Reader Response to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, By Hemingway :: A Clean Well-Lighted Place Essays

Reader Response to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place In 1933, Ernest Hemmingway wrote A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. It's a story of two waiters working late one night in a cafe. Their last customer, a lonely old man getting drunk, is their last customer. The younger waiter wishes the customer would leave while the other waiter is indifferent because he isn't in so much of a hurry. I had a definite, differentiated response to this piece of literature because in my occupation I can relate to both cafe workers. Hemmingway's somber tale is about conquering late night loneliness in a bright cafe. The customer drinking brandy suffers from it and so does the older waiter. However, the younger waiter cannot understand loneliness because he probably hasn't been very lonely in his life. He mentions a couple times throughout the story that he wished to be able to go home to his wife, yet the old man and old waiter have no wives to go home to like he does. This story have a deeper meaning to me because I often am in a similar situation at work. For a little over three years, I've been a weekend bartender at an American Legion Club. I almost always work the entire weekends, open to close, which proves to be a tortorous schedule at times. Like the cafe in Hemmingway's tale, the Legion is a civilized place, often well lit, and quieter than most clubs. Because members have to either have served in the military during wartime or have a relative that did, the patronage is often older and more respectful than an average barroom. And because most members are older, they may not have a family to go home to, or they may be just a little more dismal because their lives have been longer and harder than most. In many ways, they are very much like the old man sipping brandy while hiding in the shadows of the leaves in Hemmingway's cafe. And in many ways, I am like the young waiter, anxious to leave. The young waiter seems selfish and inconsiderate of anyone else. In the beginning of the story, he's confused why the old man tried to kill himself. "He has plenty of money," he says, as if that's the only thing anyone needs for happiness. When the old man orders another drink, the younger waiter warns him that he'll get drunk, as if to waver his own responsibility rather than to warn the old man for his sake.

Death Camp

It all began when a group of old friends decided they wanted to go camping for the weekend. All they wanted was to have a laugh, get drunk and have good last memories of their time together before they went to university in different parts of the country. Camping seemed like a perfect way to say goodbye, or so they thought. Sitting around a warm campfire, toasting marshmellows and sharing memories, they would remember the good times and leave on a good note, the troubles of the past forgotten. Jack and Mike decided to organise a weekend in the New Forest and collected a i30 contribution from their friends to pay for food, drink, fuel and the hire of a minibus. So it was that, one crisp morning in late August, the group of friends met at The Three Compasses in Luton and set off, talking and laughing, for their perfect weekend away. The journey took a few hours due to the volume of traffic on the roads and by the time they reached base camp they were hot, tired and irritable. Determined not to let the weekend get off to a bad start, Jack suggested that they set up camp in the woods then go their separate ways before the barbeque later in the evening. Jack led the group from the carpark to a clearing about half a mile into the dense trees and they began to set up the large ten-man tents. After agreeing to meet back at seven, they split into twos and threes and went off to explore the forest. Everyone was back by half past and got a fire going, crackling merrily as they toasted marshmellows. As the drink was brought out the talking and laughing grew louder and more raucous until most were either asleep or dancing outrageously to Mike's CD collection. The fire flickered, its embers glowing and cinders scattering about the clearing. The deep shadows between the trees were broken by its golden light and different hues of yellow danced across the canvas tents. A wonderful aroma of sweet pinewood burning filled the clearing, mingling with the pungent perfume of wild grasses and flowers. The stars overhead were glittering like diamonds in the velvety night sky. Jack was dancing near to the fire but he was one of the last ones, everyone else had gone into the tents to sleep off the vodka and beer. As his friends decided that they too were ready for bed, Jack went to put out the fire with a bottle of water. In his disorientated state he accidentally picked up a half-drunk bottle of vodka and threw its contents onto the fire. There was a roar and the flames sprang up, licking the night air like a predator hungry for prey. Tongues of flame caught low-hanging branches and they were swallowed up, the pine resin spitting and jumping. Jerked out of his drunkeness, Jack ran to the tents and shouted for everyone to get out and follow him. The ones who listened ran outside, dragging their semi-conscious friends with them. Crashing through the dense undergrowth they headed in the direction of the minibus and clambered aboard. Mike, who had stayed sober enough to drive, sprang into the drivers seat and they sped off down the road. At a nearby laybay they stopped and called the fire brigade from a phonebox. It was only then that they realised several of their friends behind at the mercy of the raging flames. The forest was alight, the trees catching like dry tinder and pillars of orange flame rocketing into the night sky, the pines burning like torches. The people left behind ran drunkenly away from the flames but the fire was spreading at an incredible rate, springing from tree to tree like rampaging tigers. Smoke filled the forest and they choked as they ran, stumbling and falling. Overcome by tiredness and lack of oxygen, they sank down in a clearing by a road, hoping the fire could be stopped before it was too late†¦

