The appreciation of A Clean, Well-lighted PlaceABSTRACTA Clean, Well-Lighted Place is considered a prime example of Hemingways craftsmanship and insight into the human condition. In this brief story, he evokes an atmosphere of despair and loneliness almost entirely with dialogue and interior monologue. (Net 1) this paper appreciates the story from some aspects, such as the content, the narrative voice, the characters, the style and the theme. Through These Analysis, it shows loneliness and desire in human life and express the authors attention to look for a state of securitya clean, well-lighted place.KEY WORDSan old man, the two waiters, nada, a clean and well-lighted place, lonelinessA Clean and Well-lighted Place tells a story about loneliness and the pursuit of life. The plot is focused on the old man, the young waiter and the middle aged waiter. And the main character in the story is the old man. The old man always stayed at the cafe until in the late night when everybody had left the caf. He drank lonely and quietly. The two waiters were worried that the drunken man was not paid for his wine, keeping watching on him and beginning their conversation about the old man. And the story shows their different views about life.There mainly are dialogue and interior monologue in this story. Though the feature, Hemingway renders a complex series of interactions between an old waiter and the young waiter. Hemingway leaves all of the characters and locations unnamed and those nameless but normal characters are nearly similar to every person in the world and this effect proves his theme more than anything. And the author narrates this story using the third person point of view. He sees all, knows all and presumably tells all. His view is objective. The action is played out before the reader without authorial comment. Such a method makes great demands on the reader, but at the same time promises great rewards, since it offers us a great share in the creative process.（Lin, 2009:67） A Clean, Well-lighted Place reflects the feature.Whats more, this short story is setting on a clean, well-lighted cafe during the late night. This place looks to be a good place, but actually it is a kind of idealized place. This is a place where you can escape the trouble, loneliness, despairs and spiritual emptiness. This description paves the way for the following and states the idea that only light can put out darkness.When we read this story, we can find that facially it is very short and the content is very simple, but the author justly takes this advantage to reflect those characters psychological contradictions. And the young waiter, the old waiter and the old man represent the different stages of life-the youth, the middle age and the old age. Specifically the three typical characters also reflect the peoples spiritual state after the WWI in American society. The old man is a symbol of people in that time that suffered in the war and is the representative of the lost generation. And he is deaf, which shuts him from the rest of the world. This indicates that he can not think much of the young man. The deaf man had gotten drunk and left the cafe, but although he was intoxicated he still walked with dignity. So he, a lonely, numb and despaired man, tried to commit suicide. After he was saved by his niece, he did not want to go home and wanted to stay at the clean, well-lighted caf to desire for the light and peace to fill the spiritual void and loneliness. Here Hemingway shows that even at a persons lowest depths or times of despair, there should always remain a sense of selfrespect. And at this point, the action reflects the themelonely spirit and self-respected life. In this story, there are another two waiters-the young waiter and the old waiter. In this story the young waiter said: “you should have killed yourself last week () Hes lonely. Im not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me () Im confidence. I am all confidence.”(Lin, 2009:70-72) According to his words, we know that the younger waiter has no real conception of the psychological or spiritual dimension of the customers activity; hence, all he does is complaining about not getting to go home on time and ignoring the old man. But the older waiter is different that he can understand the old man. He said: Everything but work () No. I have never had confidence and I am not young (.) I am of those who like to stay late at the caf (.) With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night (.) Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the caf. (Lin,2009:71-72)From those words, we can conclude that he has more patience because he, like the old man, has stared into the great “Nada”-nothing. All in all, the contrast is clear: the young waiter is selfish, indifferent and inpatient, while the old waiter is understanding, sympathetic, lonely and empty.Further