"A Clean Well-Lighted Place" shows use the contrast between young and old. The difference between a nice, bright café and the not so clean bar for a man to spend his long nights. In the short story by Ernest Hemingway, an old man is trying to have a drink at a café. One of the waiters is young and it anchus to go home to his wife, while the other waiter, an older man, understands the gentleman who is drinking. The old man in the café comes in often for drink. He tries to pass the night in the clean well-lighted place, where he "liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference" (Hemingway 173). The young waiter does not realize the importance of the café to the old man.

The young waiter states that the old man...