what in your view is the theme of <A clean,well-lighted place>?

"It [life] was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too." Man must consequently find something to distract himself from his horrible truth. For the old man and the older waiter, "a clean and well-lighted" cafe is such an escape. The pervading metaphor in this story is predictably, the "clean well-lighted place."

This paper aims to study the theme of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway considers loneliness the principle tragedy of modern human life. Faced with “nothing" in the modern society now and then, man should seek light and order to establish dignity in life. This kind of courage needed by man to fight against intolerable loneliness is exactly what Hemingway wanted to display in the story.