"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” Earnest Hemingway’s "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" The main focus of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is on the pain of old age suffered by a man that we meet in a cafe late one night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people around him, and uses his deafness as an image of his separation from the rest of the world. Near the end of the story, the author shows us the desperate emptiness of a life near finished, and the aggravation of the old man's restl ....