15. The literature between the wars

The older waiter jokingly asks if the younger waiter is afraid to go home early. The younger waiter says he has confidence. The older waiter points out that he also has youth and a job, whereas the older waiter has only a job. The older waiter says that he likes to stay at cafés very late with the others who are reluctant to go home and who need light during the nighttime. The younger waiter says he wants to go home, and the older waiter remarks that they are very different. The older waiter says he doesn’t like to close the café in case someone needs it. The younger waiter says there are bars to go to, but the older waiter says that the café is clean and well lit. They wish each other good night.

The older waiter continues thinking to himself about how important it is for a café to be clean and well lit. He thinks that music is never good to have at a café and that standing at a bar isn’t good either. He wonders what he’s afraid of, deciding it’s not fear but just a familiar nothing. He says two prayers but substitutes “nada” (Spanish for “nothing”) for most of the words. When he arrives at a bar, he orders a drink and tells the bartender that the bar isn’t clean. The bartender offers another drink, but the waiter leaves. He doesn’t like bars, preferring cafés. He knows that he will now go home and fall asleep when the sun comes up. He thinks he just has insomnia, a common problem.

Themes

Life is Nothingness

• Hemingway suggests that life has no meaning

• the older waiter makes this idea as clear as he can when he says, “It was all a nothing and man was a nothing too.”

• when he substitutes the Spanish word nada (nothing) into the prayers he recites, he indicates that religion, to which many people turn to find meaning and purpose, is also just nothingness (rather than pray with the actual words, “Our Father who art in heaven,” the older waiter says, “Our nada who art in nada”)

The Struggle to Deal with Despire

• they struggle to find a way to deal with their despair, but even their best method simply subdues (zdolají) the despair rather than cures it

• The old man has tried to stave off despair in several unsuccessful ways. We learn that he has money, but money has not helped. We learn that he was once married, but he no longer has a wife. We also learn that he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide in a desperate attempt to quell the despair for good. The only way the old man can deal with his despair now is to sit for hours in a clean, well-lit café. Deaf, he can feel the quietness of the nighttime and the café, and although he is essentially in his own private world, sitting by himself in the café is not the same as being alone.

• the older waiter, in his mocking prayers filled with the word nada, shows that religion is not a viable method of dealing with despair, and his solution is the same as the old man’s: he waits out the nighttime in cafés

Motifs

Loneliness

• everyone must struggle alone

• old man is alone because has no wife and only nice (he is lonely)

• young waiter (doesn’t consider that he will be one day alone to, unwise understanding of situation of old man)

• the older waiter is similar to old man by habits (sitting in café late at night – loneliness)