摘要
厄内斯特●海明威是美国最伟大的现代作家之一，也是一名短篇小说大师。他生活的年代正值旧的西方文化传统覆灭，除了信仰缺失和道德沦丧，什么也没有留下。海明威自己参加过多次战争，也经历过家庭悲剧（他父亲的自杀）。“海明威的世界极其混乱，毫无意义，生存在这个世界的人孤独地与一种他自己也无法理解的巨大力量抗争”。而虚无主义也一直是海明威作品的主题。
本论文旨在分析《一个干净明亮的地方》中的虚无主义。这是一篇典型的以虚无主义（生命的空虚）为主题的短篇小说。文中共出现了六个人物，其中三个是主要的，即老人和两个侍者。他们都生活在虚无之中，但是他们面对生活中巨大的虚无的态度却各不相同。年轻侍者人生阅历尚浅，年轻又天真。他意识不到自己生活在虚无之中。老人已经八十多岁，经历过人生的起伏后，认识到在混乱的世界中生命毫无意义。为了逃避虚无，他先是自杀，后又每天喝得酩酊大醉。但是即便醉了，他也依然保持着做人的尊严。老侍者也生活在虚无之中。他深刻地理解虚无并与之抗争。他还主动为那些有需要的人提供一个干净明亮的地方。 通过对三种不同的面对虚无的态度的分析，我们可以很清楚地看到战争和经济危机对人们身心的双重伤害，并探究海明威在人生的困难和绝望面前采取怎样的态度。
关键词：海明威，《一个干净明亮的地方》，虚无主义
i
Abstract
Earnest Hemingway is one of the most famous modern American writers and also is a master of short fictions. He lives in a period when all the old traditions are smashed and nothing left but a loss of faith and morality. He had sufficient experiences of wars and has gone through family tragedy (his father’s suicide). “Hemingway’s world is a world essentially chaotic and meaningless, in which man fights a solitary struggle against a force he does not even understand”.1 And nihilism has always been the theme of Hemingway’s works.
This thesis aims at analyzing the thought of nihilism in A Clean, Well-lighted Place. It is a typical story dealing with nada, the nothingness of life. There are six people that appeared in the story. While only three of them are important: the old man and two waiters. They all live in nada, but they react differently in face of the great nada in life. The younger waiter, who has little experience in life, is young and naive. He can’t realize the nothingness of his life. The old man, who has experienced a lot in his more than eighty years of life, knows that his life is meaningless in this chaotic world. He tries to escape from it by first killing himself and then getting drunk every night. But he tried his best to keep dignity even when he is drunk. The older waiter lives in nada, too. He has a deep understanding of the great nada of life and tries his best to fight against it and he is willing to help others by providing a clean and well lighted place.
Through the analysis of three main characters’ different attitudes towards nada, it is clear to us how great the influence of war and economic depression is on both people’s body and mind and what kind of attitude Hemingway holds when confronted with hardships and despair in life.
Key Words: Hemingway, A Clean, Well-lighted Place, Nihilism
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................1 Chapter I Analysis of The Younger Waiter’s Nihilism..................................................6 A The Background of The Younger Waiter’s Growing........................................6 B The Younger Waiter’s Attitude Towards Nada..........................................8 Chapter II Analysis of Nihilism of the Old Man….................................................11 A
The
Eventful
Life
of
the
Old
Man ....................................................................11
B The Old Man’s Attitude towards Nada ............................................................14 Chapter III Analysis of the Older Waiter’s Nihilism ...................................................18 A The Older Waiter’s Understandings of Nada ...................................................18 B The Active Attitude of the Older Waiter towards Nada ...................................20 Conclusion...........................................................................................................23 Notes.............................................................................................................25 Bibliography ................................................................................................................27
iii
Introduction
Earnest Hemingway has been regarded as one of the most famous modern American writers for a long time. Most of his works concern on themes of love, war, wilderness and loss and reflect the social conditions of the early decades of the 20th century on both physical and spiritual level. He wrote many works that reveal the spiritual conditions of that generation who lost their faith and belief. Therefore, people regard him as the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”. A Clean, Well-lighted Place is one of his best short stories, which tells about a world full of nada and people’s searching for the meaning of living.
A Clean, Well-lighted Place is a short story written by the modern American author Earnest Hemingway and has long been regarded as his prime novel. It is first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1933 and collected in Hemingway’s 1933 collection Winner Take Nothing. A Clean, Well-lighted Place is one of the most extraordinary short stories which were written in Hemingway’s early times. The story takes place in a Spanish cafe. It is very late in the night. There is nobody left in the cafe except two waiters and an old deaf man, who is a regular customer that likes to stay late. From the two waiters’ conversation, we know that the old man is lonely and desperate, and he committed suicide last week but was rescued by his niece. Then he kills time by getting drunk every night in this clean, well-lighted cafe. The younger waiter, who is eager to get home to his wife, complains over the old man’s overstay and impatiently kicks the old man out by cheating him that the cafe is closing. The older waiter understands the old man’s feelings and relates himself to the old man as his future. He is sympathetic and friendly to the old man, wanting to offer the old man a place to escape from the chaotic world. He penetrates the upsetting nothingness in life and chooses to face it bravely and actively. His “toughness” is sort of “grace under pressure”, thus he is one of the Hemingway code heroes.
This story is short, simple but it vividly shows the great influence that wars have on people. What’s more, the economic crisis started in 1929 disillusioned the blindly optimistic Americans and shattered the American Dream. People in the 1930s are kind
1
of mentally waste. T. S. Elliot wrote a novel called Waste Land that reveals the spiritual crisis of the postwar decades. Through the story, Hemingway evokes an atmosphere of despair and loneliness almost wholly by dialogue and interior monologue. A Clean, Well-lighted Place is a typical Hemingway story written by his famous “Iceberg Technique”. Hemingway wrote this story not to teach people a lesson, but to show his attitude towards loneliness and hardship, towards frustration and desperation in life.
Earnest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1889. He was the second of the six children in the family. His father was a physician, who often took Hemingway on his trips of fishing and hunting. As a boy, Hemingway loved football, boxing and reading. After he graduated from high school, he worked as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1917, he volunteered and was recruited as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross and went to Europe. In 1918 he was severely wounded in Italy. This wound had a lifelong influence on him. Then, he participated in the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War. During the WWII, he was accompanied with heavy alcohol, diseases and depression. His father’s suicide also has a lifelong influence on him. All his childhood and war experiences provide sufficient materials for his later writing and the wars become the theme of his writing. As a great novelist, short story writer, an essayist and a journalist, he wrote many a novel which creates lots of Hemingway Heroes with “grace under pressure” and “despairing courage”. His works described the image of a whole generation, generally known as the Lost Generation. He was the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”. He was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 for “his powerful style-forming mastery of the art” in the creation of modern fiction. In his later years, he behaved oddly and looked older than his age. He ended his life with a gunshot in 1961, which symbolized that an era had come to an end.
Most of Hemingway’s books are based on his life experiences or people that he knows. Sometimes, even Hemingway himself can’t tell what he imagined from what was real. The Sun Also Rises is among his first important novels. Jake Barnes, the protagonist, was wounded and left sexually impotent during the war. He finds himself
2