In "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," what kind of tone and style of language does Ernest Hemingway use?

"" is one of Hemingway's works
ofwhich is set in Spain. In most of these works the dialogue is in English, but he wrote the
dialogue in such a way that the reader understands the characters are speaking in Spanish. A
large part of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" consists of dialogue between two waiters
who obviously would not be speaking English. Hemingway had a special talent for writing this
kind of dual-language dialogue. He showed that it was really Spanish by some of the vocabulary
and by the construction of some of the sentences. A couple of examples from the story
are:

"I wish he would go home. I never get to bed
before three o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?"

"I
don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must
work."

The novel in which Hemingway uses this
English-Spanish to the extreme is . Many of his characters are uneducated
peasants who would not be capable of speaking any English at all. They are usually speaking to
theRobert Jordan, an American who can understand them because he is fairly fluent in
conversational Spanish. The reader understands that the other characters are speaking in their
vernacular but it is being translated into English through Jordan's mind. Other works in which
Hemingway uses this technique include "," "," "," and
. He also does it with Italian and German in some short works. At the end
of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," Hemingway makes it clear that one of the waiters is
only speaking Spanish by his :

It was all a nothing and
man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and
order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was all nada y pues nada y
nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada,
nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be
nada in nada as it is in nada.
Give us this nada our daily nada and
nada us our nada as we nada our
nada and nada us not into nada
but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full
of nothing, nothing is with thee.

Hemingway was speaking
for himself as well as the old man. Hemingway seems to have been troubled all his life by this
existential angst, which may explain his heavy drinking and his suicide.