User:Mr. IP/The Light of the World

"The Light of the World" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

Story Plot
"The Light of the World" takes place in an unnamed Michigan town (though we can assume with reasonable certainty that the one Michigan town it doesn't take place in is Cadillac, as Cadillac, Michigan is noted in the story's dialogue as being a place which one of the characters is en route to). In the first (and shorter) of the two scenes which comprise the story, the narrator and his accomplice, Tom - aged seventeen and nineteen, though there is ambiguity, once again, concerning who is which age - enter a bar and engage in what is presented as a rather tense, abrupt and unfriendly encounter with the bartender. Before they order their beers, but after the bartender sees them enter the bar, the bartender covers up the bowl of complimentary pig's feet which is for paying customers. Seen as a rather unwelcoming gesture, the atmosphere of the exchange between the three characters is essentially primed by this inhospitable tone.

As the exchange pushes forward, another customer walks into the bar. This man pays for and orders a whiskey drink. Just as quickly as he entered the scene, he exits after having downed what the bartender put in his glass. This contrasts the bartender's exchange with our narrator and Tom; it is not exactly focused on, but mentioned. Ostensibly vapid - or perhaps more familiar and banal - the bartender is given no reason to act toward the whiskey drinker in the same way which he has chosen to act toward the narrator and his friend.

The two young men eventually leave the bar, not without some final spirited words exchanged between Tom and the bartender. Evident that these two characters are not locals, they find themselves at the train station. This is the setting for the second and final scene of the story. New characters are introduced, initially in the following cast-of-characters fashion: "Down at the station there were five whores waiting for the train to come in, and six white men and four Indians".

At first, the narrator and Tom engage in conversation with a couple of the white men. More of Tom's bitterness is seen as was evidenced with his seemingly unpleasant exchange with the bartender. Before long it is two of the whores that begin to drive the dialogue. They each claim to have had beautiful and bittersweet love affair with a famous professional boxer of the early twentieth century who hailed from Michigan, Stanley Ketchel - or as they refer to him, "Steve Ketchel" (for as one of the whores rebuts an attempted correction of his name, "Oh, shut up...What do you know about Steve? Stanley. He was no Stanley. Steve Ketchel was the finest and most beautiful man that ever lived."). The two whores not only claim to have had their own relationships with this man before they really began to work as prostitutes, but they argue over the validity of the other's memory. And not only do they attack the veracity of one another's story, they simultaneously attack one another's character and boast about the superiority of their own.

The story ends with the two whores winding down and ending their brief argument, "Leave me with my memories...my true, wonderful memories". This is followed by a reflection of the narrator on one of the whores, Alice. As much as he can't help but - silently - attributing a number of flattering and seemingly desirable qualities to her, he simply can't see past the fact that she is a very large woman. This, of course, is presented as a hang-up to his seeing Alice as a beautiful person. Tom then says to his friend that it's time for them to leave. The last line of the story is Tom telling one of the white men - who asks where the two young men are headed to - that they are, in fact, going "the other way from you".

References to use
Abstract: "Compares the short story `La Maison Tellier,' by Guy Maupassant and the short story `The Light of the World,' by Ernest Hemingway. Parallels in the lives of Hemingway and Maupassant; Hemingway's study of Maupassant's short stories; Strong affinities of characterization, technique and theme in the two stories; Maupassant's ironic references to religion and Hemingway's religious symbolism.
 * User:Mr. IP/General Hemingway work page
 * Brief mention as a "whore story"
 * Jobst, Jack W., and W. J. Williamson. "Hemingway and Maupassant: More Light on 'The Light of the World.'"  Hemingway Review 13.2 (Spring 1994): 52 (10pp.)  EbscoHost Academic Search Elite, Article No. 9407182851.  [Full text available.]
 * page on EH and Michigan...Kalkaska
 * Meyers 135 (Crane comparison), 186 (title origin, publication date), 201 (homosexual cook)
 * Trogdon 314 (EH's praise for his own story, even includes EH guess at weight of Alice character)
 * Leff 159-160 (confirms story was written specifically for book)

Notes to self

 * Hemingway referred to this story in the preface to The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories: "and a story called 'The Light of the World' which nobody else ever liked."
 * Be sure to reference and link The Light of the World, which we have a good article on
 * When transferred to mainspace, title should be "The Light of the World (short story)" and a "for...see" link should be created at the other page
 * Biblical reference must also enter in
 * Include Holman picture, which already exists on Wikipedia...source it as inspiration for title via Leff
 * EH was very impressed with this story, and some critics find it among his best (Trogdon 111 good here...try HR for more on reception)