First Confession & A Clean Well-Lighted Place

First Confession By Frank O’Connor

First Confession is written in innocent eye point of view and told by the protagonist, Jackie. Jackie is a young seven year old boy who lives with his parents, older sister and grandmother. He is a dynamic character, because he changes from being an unruly, rude, and fighting child, into a truthful confessor at the church with the priest. The antagonist is Nora, Jackie’s sister, she is mean to him throughout the story, attacking him verbally and a few times physically. She is a static character because she never changes her ways of being mean, hypocritical, and lying. The setting of the story is in two locations, at Jackie’s home, which has a feeling of anger and repulsion, as the location changes to being in the church, confessing his sins, it turns humorous and lighthearted, almost happy. The conflict is both external and internal. External being Jackie’s disagreements with Nora and his grandmother, internally being his anxiety and overall not wanting to go to confession. The conflicts are essential to the plot. The context is religious, not that one would need to have a vast knowledge of Christianity, the context in which it is used is simple enough to not need a lot of background knowledge. Overall the theme for this short story may be that telling the truth isn’t as bad as it sometimes may seem. Some symbolism I seen was perhaps when Nora and Jackie were going down the steep hill to the church, it being similar to his thought of going immediately to hell because he didn’t want to confess anything. Also an allusion, Adam leaving Paradise can refer to John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, where Adam and Eve are forced to leave “paradise” or the Garden of Eden.

I actually liked this story, more than I thought I would, honestly. It related to me in a few ways, especially with the communion teacher. She reminded me of my confirmation teacher, with the exception of her ranting on pre-marital sex, not the general sinning. So it kind of made me laugh. I also liked the priest, being protective over Jackie when Nora basically hit him in the hallway of the church and really going easy on him, kind of laughing it off but still being serious with him. This story was kind of a nice surprise, I really like religious type fiction, or sermons from back in the day, like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Its just really interesting to read, peoples views are always different.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place By Ernest Hemingway

Third person, limited omniscient presides over this short story. Characters in this story are the Old Man, the young waiter and the older waiter. The protagonist is the older waiter, because he keeps his mind positive about what is going on, and tries to bring the concept of people having a need to be in the café at night. The antagonist is the younger waiter. He continually complains about everything – wanting to go home, being tired, having a wife and not being with her, and so on – he is also very gossipy and rude, he argues with the antagonist that the café doesn’t need to be open late. They are both static, because they stick to their thoughts throughout the story. The setting is in Spain, from anywhere around 1869 to 2002, the peseta mentioned when the old man left a tip, was currency in Spain within that time period, the Spanish language throughout the text also hints at this. The mood of the café section was sad and irritated, moods expressed respectively by the older waiter, and younger waiter towards the old man. The customs within the setting fit, being out late is somewhat normal for Spain, at least from what I know, also the high religious expectations which the older waiter mocked while saying the “Our Father” prayer, repeating the word nada or “nothing” over and over. The conflict was external in a man versus man set up (or young man versus old man), being the older waiter arguing with the younger waiter. The theme, I thought, was to not judge people you don’t know, because of the gossip over the old man being suicidal, and the older waiter having apparent insomnia. You never really know someone so you shouldn’t judge them on their reasoning.

This story was interesting. It really showed how people are different, and why they think differently. The foreign setting made me more interested in it. Something I disliked, not necessarily about the story but in general, was that the younger waiter was so rude and really talked about the old man in a gossipy way. How does he even know if the old man tried to commit suicide, really? It’s a pet peeve of mine.