A Clean, Well-Lighted Place - a Creative Essay

1181 Words5 Pages
Ryan Vachon EWC4U, The Writers Craft, Meagan Roberts October 20th, 2012 Topic: words that hit true and dear. Purpose: to treat the theme that the “pen is mightier than the sword” through an analysis of a story that resonates with me. Audience: Meagan Roberts. But our audience is often imagined as we write. Form: a loose essay. Persona: It needs no name. Otra Copa, Por Favor It was one the first stories my eighth grade English teacher handed to me. She had taken a particular liking of me. In some ways, I think she knew me better than I knew myself. She handed me novels and poems in a sequence that fit in with the puzzle that was my life, the feelings I was having. “He’s outside the box.” she said, tracing a square in the air after I read a poem, to my stunned classmates. They were surprised it had come out of me; I hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time. “He’s always looking out the window.” That window might as well of been opaque. And it was; as shuttered as the window of my adolescent bedroom. All I saw then was white air. She knew that. And so she handed me books. Slowly, I began to find a voice through their guidance, wrapping the rut of my life, one that I felt was and always would be, with words. Release. And this particular story struck a chord that rung so eerily true to my existence, now more closely than ever. The story was called “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, by Hemmingway. It is a discourse of a conversation between two waiters, one who is young and the other who is old, preparing to close shop as they study an old, drunk deaf man, savouring the Mana from his glass, who had just attempted suicide that previous week. Their conversation shifts into one of about a certain kind of loneliness. The young man wishes to return to his wife and insists they send him home. He is cruel towards him, “He should have killed himself

More about A Clean, Well-Lighted Place - a Creative Essay

Open Document