Lose Heart

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Winter Evening Settles Down” and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” both share the same theme of the alienation of the individual from society. It is the moods of desolation and despair, loneliness and struggle that reflect both authors’ observations of the individual alienated from society.

In his poem, Eliot reveals the first clue to the mood of the poem in his first line.

The winter evening settles down

The word winter might symbolize roughness, coldness and lifelessness. Here, Eliot is not in one of his happy moods, having referred to winter in the very first line. The word following winter is the image of evening, which symbolizes night, the approach of darkness. In the first line, Eliot establishes some type of dreary tone, as if suggesting that this “winter evening” is here to stay from now on. The poet writes other symbols that give a meaning of the boredom and dreariness of life. For instance:

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

The image of burnt-out days might suggest that people are “burnt” out from all their strength just like a cigarette butt. The other image, smoky days, suggests difficult times or poor living conditions.

The grimy scraps

This image suggests waste, and therefore wasted lives.

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The image vacant says it al; the emptiness in the lives of people, the emptiness of meaning, and the emptiness of purpose.

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

The broken blinds suggest people that are unable to pull themselves together and therefore they have broken lives.

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

This image symbolizes the loneliness of man.

As seen above, Eliot creates a mood of desolation and loneliness through diction and imagery. He uses words such as, “burnt out,” “gusty,” “grimy,” “vacant,” “broken,” and “lonely,” to help set the central theme.

Now, Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” shares the same theme as the poem above. The theme of the story is man’s search for light and refuge when life begins to lose meaning and purpose. The essential image used by Hemingway is that of the contrast between light and dark. The cafй is a “Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” which serves the old man and waiter as a refuge from the darkness of the night.

Another vital image in the story is the old man’s deafness. “…the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he could feel the difference.” This quote reveals that the old man’s deafness serves as a