blog assignment #1- A Clean - Well Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway was one of the young men who volunteered to serve in  the first world war, he was an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in Italy. according to him, he said "when you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality...then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you..." He was injured while running a mobile canteen dispensing chocolate and cigarettes for soldiers and while he was trying to get a wounded Italian soldier  to safety. one thing lead to another, Hemingway fell in love with Agnes Von Kurowsky a nurse he met while in the hospital within a six month span in Milan. After the war, Hemingway returned Home expecting Agnes his found love to join him shortly, only to receive a letter from her ending the relationship. This i think serves as the basics to the way he writes. In "A Clean - Well Lighted Place" the bar represents a perfect place where it is quiet, where lonely people can find comfort, somewhere they can just go to sit, think and relax. The character of the deaf old man symbolizes isolation, separation and living in the present moment, not worrying about the future, it also sort of reflects how Hemingway lived his life as a drunkard like the deaf old man who drank until he is unable to pay for his drinks, and how he took his own life maybe because he had thoughts that he didn't have anything worth living for anymore? and decided commit suicide to save himself maybe the unhappiness, discontent, or just the plain everyday life.