As divergent as James Joyce’s “Araby” and Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” are in style, they handle many of the same themes. Both stories explore hope, anguish, faith, and despair. While “Araby” depicts a youth being set up for his first great disappointment, and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” shows two older men who have long ago settled for despair, both stories use a number of analogous symbols, and lap over each other thematically.

At the beginning of “Araby”, the narrator describes the street’s lamps as lifting their “feeble lanterns” towards an “ever-changing violet” sky (227). The colour violet is both dark and rich. The sky, this deep, mysterious colour, and always mutating, suggests the expanse of unknown beyond mortal experience. The feeble lights which fail to lick the lowest tufts of cloud resemble the people who look out into the fog of unanswerable questions; who can never hope to find anything but the shapes one reads in, like hillside skywatchers.

The narrator’s character goes around looking up. First at Mangan’s sister: from the shadow, from the floor, and from the subordinate position of an admirer. Then, more metaphorically, he looks up to an image he’s built for himself; an expectation of beauty and treasures; an enthusiastic hope or hopeful enthusiasm that his pilgrimage to Araby will yield him if not the answer (to the question which manifests as a nameless longing), then the key to the answer. This answer is represented by Mangan’s sister (whose name is not mentioned, as with the Hebrew G-d), whom the boy hopes to access through the gesture of his quest.[1]  At the end, the boy looks up again, like the lights at the beginning, into the darkness above.

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, the light shines down (233). It shows what there is. It does not search for what there might be. The old man sits in the shadow and looks down. Joyce’s character carries a chalice of faith through a maelstrom of mundane chatter (228). Hemingway’s sips a glass of brandy. To him, the mundane is not a distraction on the way to higher awareness, it is all there is. If one does not like it, one may numb themselves to it, or one may quit it. This old man will not listen to myths of meaning and comfort. He has gone deaf, perhaps out of not wanting to hear any more empty promises or stories that fail to hold up. Joyce’s boy has had his first crushing disappointment. Hemingway’s old man has had his last. There is no more looking up for him. His drink, his regular café, these are his comfort and his refuge.

Both these male authors constitute woman as “the Other”, a counterpart and compliment to some man, metaphysically or physically. In Joyce’s story, Mangan’s sister is the goddess in service of whom our junior Hero goes on his quest to the bazaar. Once arrived, the young lady who flirts with the English boys comes to embody his sense of betrayal. He has come all this way, and no one has time for him. That he came all this way for a girl makes it ironic that it is a girl he first speaks to and she gives him a cold welcome. It may imply that the comfort one seeks in the Church is not always there when you need it, or even that it is never really there: that it is a sham and a front.

The women mentioned in Hemingway’s story play fairly standard roles. The first to appear is the one with the soldier. The two cut a typical figure of protector and protected. The light shining on the solider’s brass (233) suggests pride. The soldier has his protected compliment. He can be proud and walk straight, as soldiers do. Next mentioned is the niece of the old man. It is her that cut him down when he tried to hang himself. She is the nurturing other. That she cut him down out of fear for his soul expresses the stereotype that women are more religious than men, and are often the voice of religion in their lives. Next it is mentioned that the younger waiter has a wife, and that the old man used to. This waiter does not understand despair because he has somewhere to go; he has someone to go home to. His wife in this case is woman as the stabilising force in a man’s life: the symbol of family and regularity. She is also the physical and emotional compliment that the old man and the older waiter lack.

Sympathy is a theme, not central to either story, but certainly highlighted by each. In “Araby” there is all around a lack of sympathy for the boy’s desires. The uncle considers frivolous what to the boy is monumental. The aunt barely understands. The man at the turnstile was tired and wanted to leave. The young lady in the stall found the boy an unpleasant distraction.

In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, there is sympathy. The older waiter knows despair and understands the old man. The younger waiter, with his confidence and his family, is impatient and annoyed with the old man, perhaps because he is afraid of having his own peace disturbed. He also fails to comprehend what loneliness must feel like. If he is a theist, he may also fail to feel lonely even when he is alone. Thus, he cannot understand the old man, or the older waiter, for they lack both loves and gods.

Money is used symbolically in both stories. In “Araby”, with all its levels, the money which passes from the hand of the uncle to the boy to the entrance-keeper; the money seen on the salver; could all be read as indicative of the way one rises in a parish community. Short of such an intensive analysis, one could stick to two more blunt, and vital moments where money is referred to. One moment is in front of the Café Chantant, where the money being counted, and the boy’s bitter observation of this, give an air of betrayal. The other moment is where the boy leaves and lets jangle the coins remaining in his pocket. From these few incidents, it could be claimed that money in this story tends to represent hope or faith. The uncle gives the boy a start, a chance to pursue the x (enlightenment?)  which he seeks; the bazaar (church?) gouges him (tries his fidelity?); the merchants (hierarchy?) use his dreams to build their own power. At the end he takes what little hope he has left and leaves, disgusted, to go invest somewhere else.

At the end of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, the old man remembers to pay for his drink. That is, he gives his fellows what they’re due. He even leaves a tip. The simple act of being there has made the waiters worthy of thanks.

Joyce’s boy walks away from the bazaar in anguish, but with a small bit of hope. This is his first great disappointment. He looks up into the sky and knows that there is nothing. The post-liturgical silence (230) that hangs in the darkened cathedralesque hall is like the emptiness behind all the glitz and ceremony of Catholicism. He is having his first realisation that the sky might be dark just because there is nothing in it.

Hemingway’s old man walks away from the bar with dignity, but with hope long vanished. The older waiter, another faithless man, is resigned to nothingness. His mockery of Christian prayer is not angry, but spoken with a smile and a sigh. However, as indicated by his insomnia, Nada is a cold bedfellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”. Kirszner and Mandell 233.           

 

Joyce, James. “Araby”. Kirszner and Mandell 226.

 

Kirszner, Laurie, and Stephen Mandell, eds. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact Fourth Edition. New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000.

 

 


[1]This character may also stand as a sexual symbol. The bracelet she handles when she speaks of the convent may suggest that she is shackled to Catholic prudery. In any case, she still stands as “the desired”, physically or metaphysically.