Good Country People

Ernest Hemingway's story, "A Clean Well Lighted Place," is primarily set in a cafe late in the evening as two waiters wait for their last customer to leave so they can close shop for the evening. The younger of the two waiters is impatient to get home to his wife and warm bed, the older waiter has more patience because, in part, he has no one and nothing to go home to. He will leave …

…by late evening cause a rueful feeling in the older waiter. He tries to pray, but his prayers dissolve into a dark joke in which the word nada or its English translation, nothing, comes into prominent use. Clearly the older waiter has lost faith in God's ability to positively impact his life. His fear of darkness is based on his fear of what awaits him after life. He concludes that what awaits is nada also.