【文章內(nèi)容簡(jiǎn)介】 ed with hardships and despair in life.Key Words: Hemingway, A Clean, Welllighted Place, NihilismiiTable of ContentsIntroduction......................................................................................................1Chapter I Analysis of The Younger Waiter’s Nihilism..................................................6 A The Background of The Younger Waiter’s Growing........................................6 B The Younger Waiter’s Attitude Towards Nada..........................................8 Chapter II Analysis of Nihilism of the Old Man….................................................11 A The Eventful Life of the Old Man ....................................................................11B The Old Man’s Attitude towards Nada ............................................................14Chapter III Analysis of the Older Waiter’s Nihilism ...................................................18 A The Older Waiter’s Understandings of Nada ...................................................18 B The Active Attitude of the Older Waiter towards Nada ...................................20Conclusion...........................................................................................................23Notes.............................................................................................................25Bibliography ................................................................................................................27iiiIntroductionEarnest Hemingway has been regarded as one of the most famous modern American writers for a long time. Most of his works concern on themes of love, war, wilderness and loss and reflect the social conditions of the early decades of the 20th century on both physical and spiritual level. He wrote many works that reveal the spiritual conditions of that generation who lost their faith and belief. Therefore, people regard him as the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”. A Clean, Welllighted Place is one of his best short stories, which tells about a world full of nada and people’s searching for the meaning of living. A Clean, Welllighted Place is a short story written by the modern American author Earnest Hemingway and has long been regarded as his prime novel. It is first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1933 and collected in Hemingway’s 1933 collection Winner Take Nothing. A Clean, Welllighted Place is one of the most extraordinary short stories which were written in Hemingway’s early times. The story takes place in a Spanish cafe. It is very late in the night. There is nobody left in the cafe except two waiters and an old deaf man, who is a regular customer that likes to stay late. From the two waiters’ conversation, we know that the old man is lonely and desperate, and he mitted suicide last week but was rescued by his niece. Then he kills time by getting drunk every night in this clean, welllighted cafe. The younger waiter, who is eager to get home to his wife, plains over the old man’s overstay and impatiently kicks the old man out by cheating him that the cafe is closing. The older waiter understands the old man’s feelings and relates himself to the old man as his future. He is sympathetic and friendly to the old man, wanting to offer the old man a place to escape from the chaotic world. He penetrates the upsetting nothingness in life and chooses to face it bravely and actively. His “toughness” is sort of “grace under pressure”, thus he is one of the Hemingway code heroes.This story is short, simple but it vividly shows the great influence that wars have on people. What’s more, the economic crisis started in 1929 disillusioned the blindly optimistic Americans and shattered the American Dream. People in the 1930s are kind of mentally waste. T. S. Elliot wrote a novel called Waste Land that reveals the spiritual crisis of the postwar decades. Through the story, Hemingway evokes an atmosphere of despair and loneliness almost wholly by dialogue and interior monologue. A Clean, Welllighted Place is a typical Hemingway story written by his famous “Iceberg Technique”. Hemingway wrote this story not to teach people a lesson, but to show his attitude towards loneliness and hardship, towards frustration and desperation in life.Earnest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21, 1889. He was the second of the six children in the family. His father was a physician, who often took Hemingway on his trips of fishing and hunting. As a boy, Hemingway loved football, boxing and reading. After he graduated from high school, he worked as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. In 1917, he volunteered and was recruited as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross and went to Europe. In 1918 he was severely wounded in Italy. This wound had a lifelong influence on him. Then, he participated in the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War. During the WWII, he was acpanied with heavy alcohol, diseases and depression. His father’s suicide also has a lifelong influence on him. All his childhood and war experiences provide sufficient materials for his later writing and the wars bee the theme of his writing. As a great novelist, short story writer, an essayist and a journalist, he wrote many a novel which creates lots of Hemingway Heroes with “grace under pressure” and “despairing courage”. His works described the image of a whole generation, generally known as the Lost Generation. He was the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”. He was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 for “his powerful styleforming mastery of the art” in the creation of modern fiction. In his later years, he behaved oddly and looked older than his age. He ended his life with a gunshot in 1961, which symbolized that an era had e to an end.Most of Hemingway’s books are based on his life experiences or people that he knows. Sometimes, even Hemingway himself can’t tell what he i