Throughout life we all go through experiences that teach us many things. Sometimes these lessons stick with us sometimes they do not, but we all remember the first time we feel hope, anguish, faith and despair. In Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, and James Joyce’s “Araby”, we learn that no matter if it is your first time feeling these emotions or that thousandth time our response remains the same. Between the two short stories we also find a few differences on how the themes are portrayed. Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, is based upon two old men who have long accepted their despair in life, yet in Joyce’s “Araby”, a young innocent boy shows us how even at such a young age we blindly accept hope and faith only to end in anguish and disparity. In Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, Hemingway uses the themes of hope,…show more content… Overall the points that both Joyce and Hemingway are trying to make are very similar, yet they do not follow the same path. In Joyce’s “Araby”, a young boy is still learning in life, he is filled with innocence and is naïve to the affects love can have on your emotional state. The inability to focus, “I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play (Joyce 58).” Here this young child goes through a life changing coming of the age experience where as in Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the two men are going through the opposite. These two men have lived their long life and have accepted the defeat that they see coming in their near future. This old man that stays in this café into the wee hours has lived a full life, he had a wife, he had a job and now all that remains is time and money for him. A concept the younger waiter cannot seem to still