Hinglish - Definition, Etymology and Examples

Hinglish is a mix of Hindi (the official language of India) and English (an associate official language of India) that is spoken by upwards of 350 million people in urban areas of India. (India contains, by some accounts, the largest English-speaking population in the world.) Hinglish (the term is a blend of the words Hindi and English) includes English-sounding phrases that have only Hinglish meanings, such as badmash (which means naughty) and glassy (in need of a drink). Examples and Observations In a shampoo advertisement currently playing on Indian television, Priyanka Chopra, the Bollywood actress, sashays past a line of open-top sports cars, flicking her glossy mane, before looking into the camera and saying: Come on girls, waqt hai shine karne ka!Part English, part Hindi, the line--which means It’s time to shine!--is a perfect example of Hinglish, the fastest growing language in India.While it used to be seen as the patois of the street and the uneducated, Hinglish has now become the lingua franca of India’s young urban middle class . . ..One high-profile example is Pepsi’s slogan Yeh Dil Maange More! (The heart wants more!), a Hinglish version of its international â€Å"Ask for more!† campaign.(Hannah Gardner, Hinglish--A Pukka Way to Speak. The National [Abu Dhabi], Jan. 22, 2009)Prepaid mobile phones have become so ubiquitous in India that English words to do with their use--recharge, top-up and missed call--have become common, too. Now, it seems, those words are transforming to take on broader meanings in Indian languages as well as in Hinglish.(Tripti Lahiri, How Tech, Individuality Shape Hinglish. The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21, 2012) The Rise of Hinglish The language Hinglish involves a hybrid mixing of Hindi and English within conversations, individual sentences and even words. An example: She was  bhunno-ing the  masala-s  jub  phone  ki ghuntee bugee. Translation: She was frying the spices when the phone rang. It is gaining  popularity  as a way of speaking that demonstrates you are modern, yet locally grounded.New research  by my colleagues . . . has found that while the hybrid language is not likely to replace English or Hindi in India, more people are fluent in Hinglish than they are in English. . . .Our data revealed two important patterns. First, Hinglish speakers cannot speak monolingual Hindi in settings which require only Hindi (like our interview scenario)--this confirms reports from some speakers that their only fluency is in this hybrid Hinglish. What this means is that, for some speakers, using Hinglish is not a choice--they cannot speak monolingual Hindi, nor monolingual English. Because these Hinglish speakers are not fluent in Hindi, they are not likely to undergo language shift to monolingual Hindi.Second, bilinguals adjust their speech towards Hinglish when they talk to Hinglish speakers. Over time, the number of Hinglish speakers is growing by adopting speakers from the bilingual community who lose the need to use either language monolingually.(Vineeta Chand, The Rise and Rise of Hinglish in India.  The Wire  [India], February 12, 2016) The Queens Hinglish A testimony is the average north Indians response to the language of the conquering British. They transformed it into Hinglish, a pervasive mishmash beyond state control that has spread from below so that even ministers no longer aspire to imitating the Queen. Hinglish boasts of airdashing to a crisis (famine or fire) lest newspapers accuse them of being on the backfoot. A vivacious mixture of English and native tongues, Hinglish is a dialect pulsating with energy and invention that captures the essential fluidity of Indian society.(Deep K Datta-Ray, Tryst With Modernity. The Times of India, Aug. 18, 2010)[Hinglish has] been called the Queens Hinglish, and for good reason: its probably been around since the first trader stepped off the ships of the British East India Company in the early 1600s. . . .You can hear this phenomenon for yourself by dialing the customer service number for any of the worlds largest corporations. . . . India has literally turned its English-speaking ability, a once embarrassing legacy of its colonial past, into a multi-billion-dollar competitive advantage.(Paul J. J. Payack, A Million Words and Counting: How Global English Is Rewriting the World. Citadel, 2008) The Hippest Language in India This mix of Hindi and English is now the hippest slang on the streets and college campuses of India. While once considered the resort of the uneducated or the expatriated--the so-called ABCDs or the American-Born Confused Desi (desi denoting a countryman), Hinglish is now the fastest-growing language in the country. So much so, in fact, that multinational corporations have increasingly in this century chosen to use Hinglish in their ads. A McDonalds campaign in 2004 had as its slogan What your bahana is? (Whats your excuse?), while Coke also had its own Hinglish strapline Life ho to aisi (Life should be like this). . . . In Bombay, men who have a bald spot fringed by hair are known as stadiums, while in Bangalore nepotism or favouritism benefiting ones (male) child is known as son stroke.(Susie Dent, The Language Report: English on the Move, 2000-2007. Oxford University Press, 2007)