Human Perception In Ernest Hemingway's A Clean Well-Lighted Place
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Human Perception People’s concern throughout their lives will always be for themselves and for that reason they do not stop to question or have second thoughts about their surroundings. Ernest Hemingway in his short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” has exposed readers of how within a society people treat one another. Regarding this, the short story displays human perception through three different persons, the self- centered young waiter, an empathetic older waiter, and a hopeless old man. Hemingway generated these types of characters to show how people tend to be in their natural default-setting or how apprehensive they are to their surroundings. In fact, David Foster Wallace discloses that people do not stop and think about who, and what to pay attention to. As a result, it makes one feel at times frustrated, stressed, and worthless.…show more content… The young waiter’s comments show constantly using “I” as if the world was to end because his needs were not put first. Even though, the young waiter knows somewhat how the old man is feeling, he persist on being selfish and heartless, “He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.” (Hemingway 380). Fragments of the story may seem awful, but Hemingway aspires to reach people that this way of life should not continue. However, in reality humans will not be persistent to others, but at least to make people become aware of what happens around them. An empathetic older waiter appears in the short story to indicate that not everybody is in their natural default-setting, that there are actually people who have gone through experiences that have made them open their eyes to cruel reality of the world. The older waiter’s perspective was seeing this defenseless, hopeless, lonely man, witnessing how this old man struggled to make it through the day, owning to the fact that he probably saw himself in him. Even though, not much is said about the older waiter’s life, he became significant because of