“Fat” by Ray Carver is so similar to Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, that it is sometimes considered a ‘revision’ to Hemingway’s story (Oard n. pg.) The two stories are parallels in the sense that both take place in a restaurant/bar and both characters cause some sort of disturbance to the workers of the facilities. The only real difference between the two is that in “Fat”, the character in reference is a morbidly obese man who orders a great quantity of food, but in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the character is a wealthy drunk who keeps asking for more booze.
I think that the morbidly obese man is supposed an example of one of the seven deadly sins – Gluttony. He starts out with an order of: a Caesar salad, a bowl of soup, bread and butter, lamb chops, a baked potato with sour cream, and a glass of water. The narrator, who is his waitress, commented, “You know the size of those Caesar salads?” I’m assuming this means it’s a pretty large salad, especially after all the dressing, cheese, and croutons - the typical variation of this salad – could be considered a large meal by itself. The fact that the waitress also keeps bringing the man bread and butter, at least 3 times, possibly a reference to the idiom “one’s bread and butter”, meaning his source of income, or a job. This leads me to believe this ‘fat man’ has the hardest job of all, eating for himself and his enormous gut. Carver also mentions that the ‘fat man’ is “well dressed enough”, so he probably has a job of some sort, or at least some sort of steady income. However, he may not be as rich as Hemingway’s ‘old man.
In Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the old wealthy man keeps ordering drinks. One of the employees of that restaurant mention...
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...en he had a purpose. The waitress in Carver’s story picks up on the polite nature of the ‘fat man’ and wishes her significant other would be more like the ‘fat man’, instead of making fun of someone who treats her well. She realizes she had lost self respect and confidence that the ‘fat man’ exemplifies.
Works Cited
"Convert Spanish Pesetas (ESP) and United States Dollars (USD)." Currency Exchange Rate Conversion Calculator. 2003. Web. 16 Mar. 2011. .
Grimal, Claude. "Prose as Architecture: Two Interviews with Raymond Carver." Illinois Wesleyan University -- Bloomington, IL. 1995. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
Oard, Brian. ""Fat" by Raymond Carver." MINDFUL PLEASURES. Blogspot.com, 27 Aug. 2010. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
Christa Kurkjian explains in her paper, Is “Fat” the New “F” Word?, that Carver transforms the social norm of being fat—and ugly—to something of a “saving grace” (Kurkjian 3). However, I have to disagree with Kurkjian on her thesis. I truly do not feel Carver’s intent for Fat is to transform the word “fat,” but to elaborate on how people perceive fat.
Upon reading Raymond Carver's short story of the Cathedral one will notice the literary devices used in the short story. When analyzing the story completely, one then understands the themes, motifs, metaphors, and the overall point of the piece. This leaves the reader with an appreciation of the story and a feeling of complete satisfaction.
Carver sets “Cathedral” in an early 1980s middle class suburban house. In this time period, authors including Carver wrote about the heartbreaks, frustrations, and the harsh realities of middle class life. This type of writing was known as “dirty realism”. Carver’s minimalist style of writing is very similar to Ernest Hemmingway’s in the sense that it contains mostly actions and sometimes comedic dialogue. The reader is left to analyze and infer what are the characters’
A good author is always conscious of being too sarcastic. In the short story “That Lean and Hungry Look” written by Suzanne Britt; the author point of views are drowned out by sarcasm. Suzanne Britt probably wrote this comical literary story while sitting in a coffee shop, drinking a fat-free cappuccino as she watched “thin and fat” people walk by. She may have wondered to herself what her life would have been like if she was thin. At some point, envy caused her point of views to be too sarcastic. Also, the sarcasm had inadvertently affected the mechanics of her story. The story was well written and has some unique pointers. However, the author message is muddled by her usage literary allusions, exaggerated usage of figurative language, and over usage of alliterations.
A short, heavyset lady in her mid-forties with a slight stench of cigarettes on her breath takes our order. Jorge, and I sit in the booth closest to the nearest exit door of an old-school 50's style diner. Pictures of Elvis Presley, Humphrey Bogart and James Dean decorate the velvet walls while music from the late great Buddy Holly plays on the speakers. It is a slow night at the diner, as only a few tables are occupied. I assume the customers are regulars at the diner as they yell back and forth from table to table, talking about the baseball game, something I don't eavesdrop in, for I have no interest in “Americas Pastime.” After our orders are taken, our waitress steps away from the booth and I can't help but notice how drained she looks, she appears to be lacking energy the way she drags her feet back into the kitchen. Maybe she clocked in a double shift, maybe she's just tired of working a dead-end job, or maybe she is just having a bad night. No matter what her problem is, her night is only going to
Food is the world’s safe house. Primarily, food is what keeps the body in working order. Behind the scenes, food creates an industry that is incomparable to any other. From diners to fishermen, and from bakeries to slaughterhouses, food is known by all. Oscar Wilde takes this universal knowledge of food to create the compelling social satire known as “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Wilde cleverly brings readers into a new world of secrecy, fantasy, and power through the need to eat. With the onset of the “New Woman” era, Oscar Wilde uses food to introduce his humourously repulsed opinion on the freedom of women, while alluding to the struggle of being accepted in this previously unheard of society.
