A Clean, Welll Lighted Responce

“A Clean, Well Lighted Place” (Short story) and the Screen adaption both have some excellent symbolism.  It compares light and dark, experience and inexperience in many different ways. But even though  they both have the same characters, the symbolism is much different in the Film. There are other differences too but the Symbolism is the biggest.

A few symbols are alike in these two examples of media, they are probably seen as the most important to an untrained eye but they forgot one important thing, which we will come to later. For example, The Café, a Clean Well Lighted Place (hence the name of the story). It is a happy place to meet people and drink peacefully. It was a great thing to add to the Film mostly because it makes the story makes sense. Moreover, the most important symbols are the people; the people are important because they mean many things. The young waiter; a symbol of naivety, selfishness and what Hemmingway was himself when he was young. The Older waiter; a symbol of experience, selflessness, and what Hemmingway was when he wrote this. and finally the Old man; a symbol  of depression, money, experience, loneliness  and  what Hemmingway actually was when Hemmingway killed himself.

There were only 2 ‘Symbolarities’ so there were quite a few differences. In addition, as I said before 1 huge one. The huge one was, that in the story the old man was sitting in the shadows which symbolizes that he is between  light and dark and that he really isn’t alive or dead.  Another difference while not exactly  symbolic was that the time in the film was more modern than the story  I noticed there were flat-Screen TVs  and security cameras]

Even though the story was shorter than the Film I personally think that  the short story had more symbolism which is why I chose to write on symbolism… Because I like symbolism!