Teaching A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Instructions for You

Objective: A story's setting is a Big Deal. Yeah, a capital letter-worthy Big Deal. Would Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" have the same effect if it took place in a little beach house on a sunny, tropical island? No way. Does Poe use the spooky mansion setting to heighten the suspense of the story? Absolutely.

In this activity, students will check out how Ernest Hemingway develops the setting in his story. Looking for a hint that the setting might be important? Look no further than the title, which describes the café in question. (Just kidding. Your students will have to look a little deeper than that.)

This assignment should take about 60 to 90 minutes to complete, or about one to one and a half class periods.

Materials Needed: A copy of the text, and/or our summary page

Step 1: As a class, define some important terms. These are going to be helpful when your students start discussing things in more detail. We've got you covered:

• Setting: When and where a story takes place
• Tone: The writer's attitude
• Mood: The feelings readers experience when reading
• Theme: Usually defined as the central idea of a story, we like to think of theme as what the readers take away from a story.

Step 2: Ask your class to define the setting in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." How would they describe the tone? The mood? Here are a couple of main points you'll want to make sure to cover during your discussion:

• While the setting of a Spanish café in post-World War I Spain might seem a bit self-explanatory, there's so much more to it than that. Understanding the feeling of hopelessness that came from this war is absolutely necessary to seeing Hemingway's deeper meaning. (Activity #1 should have covered this nicely.)
• In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," the atmosphere of the café is so important that it's almost like another character. It provides hope to the hopeless. To fully understand the story, students need to be able to identify how Hemingway develops this atmosphere by finding word choices (diction) and dialogue that contribute to his tone.

Step 3: If it didn't come up in your previous discussion, review the difference between a café and a Spanish bodega. (Bonus points if any students already know.) You might explain it like this:

• A café is a restaurant that can be indoors or outdoors. Cafés serve everything—food, coffee, and alcohol.
• A bodega is traditionally defined as a wine cellar. So think of this place as a bar underground. Not much light gets in.

Speaking of, light and darkness are big in this story. Ask the students how they would feel hanging out in each of these places, and how those feelings are different. Does the light (or lack of light) have anything to do with it?

Step 4: Time to dig into the text. The goal here is to get students to examine Hemingway's description of the café and figure out how this contributes to the story's mood and themes, and you can do this by creating a T-chart with two columns:

• Café details: quote from text
• How does the quote affect the mood or develop a theme?

For example, in the first column, we might write:

• "It was late and every one had left the café except the old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light" (288).

And in the second column of the T-chart, we might write:

• Hemingway makes several interesting word choices create an idea of loneliness and isolation. He writes, "It was late and everyone had left" and then he writes that the "old" drunk "sat in the shadow" of the leaves.

You can have students work on this independently, in partners or groups, or even for homework. Whatever you prefer.

Step 5: After the charts are filled out, have students write an analytical paragraph based on their answer to the question "Why does Hemingway use the café as the story's primary setting?" We're thinking about 150 words here.

• Students should use a revised version of the sentence they wrote at the bottom of their T-charts as a topic sentence.
• Students should then use the analysis completed within the T-chart to support the argument they make in the topic sentence. Look for those text citations.
• Students should also make sure they use several transition words that help the reader understand the development of the argument.

Step 6: If you'd like, have students share their paragraphs with the class or in groups. Then collect their work, and that's all, folks.

Instructions for Your Students

A story's setting is a Big Deal. Yeah, a capital letter-worthy Big Deal. Would Harry Potter be the same if it took place in the middle of Los Angeles? What if Luke Skywalker came from a city planet where he had all the benefits of the Empire, not a desert under control of a gangster? You get the point.

In this activity, you'll think about how Hemingway develops the setting in his story. Looking for a hint that this setting might be important? Look no further than the title, which describes the café in the story. But let's dig deeper, shall we?

Step 1: Your teacher will teach you four literary terms and explain them and how they're used.

• Setting: When and where a story takes place
• Tone: The writer's attitude
• Mood: The feelings readers experience when reading
• Theme: Usually defined as the central idea of a story. We like to think of theme as what the readers take away from a story.

Step 2: Hop on Google to do a search of "Spanish café" and "Spanish bodega" and see what images come up.

These images are probably not exactly what Hemingway is describing, but they'll help you get the picture. Cafés are generally above-ground, well-lit (yes, that's the title of the story) places that serve alcohol, coffee, and food. Bodegas, generally speaking, are enclosed and oftentimes underground places where wine is served. Discuss what you think the atmosphere in these places would be.

Step 3: One thing to know about Papa (Hemingway) is that he rarely includes any unnecessary words. You can safely assume that Hemingway considered every detail about the café absolutely essential to the story. We need to figure out why, so you're going to complete a T-chart that requires you to look at descriptions of the café from the text itself and then analyze the descriptions asking these questions:

• How's Hemingway describing the café? Discuss diction, repetition, and figurative language here.
• How's this description of the café making me feel (mood)?
• How's this description of the café contributing to my overall understanding of the story's central idea (theme)?

The goal here is to get students to examine Hemingway's description of the café and figure out how this contributes to the story's mood and themes, and you can do this by creating a T-chart with two columns:

• Café details: quote from text
• How does the quote affect the mood or develop a theme?

For example, in the first column, we might write:

• "It was late and every one had left the café except the old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light" (288).

And in the second column of the T-chart, we might write:

• Hemingway makes several interesting word choices create an idea of loneliness and isolation. He writes, "It was late and everyone had left" and then he writes that the "old" drunk "sat in the shadow" of the leaves.

After completing the T-chart, answer this question: Why does Hemingway use the café as the story's primary setting? Be as specific as possible. If you do this right, you'll have an argument, which is the goal whenever writing about literature.

Step 4: For your last trick, you'll write an analytical paragraph based on your answer to the question "Why does Hemingway use the café as the story's primary setting?" We're thinking about 150 words here.

• You should use a revised version of the sentence you wrote at the bottom of your T-charts as a topic sentence.
• You should then use the analysis completed within the T-chart to support the argument you make in the topic sentence. We want text citations too.
• You should also make sure to use several transition words that help the reader understand the development of the argument.

Nice one.