Analyzing a Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway Essay Example

Analyzing a Clean, Well Analyzing a Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway Paper Analyzing a Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway Paper and the waiters are about to close up only hindered by an old, deaf man, who is still sitting on the terrace drinking brandy. Obviously this particular old man comes there often, since the narrator tells the reader about the old mans bad habit of not paying for his drinks once he is drunk. Hemingway keeps emphasizing the shadows of the leaves of a tree (Hemingway 11) apparently standing either on or nearby the terrace. By doing that he separates the caf? © even more from its surrounding, thus highlighting it as some kind of illuminated haven within the darkness of the night. Since darkness and night always in a world of sinister and menacing loneliness. This picture is aided by the description of the tree that moved slightly in the wind (Hemingway 311) and thus creates a feeling of desperation. In this scenery the two waiters talk a bit while waiting for the old man to finish his drink and leave. At first they talk about the man imself. One waiter tells the other one about the suicide attempt of the old man from the week before. Cleverly Hemingway writes this first part of his story in a way that the reader will never know which waiter is the one telling and which is the one listening. Up to the point at which the old man changes the setting by calling for a waiter Hemingway lets the waiters appear to be equal and most of all equally unknown and plane in character. Then he distinguishes them by identifying one as younger than the other, creating a gap between them and establishing some kind of ierarchy between all three protagonists. All of a sudden there seems to be a constellation emerging to be depicting a conflict of generations. Despite the feeling from the beginning of the story that the old man is the main character, Hemingway now starts to deepen the characters of the waiters by switching from descriptive narration to descriptive dialogues leaving out the old man. Now the reader gets an impression of the younger waiter as being full of life, married, impatient and not emphatic, while the older waiter appears to be more demure and empathizing. As their dialogue goes on one could suspect that the older waiter told the younger one about the attempted suicide of the old man, whom they consider to be eighty something years old. By recognizing this, the older waiter becomes sort of a mediator between the old man with his experiences and feelings on the one hand and the younger waiter with his lack of comprehension for other people, especially elder ones, on the other hand by trying to explain the behavior of the old man to his colleague. Once the old man has left and the younger waiter has gone home too, the lder waiter heads for a bar to fght his apparently chronic insomnia and starts thinking about the old man. Hemingway illustrates that by switching again, this time from the descriptive dialogues to a stream of consciousness in which the older waiter contemplates the reasons of the old man to attempt suicide. He comes to the conclusion, that this man had nothing in his life anymore, Just a great, big, chaotic nothing, so the caf? © has become a place of life with a good lighting and tidiness as symbols of the order the old man misses so much in his personal life. Cynically the waiter begins to recite the Lords Prayer in his mind exchanging some words with the Spanish word nada which means nothing. Interestingly he also uses the term pues nada (Hemingway 313) which translates as well then indicating he is accepting the loneliness and nothingness he already feels in his own life Just as part of growing old. In the bar the barman asks for the waiters order which he answers with nada (Hemingway 313) as well, obviously messing around with his own thoughts. The barman, seemingly annoyed, responds with otro loco mas (Hemingway 313) eaning and another insane. The complete behavior of the barman even in response to the statement of the waiter about the unpolished bar aids the impression of the bar as a symbol of the despair of the world. In the end the waiter reflects the usual progress of his night convincing himself that the symptoms of loneliness in his own life are Just simple insomnia, ergo a disease pattern, which connects him with other into his story or is it Just a story? In fact I am convinced that Hemingway processed his own traumata and feelings of loneliness and despair in this short story. When he ublished it he had already been in one war including being wounded, got divorced, learned about his fathers suicide and suffered from a disease in Africa. So the old man in the story might be an allegory for Hemingways father while the story itself portrays his introversion and thus might be an early sign for his lethal depressions. Bennett, Warren. Character, Irony, and Resolution in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. American Literature. Vol.. 42. Durham: Duke UP, 1970. 70-79. Print. The Manuscript and the Dialogue of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. American Literature. vol.. 50. Durham: Duke up, 1979. 613-24. print. colburn, William E. confusion A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. College English. Vol.. 20. Millwood: Klaus Reprint, 1973. 241-42. print. Gabriel, Joseph F. The Logic of Confusion in Hemingways A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. College English. Vol.. 22. Millwood: Klaus Reprint, 1973. 539-46. Print. Hemingway, Ernest. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. The First Forty-Nine Stories. London: Jonathan Cape, 1968. 311-14. Print. MacGowan, Cristopher. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). The Twentieth-Century American Fiction Handbook. Ames: Wiley-Blac kwell, 2011. 91-95. Print.

