A Clean Well Lighted Place
By Joe E

Imagine that you are an old man with no friends, life, or companionship every night you have to sleep alone. Wouldn’t you want to be somewhere besides at home all by yourself? In the short story “A Clean Well Lighted Place” there are three different characters that have different personalities.
Within this story there is an old man who lives all by himself. Since the man is alone he likes to stay at the café really late at night sometimes past midnight. On multiple pages of the story he calls “another brandy”. The reason why the old man doesn’t want to go home ever is obviously because he doesn’t want to be alone. A wife was what the old man once had, but now she is gone maybe the old man is just depressed. Inside of the story the old man attempted to kill himself by trying to hang himself but his niece saved him. This is definitely a sign of depression and loneliness .
Besides the old man there are the other two waiters; the older waiter seems to understand the old mans loneliness. Another thing that the older waiter does is not get mad the old man likes to be there. On the third page in the story the younger waiter say “ why doesn’t he just buy a bottle and drink it at home” after hearing this the older waiter said “it’s not the same”. This shows that the older waiter probably knows what it is like. Maybe the older waiter has no companionship as well. Overall the older waiter is much more polite than the younger one.
While the older waiter is so kind and polite to the old man, the younger waiter is being terrible and nasty to the old man. The cruelest thing that he did to the old man was on the second page of the story. All the old man wanted was another brandy and the younger waiter said “you should have killed yourself last week” . Another thing that the younger waiter does is always complains that he wants to go home and says he’s tired. It is kind of weird; why does he have this job if he always complains about it?
As you can see the three characters, the old man and the two waiters are all very different and all have unique personalities. It is hard to live by yourself when your old even in time today. There is nobody to take care of you when you are sick, or if you fall down and are unable to get up. You need family and friends around you no matter what your age.