At first glance “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway is an emotionless, unfinished and simplistic narrative of two waiters and an old man. However, when readers dig a little deeper to deepen their knowledge, they can truly see how significant this story is as Hemingway captures the source and essence of nihilistic thought, in a time of moral and religious confusion after the first world war. thoughts on Hemingway and the Lost Generation in Paris were expressed and represented through his ideas, influenced by the trials of war. Because of Hemingway's disturbing and disturbing experiences during his military service, he portrays the idea that all human beings await an inevitable fate of eternal nothingness and everything we value is worthless. He states that all humans will die alone and be “despairing” for “nothing” (Hemingway 494), also that people will seek “calm and pleasant coffee” (Hemingway 496) to escape their misery. Hemingway goes on to say “[Life is] all a nothing, and a man also [is] nothing” (Hemingway, 496), undoubtedly abolishing any existence of a higher being. After observing the actions of individuals over the past three decades, Hemingway attempts to elaborate in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” that life is about gradual desperation and not continuous enlightenment and that we will all eventually fade into “nada.” (Hemingway 497). ). Hemingway displays in his writings weltschmerz, which is a mental depression or apathy caused by comparing the current state of the world to an ideal state (Merriam-Webster Dictionary), due to his experiences during his military service. The vast majority of his exceptional war work is made up of the aftermath and what happens to a soldier's soul as a result. After World War I, Hemingway kept a fragment of shrapnel among many other small trinkets from the war in a small change