The Outsiders
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” written by Ernest Hemingway is about an old man who is in a cafe and stays there until everyone has left. Two waiters watch and talk about him intently. The young waiter is anxious to go home since it was very late and every other client had left. He wants to go home since his wife is waiting for him and that he never goes to bed before three o’clock. The old waiter tells him that the old man likes to stay up and it is not even three o’clock yet.
When the old man asked for another drink, the young waiter told him that he is finish and the old man left. The young waiter suggests that the old man can buy a bottle and drink it at home. His co worker says that it is not the same and that this cafe is a clean and well-lighted place, unlike bodegas. The impatient waiter again points out that he wants to go to bed and the older waiter tells him that they are two different people. “”I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe.’ he said . ‘With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.'” (Hemingway, 5). He also says that he lacks everything but work. All the younger waiter can say was “Good night” and the old man was left talking to himself as he locked up to go to a bar.
Hemingway’s old man leads a meaningless life that continues without anything worthwhile happening. He is the subject of the old and young waiter’s conversation. The old waiter shows all characteristics of an admirable and respected person while the young waiter is the impatient and uncaring character. The old waiter can relate and sympathize with the old man because he too lacks everything. The young waiter is a typical young man who is just starting his life and eager to get on with everything but his replies show that he is uncaring. For example the old waiter said that their client tried to commit suicide.
The young man told the deaf, old person, “You should have killed yourself last week,” so that he can go home early that night (Hemingway, 2). An hour is worth more to the young than to the old. The author in a sense is telling us that as we get old we begin to lose everything and also that money is not everything. The old, widowed man, Drinks every night because this is what gets him through life. At the end the old waiter did not go straight home but instead went to a bar to pass the night like the old man. The cafe, the clean and well-lighted place, is refuge for people like the old man and old waiter.
A bodega, which is loud and dirty, is not a good location for someone like them to relax and make sense of their lives. This story represents existentialism and that the old man and old waiter have different lives from that of the young waiter who represent the majority of society. Both old men are regarded to be outsiders because they lead senseless lives and that their existence is incomprehensible. Also the old waiter had nihilistic views because of his “nada” speech. He recites the “Our Father” prayer but instead of using the word “god” he uses “nada” in its place. Overall the author might have been showing us his life through the old man and old waiter. Hemingway, like the old man, tried suicide and died in 1961.
Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener” introduces a copier. He spends his days working and staring at windows and brick walls. He spent his days and nights in the office and the others thought that he went home very late but the fact was he lived in the office. Then one day he decide that he could no longer work, giving no reason, so his employer, who already knew he lived there, wanted him to leave. When he refused his employer decided to sell the office so that he was no longer his problem. However the new owners called the police and the former scrivener was sent to jail. There he spent his time doing absolutely nothing but staring at the walls. Even his former employer came to visit and offered his home to him but all he can say was, “No. At present I would prefer not to make any changes at all”. (Melville, 23). At the end he no longer cared about anything and stopped eating. Bartleby died of starvation in jail.
Melville’s Bartleby is a nihilist and that he denies all existence. To him all values are unwarranted and that nothing can be known. He has no religious values and refuses any religious beliefs. At the beginning he lived a life of an existentialist. He spent his days in the office doing work and when finished would stare at walls and windows. That however changed.
He no longer performed his duties in the office and was told to leave but refused to do so probably because he has no place to go. His employer, from whose perspective this story is being told, feels sorry for him and when he was in jail, he visited him. Someone did care for him but he did not care about anyone or anything. He always said, “I would prefer not to”. That is why at the end he refused everything, even eating. His death was his choice because of his believes that there is nothing for him.
The Stranger by Albert Camus is about a man living in Algeria. At the beginning of the book his mother died and he forced himself to attend it. After the sad occasion he left quickly to return to his work in the city. He spent his Sundays up in his balcony, which overlooks the main street, watching the people. He always had the same answer to everything and presented no opinion. Raymond, a man living in the same apartment, would talk to him and ask him about his opinion but he would give the same answer to all of them.
Raymond would ask for favors from Mersault and he would agree. Marie, his girlfriend, at one point in the story asked if he would marry her and he said that he has no opinion on that and if she wants to, he would agree to it. During one Saturday Mersault, Marie, and Raymond spent their time in a friend’s house by the beach. During this time Raymond was in trouble with the Arabs because their sister was the girl he abused. During a walk, after Raymond was stabbed in the arm, Mersault encounters one of the Arabs. He shoots and kills him. He was sent to jail and when asked for his reason for killing the Arab, he could not give an answer. At the end the court found him guilty for the crime and was sentenced to death by decapitation.
Camus presents to us an absurd in a first person perspective. Mersault is an absurd because he believes there is no order in life or in the universe. At beginning of the novel he showed no emotions during his mother’s funeral because he knows that occasions like these happen. Someday he will encounter this and thinks that it is not worth crying about. He actually found the long trip from Algiers to Marengo the worst part of the event because of the heat. Also during the encounter with the Arab he had no logical explanation for his actions. The sun and the heat were the items that lead to that incident.
Those factors contributed to his actions but of course he did not explain it to authorities because he knew it was not worth it. During his trial he barely said anything that can help his case because he thought it was useless to speak his mind. Also I believe that he did not really love Marie but because he is human, he had needs. He went along with whatever she wanted. The absurd, like Mersault, would see that humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe who have nonsensical lives. His Sunday in his balcony is one example because while the passerby in the streets were doing something he was up in his balcony watching them and letting time pass by. Also that is why at the end he did not feel depress about his execution.
He knew that death will come to him and therefore he might as well get on with it. “With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again.” (Camus, 154).
All three stories had many differences and similarities. All can be considered to have existentialism because they all talk about people who have lives that continue with no meaning and is unexplainable. However The Stranger is more absurd than any of the others because Mersault believes that the truth is out there but does not care or want to find it. Bartleby, moreover, was a nihilist because he denied everything at the end.
He had no hope and did not believe in god. Mersault and the old waiter, too, did not believe in god but Melville’s story was more nihilistic than the others. Existentialism was throughout “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” but it also had nihilistic views at the end. The old waiter at the end reveals that he does not have religious values when he considers god as a “nada”, a nothing. Mersault, like Bartleby, had people that supported or pitied him. However all are alone because no one else in their stories shared their values. These outsiders can be misunderstood if they actually exist in our society. “Camus claims that the feeling of the absurd is something of which we can find evidence not only in literature but in daily conversation and ordinary contacts with other people” (Cruickshank, 2).
