A Clean, Well Lighted Place

Author's Note: I wrote this two paragraph response on the difference between the film and the story of "A Clean, Well Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway

The obvious dislike that the director of "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" stumbled upon was the misconception of the setting. In the story, it was described like this: “[A] terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind." This is saying that the old man was sitting outside on the terrace by a tree. In the film version, the old man was sitting at a booth with a lot of light inside. If you were to put him in an exact opposite setting, that’s what it would be. I don’t think the director interpreted that very well.

Now, although this mistake was very different from the original piece, maybe the director put it in there for a reason. The old man was sitting in a spot with a ton of light, which describes life and happiness. The older waiter made a comment stating: "He stays up because he likes it." This is showing that he was in his “happy place”. Then at the end as he was walking into the darkness, he was walking back into the shadows, back to his normal life, back to depression and loneliness.