the old man, and about people who "need" the caf to stay open. The older waiter sympathizes with these people he recognizes that sometimes someone might need to take refuge in a "clean, well-lighted place," rather than a dark, dim bar or bodega. After the younger waiter hurries off home to his wife, the older waiter takes his time, continuing their argument in his mind. He realizes that life, when it comes down to it, is simply meaningless and that we all need a brightly lit, pleasant place to sit to avoid thinking about the dark demons of death and nothingness. He stops at a bar, but finds that it's not to his liking, and continues home, ruefully commenting that his malaise is probably just insomnia.

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MAJOR CHARACTERS 1)The Older Waiter: Like the old man, the older waiter likes to stay late at cafs, and he understands on a deep level why they are both reluctant to go home at night. He tries to explain it to the younger waiter by saying, He stays up because he likes it, but the younger waiter dismisses this and says that the old man is lonely. Indeed, both the old man and the older waiter are lonely. The old man lives alone with only a niece to look after him, and we never learn what happened to his wife. He drinks alone late into the night, getting drunk in cafs. The older waiter, too, is lonely. He lives alone and makes a habit of staying out late rather than going home to bed. But there is more to the older waiters insomnia, as he calls it, than just loneliness. An unnamed, unspecified malaise seems to grip him. This malaise is not a fear or dread, as the older waiter clarifies to himself, but an overwhelming feeling of nothingnessan existential angst about his place in the universe and an uncertainty about the meaning of life. Whereas other people find meaning and comfort in religion, the older waiter dismisses religion as nadanothing. The older waiter finds solace only in clean, well-lit cafs. There, life seems to make sense. The older waiter recognizes himself in the old man and sees his own future. He stands up for the old man against the younger waiters criticisms, pointing out that the old man might benefit from a wife and is clean and neat when he drinks. The older waiter has no real reason to take the old mans side. In fact, the old man sometimes leaves the caf without paying. But the possible reason for his support becomes clear when the younger waiter tells the older waiter that he talks like an old man too. The older waiter is aware that he is not young or confident, and he knows that he may one day be just like the old man unwanted, alone, and in despair. Ultimately, the older waiter is reluctant to close the caf as much for the old mans sake as for his own because someday hell need someone to keep a caf open late for him. 2)The Younger Waiter: Brash and insensitive, the younger waiter cant see beyond himself. He readily admits that he isnt lonely and is eager to return home where his wife is waiting for him. He doesnt seem to care that others cant say the same and doesnt recognize that the caf is a refuge for those who are lonely. The younger waiter is immature and says rude things to the old man because he wants to close the caf early. He seems unaware that he wont be young forever or that he may need a place to find solace later in life too. Unlike the older waiter, who thinks deeplyperhaps too deeplyabout life and those who struggle to face it, the younger waiter demonstrates a dismissive attitude toward human life in general. For example, he says the old man should have just gone ahead and killed himself and says that he wouldnt want to be that old. He himself has reason to live, and his whole life is ahead of him. You have everything, the older waiter tells him. The younger waiter, immersed in happiness, doesnt really understand that he is lucky, and he therefore has little compassion or understanding for those who are lonely and still searching for meaning in their lives.

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THEMES 1) Life as Nothingness: In A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning and that man is an insignificant speck in a great sea of nothingness. The older waiter makes this idea as clear as he can when he says, It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too. When he substitutes the Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indicates that religion, to which many people turn to find meaning and purpose, is also just nothingness. Rather than pray with the actual words, Our Father who art in heaven, the older waiter says, Our nada who art in nadaeffectively wiping out both God and the idea of heaven in one breath. Not everyone is aware of the nothingness, however. For example, the younger waiter hurtles through his life hastily and happily, unaware of any reason why he should lament. For the old man, the older waiter, and the other people who need late-night cafs, however, the idea of nothingness is overwhelming and leads to despair. 2) The Struggle to Deal with Despair: The old man and older waiter in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place struggle to find a way to deal with their despair, but even their best method simply subdues the despair rather than cures it. The old man has tried to stave off despair in several unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, well-lit caf. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the nighttime and the caf, and although he is essentially in his own private world, sitting by himself in the caf is not the same as being alone. The older waiter, in his mocking prayers filled with the word nada, shows that religion is not a viable method of dealing with despair, and his solution is the same as the old mans: he waits out the nighttime in cafs. He is particular about the type of caf he likes: the caf must be well lit and clean. Bars and bodegas, although many are open all night, do not lessen despair because they are not clean, and patrons often must stand at the bar rather than sit at a table. The old man and the older waiter also glean solace from routine. The ritualistic caf-sitting and drinking help them deal with despair because it makes life predictable. Routine is something they can control and manage, unlike the vast nothingness that surrounds them. 3) Old Age: "Old Age" may look a lot like "Mortality" to young whippersnappers, but let me just tell you that while these two themes are related, they are certainly not the same. In this text, the process of aging makes the characters feel their mortality; the Old Man's attempted suicide demonstrates his willingness to escape the loneliness that, according to Hemingway, comes with age. Hemingway implies that, no matter how much money we have, or how successful we have been in life, we are all ultimately end up as lonely individuals. In this loneliness, what matters above all is simply to have some means of escape from this loneliness,

