stylistic analysis of a short story "a clean - well lighted place"

      “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

Ernest Hemingway

    The analysis method is adopted from Winfried Crombie’s analysis of Milton’s “Areopagitica”. My analysis will be based on discoursal relationships in which logico-deductive semantic relations (eg. cause-effect relationships) and associative semantic relations (eg. compare-contrast relationships) interact and reinforce one another. For my analysis I will use a short story from Ernest Hemingway, the name of the short story is “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.

      Semantic relationships between discourse segments underlie all coherent stretches of language (Crombie,1989) Accordingly, for my analysis, I will try to exemplify this notion. For this I will use the framawork below:

1) Associative Relations:

simple contrast,

A1) "He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me." (making contrast between the old man and himself, the waiter)

B1) "The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,"the waiter said.” (stressing the contrast between the light and the bar)

comparative similarity,

A1) "You have everything I have." (comparing himself to the other waiter)

B1) “It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too.” (comparing human beings to all other things)

statement affirmation,

A1) "He must be eighty years old."

B1) "Anyway I should say he was eighty." (confirmation about the age of the old man)A2) "I have confidence. I am all confidence."
B2) "You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said."You have everything." (the older waiter agrees about younger waiter’s having everything)

statement denial,

A1) "I know." "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing."     

B1) "Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him." (older waiter desagrees about the old man’s being nasty)

 concession – contraexpectation.

B1) "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe." (the older waiter doen’t want to close, this is unexpected from a waiter at that time of the night)

2) Logico-Deductive Relations:

reason – result,

B1) “The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.” (sometimes the old man doesn’t pay for his drinks so the waiters are careful)

grounds – conclusion,

A1) "Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him." (the older waiter concludes that the old man is clean from the way he drinks)

condition – consequence.

A1) "What does it matter if he gets what he's after?" (if the walks on the streets with a moman, the consequences would be bad for him, he could be picked up)

            This way of analyzing a literary text could be very helpful in enhancing a better understanding of language use and the semantic relationships in a language. For foreign language learners it is essential to be aware of this kind of semantic relations within the target language. Discourse awareness could be implemented into the curriculum so as to bring variety into the activites and the comprehension of linguistic input.