A Clean Well Lighted Place

Imagine yourself alone, in a small café with nothing to comfort you but a cold glass of brandy. In the story "A clean Well Lighted Place", the main character feels this way and has his entire life. This story features a narcissistic young waiter and his interactions between two different characters.
In Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean Well Lighted Place" one of the characters is very impolite. He says things about the old man that you probably wouldn’t want people saying about you. Things like on page 175 "He has plenty of money". He probably thinks this because he has money and he thinks it will make you happy but it doesn't and that is why the old man is so lonely. Researches state that people that are mean or that like cutting someone down is because they are insecure them self or it is because of a past experience that happened to them. He is probably taking all his anger out on the old man because that is the only outlet in which he can express his feeling in. you can tell at one point in his life he wanted someone to die because on page 175 he says “You should have killed yourself last week", he is using the old man as a symbol of the person that hurt him in his past. In my conclusion the young waiter is a selfish crude man that deep down is a real big coward.
Not only is there a young waiter in this story but an older waiter as well. The older waiter reminds me of the old man for several reasons. When the younger waiter says on page 176 “He can drink at home" "its not the same", he probably says this because he knows how loneliness feels because he is lonely himself. He also probably keeps the café open late cause he has no were to go much like the old man so the café is a way to keep himself busy. The only reason that he is not alone and drinking is because he knows that he will turn out like the old man so he is trying to change that by keeping the café open. On page 178 it says "he will lie in his bed, and finally with daylight, he will go to sleep, Ernest says this for a reason. Dark symbolizes nothing because that is what you can see, but light symbolizes everything because that is what you see. Because of this I believe that the older waiter hates being lonely and never goes to bed in the dark because he feels like he has nothing. He feels comforted in the light and that is why he likes it so much. He has this phobia because he is so lonely.
The old man is also an alcoholic. An alcoholic drinks 3-5 days a week and in this story the old man drank everyday which tells us that he is for sure an alcoholic. An alcoholic also has the ability to drink large portions and always wants more just like in the story when the old man kept asking for more brandy. Drinking is a stress escape and starts alone and early in the morning. Alcoholics have an increase tolerance which makes them dependent on drinking and gives them loss of interest this is exactly how the old man acts in this short story. The loss of willpower that drinking gives you causes relationship problems and leads to you to cut your friends and family out of the picture and that is why the old man is so lonely. Statistics say that there are more than twelve million alcoholics in the world and seven million of them are between the age of 12 and 20. I know that the old man is defiantly an alcoholic and it probably started in his younger years, this is why he is so lonely.
In “A clean Well Lighted Place” two characters are very similar and one is very denote and vulgar. This short story is a sad tale relating to the writer’s real life and his background with alcoholism. The lesson we can all take from this is that some people are insecure and very lonely, and this is just something that you need to be patient with.