12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know

12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know 12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know 12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know By Mark Nichol What is the origin of various symbols used in English, and when is the use of each appropriate? Here’s a guide to twelve common signs, including how they developed and in which contexts they are used or avoided. 1. (Ampersand) The ampersand was, at least until well into the nineteenth century, treated as the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet, but its star has fallen, so that now it is used only informally except in registered names of businesses (â€Å"Ay, Bee See Inc.†), which should be written as rendered; a comma preceding it is extraneous. The symbol comes from the cursive formation of the Latin word et (â€Å"and†), and the name is a slurring contraction of â€Å"and per se and,† which used to terminate schoolroom recitals of the alphabet: The phrase means â€Å"and by itself and†; instead of reciting, â€Å". . . W, X, Y, Z, and,† children said, â€Å". . . W, X, Y, Z, and per se and† to clarify that â€Å"and† referred to a list item rather than serving as a conjunction for an item that was left unuttered. The symbol is also seen in c. (â€Å"et cetera†), an alternate form of etc. American Psychological Association (APA) style allows the ampersand to link author names in an in-text citation (â€Å"Laurel Hardy, 1921†), but other style guides call for using the word and. 2. * (Asterisk) The asterisk is used to call out a footnote or to refer to an annotation of special terms or conditions, to substitute for letters in profanity (â€Å"Oh, s***!†) or a name rendered anonymous (â€Å"the subject, M***†), to serve as a low-tech alternative to a typographical bullet, or provide emphasis in place of boldface (â€Å"Do *not* go there the food is awful.†). It also has many specialized technical usages. Its name is derived from the Greek term asteriskos, meaning â€Å"little star,† and it was originally applied to distinguish date of birth from other references to years. 3. @ (At Sign) Until the age of e-mail, the at sign was restricted mostly to commercial use, in purchase orders and the like, to mean â€Å"at the rate of† (â€Å"Order 1K widgets @ $2.50 per.†). It’s also used in displays of schedules for competitive sports to identify the event venue. Now it’s ubiquitous in email addresses and in social-networking usage, as well as computer protocols, but outside of those contexts, it is considered inappropriate for all but the most informal writing. 4.  ¢ (Cent) This symbol for cent (from the Latin word centum, meaning â€Å"hundred†), unlike its cousin the dollar sign it’s also used in many monetary systems other than that of US currency is rare except in informal usage or for price tags. When it does appear, unlike the dollar sign, it follows rather than precedes the numeral, though as in the case of the dollar sign, no space intervenes. The equivalent usage in a context where dollar signs are employed is to treat the amount as a decimal portion of a dollar (â€Å"$0.99†); for clarity, a zero should always be inserted between the dollar sign and the decimal point. The sign probably originated to distinguish an ordinary c from one denoting a monetary amount. 5.  ° (Degree Sign) The sign for degrees of arc or degrees of temperature, which started out as a superscripted zero, was chosen for consistency with use of the minute (†²) and second marks (†³) employed in geometry and geography; those symbols originally stood for the Latin numerals I and II. The degree sign appears in technical contexts, but in general-interest publications, the word degree is generally used. In references to temperature, the symbol (and the designation of the temperature scale) immediately follows the associated numerical figure (â€Å"45 °C†). This style is true of many publishing companies, though the US Government and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures prescribe a space between the number and the symbol (â€Å"45  °C†), while other publications omit the first letter space but insert another between the symbol and the abbreviation (â€Å"45 ° C†). 