Compare And Contrast A Clean Well-Lighted Place And The Cask Of Amontillado

A critical element in any work of fiction is the narrator, the person who is telling the story. Associated with the narrator is the narratee, the person who is getting the story told too. It is harder to pin down the narratee than the narrator because, in some texts, they tend not to be fully realized characters while in others they are fully described. The relationship between the narrator and narratee is an important aspect of a story and identifying this connection allows for a deeper comprehension of the narration. Although Hemingway’s, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” and Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” use different modes of “person” and points of view in their stories to distinguish the presence of a narrator and narratee, they both rely

This is opposite to a first-person narrator because in this case, the narrator is outside of the story world rather than within. A third-person narrator also provides a broader perspective of the story and is more objective. A large part of the story is the dialogue between the two main characters: a young and old waiter who are waiting to close their café for the night. The subject of their dialogue is their last customer, a deaf, drunk, old man who tried to commit suicide a week before. The younger waiter is insensitive and unsympathetic toward the old man’s feelings of loneliness and despair. He would rather be at home with his wife then waste his time with issues that do not concern him. On the other hand, the older waiter is the exact opposite, he is lonely and is gripped by a feeling of “nothingness”, so he understands and relates to the old man’s inner conflicts. In third-person narratives, the narratee’s tend not to be another imaginary individual but they can still be inferred even if the narrator never directly addresses one. For example, the story states that “It was late and everyone had left the café…” (Hemingway 1339), by just introducing aspects of setting and time it is inferred that these details help the narratee understand the narrative which ultimately recognizes the presence of the narratee. In both stories, there is a clear distinction between the types of “persons” in

For instance, the fact that the characters remain unnamed and mysterious give a sense of commonality. This complicates the relationship by making the reader feel distant and detached from the narrative. This story is an example of a second-hand account which ultimately creates a barrier between the narrator and narratee and the reader. Unlike, “The Cask of Amontillado”, the reader’s emotions are affected as they do not feel or see themselves as part of the story – weather is it as the narratee or any