On the other hand, the older waiter relates to the old man and realizes that time is the only difference between himself and the pitiful heap in the café. As a result he resigns to succumb to this same fate eventually and ventures home where he is unable to sleep.
In The Killers, Ole Anderson, an ex-boxer, is literally awaiting an inevitable death. As in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, the perspective of the younger character is one of misunderstanding due to the inability to comprehend death as an unavoidable end. The character, which in this case is Nick Adams, whose days are not yet numbered, is actually watching death stalk a victim who cannot and will not escape its clutches (Bryant, 1627). In the end, it is Nick who is unable to accept the terrible inevitability of Anderson's death. The hit men, the men in the restaurant, and even the victim all accept that death is coming for the former boxer. Rather than face death, Nick chooses to escape this reality. He wants to leave the town in order to escape from the thought of Ole's death. Nick's inability to handle the impeding death of the former boxer drives him to seek a new town in which to live. Thus, it is death that controls the destiny and fate of this character rather than personal choice.
The second characteristic shared by the Hemingway hero is the indulgence of some sort of self-destructive activity. In A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, the old man has indulged in drinking as a means to escape the reality of growing old. The old man's deafness is a powerful image used in this story. ". . .the old many like to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he could feel the difference."" "Deafness shuts out the remainder of the world and is a constant reminder of the .
3.
eternal quiet that is approaching in the near future for his character- (Wall, 1).