One way in which fat people are depicted in films is that they are the person who is always hungry or caught eating something that they are not supposed to. Fat people are depicted as sloppy and gross because they have food stains on their clothes or oil stains. Another way they are depicted is that they are always last to a place because it takes them longer to get to one point to the
She knows that his work dries the life out of him and therefor let 's him drink a little of the drink, knowing that it will give him some strength back. As he drains half the glass her thoughts runs away with her, reminding her of all the beauty reflected in this wonderful human being, she loves him for everything he is, even for the way he sits loosely in the
“...[E]veryone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light”(A Clean, Well-Lighted Place 1). Hemingway’s approach to the story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, was both intricate and simplistic. This unique approach to the story forges a specific mood exclusive to the story. The mood conveyed by the story is a melancholic mood for the old man because the young waiter wants to go home and believes that his life is more meaningful than that of the old man’s when he stated that an hour was “more [important] to [him] than to [the old man]” (Hemingway 3). This mood contributes to the story’s meaning of contrasting light and dark, old and young, and how the old and young generations do not understand each other’s rationales.
Of all his short stories, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” best illustrates Hemingway’s mental digression, and the depression that plagued his everyday life. This story follows a few waiters serving a depressed, older man at their cafe, after a long day’s work. As it gets later, one waiter becomes impatient and wants to leave, while the other waiter is understanding of the customer’s struggles. Throughout the story, biographical
To begin, Hemingway indirectly characterizes the old waiter as wise in order to demonstrate how he utilizes this quality to facilitate the abandonment of his problems. At the bar, when analyzing the old drunk man, the old waiter immediately recognizes the root of the drunkard's problems. He feels sympathy for the man, pointing out that he is in despair and that he might be happier if he was married (Hemingway 2-3). The old waiter also uses his wisdom when he offers the young waiter advice. The old waiter suggests that the young waiter forget about his lack of confidence and youth and move on with his priorities (Hemingway 4). The old waiter demonstrates his wisdom once more on his journey home after working at his clean cafe. He notices that the bar where he has sat down for a small drink is very bright, but dirty. He then contemplates laying in bed and getting a restful sleep during the daytime. The story reads, "He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted café was a very different thing. Now, without thinking furth...
I chose to read and write about Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place". Here is a summary of what happens. Two waiters in a Spanish café are waiting one night for their last customer, an old man, to leave. As they wait, they talk about the old man's recent suicide attempt. The younger waiter is impatient to leave and tells the dead old man he wishes the suicide attempt had been successful. The young waiter has a wife waiting in bed for him and is unsympathetic when the older waiter says that the old man once had a wife. The old man finally leaves when the younger waiter refuses to serve him anymore.
Ernest Hemingway's short story titled "A Clean Well-Lighted place" deals with the loneliness, isolation, and depression felt by many during the modernist period. The story takes place in a well lit café, occupied by two waiters (one old, and one young) and an old deaf man. This story is the perfect example of the modernist form because it questions the meaning of life. Joseph Gabriel, in is essay titled "The Logic of Confusion in: Hemingway's "A Clean well Lighted Place", believes that "the dominant visual image of the story is the radical contrast between the minute spot of light represented by the café and the infinite surrounding darkness outside."(Joseph Gabriel, The Logic of Confusion in: Hemingway's "A Clean well Lighted Place", Pg, 541) One can't help but compare the story to the image of moths att...
..." (9 Hemingway). Old age because the short story demonstrates that the old man attempt for suicide shows his willingness to escape his loneliness, which comes with age. Hemingway implies that no matter how much money you have you will most likely end up a lonely person. The best solution for this in Hemingway’s short story is that you can either commit suicide, get drunk, or go out to a well-lighted cafe. For example "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing." "Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him" (9 Hemingway). In this example the young waiter finds the old man disgusting and the old waiter appreciates and admires the old man’s cleanliness and dignity. Morality Hemingway wants us to know that no matter how young and confident we are right now we will no matter what grow old and die one day.
To the casual eye, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” does not appear to have much merit. It is a plotless story lacking substance on which to feed the mind, but upon careful peruse, the story’s simplicity is sufficient to breed intense insight into sentimental nullity. The first signs of this emotional oppression by nothingness are found in the opening dialogue between two waiters in a café who discuss an old man’s reason for attempting suicide. They conclude the reason is “Nothing. He has plenty of money” (Hemingway 167). It is evident that the old man is experiencing a despair that he believes cannot be quelled except by death. His plan having failed, sobriety is unbearable, so he “[sits] in the shadow the leaves of the tree [make] against the electric light” of a café every night far beyond the stay of other customers; sometimes he drinks to the point he forgets to pay (Hemingway 167). The literal darkness in which the old man is shrouded is symbolic: black, which is the...