No. No. I don’t care what the graduate student teaching your 120 is saying. The older waiter’s sympathy for the old man prior to the revelation of sharing what “must be insomnia” is just not foreshadowing and even talking about it in a story this short and well-honed detracts from the power and the message. The message being: nada.
Quite to the contrary, the rest of the story is in stark contrast to the punchline. Dignity, cleanliness, nice fixtures, tables, and beautiful electric lights, still a novelty in the world, that cast shadows from the tree leaves around the café; make all night into summer’s day. Antidotes to the thing exposed.
Time for a transfer, my man. When you can’t follow the most honest, direct, and distilled writing—like Hemingway—and instead try to shoe-horn it into some fin de siècle literary slot, you have no business teaching.
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