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whether that's suicide, drunkenness, or simply a clean, well-lighted place to sit and still feel like part of the world. 4) MORTALITY: The real conflict of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is not between two characters, but, rather, in a more abstract sense, between man and time. The story deals with characters that all have different visions of the meaning of time the youngest man values it, but the older characters don't. The oldest character, a man near the end of his life, is simply passing the time until he dies (in fact, we learn that he even tries to commit suicide to hurry along the process). The point is, the older you get, the more time wears upon you, and the more you feel your mortality Hemingway wants us to recognize the fact that all of us will grow old and die someday, no matter how young or confident we are now.

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MOTIFS 1) Loneliness: Loneliness pervades A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and suggests that even though there are many people struggling with despair, everyone must struggle alone. The deaf old man, with no wife and only a niece to care for him, is visibly lonely. The younger waiter, frustrated that the old man wont go home, defines himself and the old man in opposites: Hes lonely. Im not lonely. Loneliness, for the younger waiter, is a key difference between them, but he gives no thought to why the old man might be lonely and doesnt consider the possibility that he may one day be lonely too. The older waiter, although he doesnt say explicitly that he is lonely, is so similar to the old man in his habit of sitting in cafs late at night that we can assume that he too suffers from loneliness. The older waiter goes home to his room and lies in bed alone, telling himself that he merely suffers from sleeplessness. Even in this claim, however, he instinctively reaches out for company, adding, Many must have it. The thought that he is not alone in having insomnia or being lonely comforts him. SYMBOLS 1) The Caf: The caf represents the opposite of nothingness: its cleanliness and good lighting suggest order and clarity, whereas nothingness is chaotic, confusing, and dark. Because the caf is so different from the nothingness the older waiter describes, it serves as a natural refuge from the despair felt by those who are acutely aware of the nothingness. In a clean, brightly lit caf, despair can be controlled and even temporarily forgotten. When the older waiter describes the nothingness that is life, he says, It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. The it in the sentence is never defined, but we can speculate about the waiters meaning: although life and man are nothing, light, clealiness, and order can serve as substance. They can help stave off the despair that comes from feeling completely unanchored to anyone or anything. As long as a clean, well-lighted caf exists, despair can be kept in check. One of the first of such symbols mentioned is the old man's deafness which is relative to his loneliness. The deafness is a symbol of how the old are cut off from the rest of the world. The old man can't hear spiteful remarks such as "you should have killed yourself," and perhaps he doesn't care because of the "nothingness" or futility of life he has realized in his old age. During the day the streets were busy and " 2) The light: A widower, the lonely old man, who has before attempted suicide, lingers in the cafe because he wants to drink where there is light. While the young waiter is irritated with the old man, wishing he would leave, the older waiter understands that the man's endurance of the meaningless of life can better be made in the light. He compliments the old man saying,"He drinks without spilling Even now, drunk. Look at him." The old man has discipline, but his despair is so great that darkness exacerbates his condition. In the light there is some hope, some order to things

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to which the man's desperate spirit can cling as life then is predictable. But, in the darkness he feels only the nothingness of his life. 3) The nada: The Spanish word for nothing, nada represents the absurbity and meaninglessness of life. This existential concept defines the emptiness, or void, that many have felt in their souls after returning from the world wars. Nothing really matters in life; all that one can do is create his own existence and give some meaning to his life by maintaining a stoic order. Otherwise, the nada will conquer the man. When the older waiter goes to bed, he hopes that the daylight will give some meaning to his life and he can go to sleep because he feels, too, that all is a nothing and man, too, is nothing. 4) Repetition: Hemingway's use of repetitive phrasing, such as beginning so many sentences with "The old man..." and phrases with nada and their imitation of the Lord's Prayer all suggest aesthetic appreciation along with the need for order if one is to survive the absurdity of life.