Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for? All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they all belong?   --John Lennon (Eleanor Rigby)

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." He could have added that it takes life experiences to become aware of ones own growing desperation. Ernest Hemingway wrote the short story, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place in 1933, when he was 33-years-old, only beginning to understand the desperation of his mortality and inability to commit to his loved ones.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is a story about contrasts: light and dark; beginnings and ends; experience and youth. Two waiters, separated by years both in age and experience discuss an old drunk who is the last customer in the café where they work. They both view the old man through there own experiences, with the older waiter appreciating the appeal of the well-lit café. The young waiter fails to understand or care, even saying, "He should have killed himself last week." Like many youngsters, the younger waiter only sees how the old man is affecting his life, keeping him from his home and wife. "I don't want to look at him," the young waiter says. "I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work." Meanwhile, the older waiter relates to the old man, knowing that the only difference between the two of them is time.

The older waiter also grasps the appeal of a clean, well-lighted place to a lonely person. The young waiter thinks it shouldn't matter to the old man if he is sitting in a café, bar, bodega or even drinking alone at home. But bars and bodegas are darker, noisier and more festive than a café, intended for groups of people. To be alone in a dark bar enhances the feeling of loneliness, drawing attention to the solitude. When alone in a clean, will-lighted place, a solitary person can feel part of the community. There would be other singles sitting in the café, some alone by choice, some desperately lonely. One could picture the Queen of being left alone, Greta Garbo, who in the film Hotel said, "I want to be alone," sitting quietly in a café but never in a bar. There isn't attention drawn to the solitude in the café. "You do not understand," said the older waiter. "This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves." Shadows for the voyeur, wanting to watch but not be watched.

Hemingway himself was going through a crisis of change at the time he wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. He had reached middle age, no longer a head-strong youngster. In the middle of a failing second marriage; recently returned to the United States (Key West) after living for many years in Europe; returned from his closest brush with death of his life on a safari earlier that year; Hemingway was thinking more about the passing years and his own not-so-quiet desperation. Middle age could be said to begin when you go from preferring a night at a clean, will-lighted place over the dark and noisy bar or bodega, and Hemingway had recently discovered that he had reached middle age.

Hemingway also includes his contempt for organized religion. He has the older waiter recite the Lord's Prayer, substituting the word nada for key religious terms in the prayer. He is using this passage to make the point that religion is a poor antidote for the desperate feeling. It might also have been intended as criticism toward his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, a devout Roman Catholic. Many of their marital conflicts originated due to opposite positions on the approaching Spanish Civil War (The Catholic Church in Spain took the side of the royalists.)

Thoreau also wrote, "time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." As we age, time can mean different things depending on our feelings toward mortality. The young waiter fails to understand the value of time as you get older, saying "[an hour] means more to me than to him," demonstrating his belief that time can be measured by what is accomplished with each hour, rather than the preciousness of the number remaining. Hemingway wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place at close to the middle point of his life -- he would live to be 61. It's also ironic that he would be so sympathetic toward the old man in the story. Almost 30 years after this writing, despite riches and fame, Hemingway would take his own life on his ranch in Utah. There are people similar to the young waiter who failed to understand how fame and fortune didn't thwart the desperation. Luckily, we can take comfort in the immortal words of Groucho Marx who said, "Time wounds all heels."