SOURCE: “The Logic of Confusion in Hemingway's ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” in College English, Vol. 22, No. 8, May, 1961, pp. 539-46.

In the following essay, Gabriel revisits the confusion regarding the dialogue in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and contends that “there is no error made in the dialogue … in short, the inconsistency in the dialogue is deliberate, an integral part of the pattern of meaning actualized in the story.”

Recent criticism of Hemingway's much admired and frequently anthologized “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” has attempted to demonstrate that this story contains a damaging flaw. Indeed, two critics, F. P. Kroeger (“The Dialogue in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” College English, Feb. 1959) and William E. Colburn (“Confusion in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” College English, Feb. 1959), working independently of each other, appear to have arrived simultaneously at the same conclusion—that, to quote Professor Colburn, “The dialogue does not fit a logical pattern.” Inasmuch...