Decay has been associated with humanity since the beginning of time. Those who believe in the Bible say that it was the first sin, the eating of that tempting fruit in Eden, that brought the first instances of decay into the world. Whether or not the serpent actually lured Eve into trying that fruit or not, the fact of mortality has been with us for millennia. Decay does not just happen physically, though; it also happens morally and emotionally, depending on the deeds that we commit. In Shakespeare’s works Venus and Adonis and Hamlet, and in Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” decay is a theme that appears in the three genres (poetry, drama, and short story, respectively). While the language in Venus and Adonis is vibrant, perhaps the fact that the filter of Greek mythology keeps that decay from seeming as visceral as in the other two stories. Hemingway’s story expresses the sense of decay in a clear, fluid way, as Hemingway does his usual work of keeping his language out of the way of the story. However, perhaps because of the scale of the story, it is impossible for Hemingway’s characters to keep pace with the inner corrosion that eats away at Hamlet, scene by scene, until the entire royal family of Denmark is dead.
There is a Greek maxim that says “khalepa ta kala” – literally, it means that “Beauty is harsh.” In Greek culture, there was considerable priority placed on physical beauty, and with that came the knowledge that the beautiful of the earth could indeed be fickle and harsh – and that no one would expect anything less. After all, it was the beauty of both Helen and Paris that lured them both into the infidelity that would slaughter entire armies and lead to the destruction of Troy. Adonis is a mortal who has no earthly equal in the way that he looks. Even though he is still just a boy, Venus sees him and covets him; it is worth pointing out that pursuing younger men was more widely accepted in that culture than it is today, but one should also note that it was more common for men to start affairs with adolescents (Budin). Venus, of course, is as erotically aggressive as any man, and she comes after him one day while he is out hunting on horseback. Interestingly enough, she refers to him at “the field’s chief flower, sweet above compare” (Shakespeare), reversing the typical male-female roles in their situation. This happens yet again when he refuses her kisses; he is described as “frosty in desire” (Shakespeare). The notion of frigidity has traditionally been associated with women; here, the gender roles are switched. She is quite persistent, though, kissing her all day long instead of hunting boars. The next day, when she returns, Venus sees the boar who has killed her love of the day. Adonis' beauty is made obvious from Venus' question: “What face remains alive that's worth the viewing? Whose tongue is music now? What canst thou boast of things long since, or any thing e nsuing?” (Shakespeare). The beautiful Adonis has fallen to the corrosive beauty of Venus; he ends up having become “a lily prison'd in a gaol of snow” (Shakespeare). Earlier, he was the “frosty” one, but it appears now that she has extinguished his fire by overwhelming him with her kisses. To call this decay, though, is a bit of a stretch. Adonis does not really have time to decay, as he has just spent one afternoon kissing the goddess of love. His fall is swift, as one leaf falls from a tree; true decay, though, would have happened to the stem of that leaf, as it slowly broke of the tree one strand at a time. It is difficult for a poem of this length to convey decay, especially when there are so many conventions of the goddess/love poem to follow.
Ernest Hemingway's “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” has no such difficulties setting the stage for decay. At the beginning, it is tempting to believe that the elderly, deaf man sitting in the cafe is the one who is decaying. Two waiters sit and watch him make his way through his alcohol for the evening, and they discuss what they know about this man. One waiter says to the other that the elderly man had tried to kill himself just the past week. One interesting point of the story is that the dialogue is written in an ambiguous way, making it unclear exactly who the person talking is (Bennett). As the story passes, and the waiters continue to talk, it is clear that decay happens on three different levels. The old man sits and drinks until he is sent home at closing time; at that time, he walks “unsteadily but with dignity” (Hemingway). He is at the point in his life where he has nothing waiting for him except an empty room and an empty bed. He has plenty of money to live on, as the story indicates; however, he has no one to share it with except his bartender. The young waiter pities himself, because he wants to go home and spend time with his wife. Sitting and waiting for the old man to finish the brandy and head home makes him feel like decay is happening to him. His inability to empathize at all shows the reader that the young waiter has not yet learned much in the way of wisdom. The third waiter is older and has no one to go home to either. While his life still has more activity than that of the old man, he actually finishes the story in much the same way as the old man, trying to talk to a bartender at a different establishment and being rebuffed. He sees his own future decay unfolding in front of him; he realizes that the present of the old man is his own destiny, if nothing changes. The version of the Lord's Prayer that he recites as he walks home replaces most of the important words with nada (nothing), showing how much of his hope has already been eaten away. Within the genre of the short story, the fact that one would celebrate having a “clean, well-lighted place” to be social shows how precious the blessings of friendship and conviviality can be.
As crisply constructed as Hemingway's story is, though, it is no competition with the avalanche of decay which claims the lives of all of the characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet. There are images of decay throughout the play; even the moon is “sick almost to doomsday with eclipse” and then, later, “thoughtsick” at the sin of Gertrude and Claudius. In Act I, when Laertes is trying to convince his sister, Ophelia, to hold on to her virginity, he says that “the canker galls the infants of the spring/too oft before their buttons be disclosed,/And in the morn and liquid dew of youth/Contagious blastments are most imminent” (Shakespeare). Here, some fairly technical plant imagery is used to express the inward decay that a loss of virginity can portend. However, the imagery of decay does not always require a horticulture degree to interpret. The older Hamlet is murdered through the use of a poisonous liquid that his brother pours into his ear, corroding the inside of his head, leaving a “vile and loathsome crust” all over his body (Shakespeare). When Hamlet describes the consumption of Polonius' corpse by worms, one of the most disgusting images is the idea that “we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots” (Shakespeare). All of us are destined to be carrion; that is the destiny of our bodies. The decay goes beyond the physical; Gertrude goes from being a happy honeymooning bride to the possessor of a “sick soul” (Shakespeare); Ophelia changes from being a lovestruck maiden to an insane suicide; Hamlet changes from grieving son to mad avenger; Laertes changes from sorrowful friend to conflicted deceiver. The corrosion is universal; in the Mel Gibson film version of Hamlet, the use of broadswords in the duel shows the tremendous weight that this corrosion has had on the souls of Laertes and Hamlet in particular; the sense of gloom in the room shows that, indeed, something is rotten in the state of denmark.
Works Cited
Bennett, Warren. “The Characterization and the dialogue Problem in Hemingway's 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.'” Hemingway Review 9(2).
Greenfield, Sayre N. “Allegorical Impulses and Critical Ends: Shakespeare's and Spenser's Venus and Adonis.” Criticism 36(4). http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol36/iss4/1
Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. http://www.william-shakespeare.info/script-text-hamlet.htm
Shakespeare, William. Venus and Adonis. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/VenusAndAdonis.html
Shapira, Yael. “Shakespeare, The Castle of Ontranto, and the Problem of the Corpse on the Eighteenth-Century Stage.” Eighteenth Century Life 36(1): 1-29.
