SOURCE: “The Dialogue in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” in College English, Vol. 20, No. 5, February, 1959, pp. 240-41.

In the following essay, Kroeger considers the confusing dialogue in Hemingway's story.

Ever since the first printing of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” in Scribner's Magazine (March, 1933), there has been what appears to be an insoluble problem in the dialogue. Hemingway, or someone, has been careless enough about this story so that at one time one main speaker seems to have information about the old man's suicide attempt which the other one does not have, and at another time the situation is reversed. If the young waiter has the information about the suicide attempt, all the lines which describe details of the attempt should be ascribed to him. Unfortunately, this cannot be done in the second dialogue between the two waiters, which begins right after the young waiter has served the old man...