A Clean, Well Lit Place

In Earnest Hemingway's short story the older waiter struggles with the idea that there is nothing in the world and that man is also a nothing. There is no God and nothing awaits us outside of life, if life is even anything. The cafe he works at provides a sort of protection from the nothing that [is] the world. But wait, how can nothing "be"? Nothing by definition is a lack of anything and so there cannot be 'nothing'. This is absurd. He finds comfort in the structure, cleanliness, and light of the cafe which protects him from nothing long enough for the sun to rise and for him to be able to fall asleep. He too denies that any deity exists who is above all of the world. There is nothing, good or evil or significant. With this extreme idea of nothing there can be no hope for the future and thus despair must ensue. The only patron at the cafe, an old man, apparently attempted to commit suicide the week before. Is this because he shares the same vision of nothing for the world? Apparently he has lots of money and this does not make him content. Somehow something deeper is afflicting him. He comes to the cafe every night and becomes drunk. Somehow maintaining his dignity. What does he find in this cafe that causes him to return. Is the light a symbol of existence that draws him toward something he can know to exist, or at least percieve? Is the need to escape the dark of night the pull towards such a cafe? Is the disorder and mess found in bars too characteristic of a lack of order which must come with non-existence? The older waiter cannot sleep each night until the light of day streams into his window. Perhaps this light, either of the sun or the cafe, is the only real hope that there may be something more to come, or at the least at present there is something in the present, as insignificant as it may be.

Thoughts while writing an essay on this topic. Quite helpful actually.

There must be something, because for nothing to exist would be contradictory to the nature of nothing.