Start a discussion with an observation, comment, or question that relates to point of view, themes, of Ernest Hemingway short story.
A clean well-lighted place
Emest hemingway(1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, bypassed college to be a cub reporter. In world war I, as till eighteen -year old volunteer ambulance driver in italy, he was wounded in action. In 1922 he settled in paris, then aswarm with writers: he later recalled that time in a movable feast(1964). Hemingway won swift accliaim for his early stories. In Our Time (1925). andfor his first, perhaps finest, novel, The Sun Also Rises(1964) portraying "lost generation" of postwar American drifters in Fraiice and Spain.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) depicts life durint; the Spanish civil war. Hemingway
became a celebrity, often photo,traphed its a marlin fisherman or a him hunter. A fun of
lighting, he it two nonfictian books (11 the subject: Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Lind The Dangerous Summer (posthumously published in 1985). After World War II, with his fourth wife, journalist Mary Welsh, he made his home in Cuba, where he wrote The Old Man and the Sea (1952). The Nobal Prize in Literature came his way in 1954. In 1961, mentally distressed and physically ailing, he shot himself. Hemingway brought a hard-bitten realism to American ficticm. His heroes live dangerously , personal codes of honor, courage, and endurance. Hemingway's distinctively crisp, unadorned style left American literature permanently changed.
It was late and every one had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow
the leaves tit the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty,
but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf
and now at night it was itiiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe
knew that the Old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that
if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.
Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.
"Why?"
"He was in despair."
"What about?"
"Nothing."
"How do you know it was nothing?"
"He has plenty of money."
They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the
café and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old
man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl
and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his
collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.
"The guard will pick him up," one waiter said.
"What does it matter if he gets what he's after?"
"He had better get off the street now. The guard \yin get him. They went by five
minutes ago."
The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The
Younger waiter went over to him.
"What do you want?"
The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said.
You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.