6. (Ditto Sign) The ditto sign, first attested three thousand years ago, signals that text shown above is to be repeated, as in a list in which the same quantity of various materials is intended to be expressed: apples 24 bananas oranges The word ditto, meaning â€Å"said,† derives from the Tuscan language, the immediate ancestor of Italian, but was borrowed into English hundreds of years ago. The word, its abbreviation (do.), and the symbol are considered inappropriate for most writing, though the term has often been used in informal spoken and written language to mean â€Å"(the same as) what he/she said.† Although the symbol has a distinct character code for online writing, straight or curly close quotation marks are usually employed to produce it. 7. $ (Dollar Sign) This symbol for the American dollar and many other currencies was first used to refer to the peso, which inspired the American currency system. Various origin stories for the symbol come in and out of fashion, but it’s most likely that it developed from an abbreviation of pesos in which the initial p preceded a superscript s; the tail of the initial was often superimposed on the s. A dollar sign with two vertical lines is a less common variant. Most books and other formal publications tend to spell out dollars in association with a (spelled-out or numerical) figure, but periodicals usually use the symbol, as do specialized books about finance or business or others with frequent references to money. In international publications, when the symbol is used, for clarity, it is combined with the abbreviation US (â€Å"US$1.5 million† or â€Å"US $1.5 million†). The dollar sign is also used as an abbreviated reference to various functions in computer programming and similar contexts. 8. # (Number or Pound Sign, or Hash) This symbol evolved from the abbreviation for pound, lb. (a literal abbreviation for the Roman word libra, meaning â€Å"balance†), in which horizontal lines were superimposed on the vertical lines of the letters, producing something like the tic-tac-toe pattern used today. One of many other names for the sign, octotherp (also spelled octothorp or otherwise), was a jocular coinage by telecommunications engineers in the mid-twentieth century. The symbol is seldom used outside informal or highly technical or otherwise specialized contexts. 9. % (Percent) The sign for indicating percentage developed in the Middle Ages over the course of hundreds of years, beginning as an abbreviation of percent (from the Latin phrase per centum, meaning â€Å"out of a hundred†). Its use is recommended only in technical contexts or in tabular material, where space it at a premium. (Some standards authorities call for a space between a number and this symbol, but most publications and publishers omit the space.) 10. ~ (Tilde) The tilde is used as a diacritical mark over various letters to indicate a variety of sounds in different languages, but it also appears midline, like a dash (and is sometimes called a swung dash), to denote â€Å"approximately (â€Å"Last night’s attendance: ~100†). It has technical connotations as well and is even used as a notation for recording sequences of action in juggling. The name, borrowed into English through Portuguese and Spanish from Latin, means â€Å"title.† 11. / (Slash, Solidus, Stroke, or Virgule) During the Middle Ages, this sign of many names, including those listed above, served as a comma; a pair denoted a dash. The double slash was eventually tipped horizontally to become an equal sign and later a dash or hyphen. (The equal sign is still used as a proofreader’s mark to indicate insertion of a hyphen.) The slash also called the forward slash to distinguish it from the backslash, which is used only in technical contexts is an informal substitute for or. 12. _ (Underscore or Understrike) This artifact from the era of the typewriter was used on such devices to underline words to indicate emphasis in lieu of italics. As a survival of that function, words are sometimes bracketed by a pair of single underscores in email and other computer contexts to mark a word for emphasis (â€Å"That band totally _rocked_ the place.†). Indeed, as I typed this post in Microsoft Word, the program automatically converted rocked to italics. The symbol also appears frequently in email and website addresses and other technical contexts. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! 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