Compare/contrast and describe the use/meaning of nothing in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona".

In both stories, "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" (Hemingway)
and "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" (Alexie), the use of the word
nothing is minimal, not scattered
throughout. In Hemingway's story,
nothing is used liberally along with
its Spanish language counterpart nada
in one of Hemingway's more famous passages about "nada y pues nada y naday pues nada."

In Alexie's story, the first use of
nothing occurs in a flashback during
which the boyhood relationship between Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire is described
and during which Thomas tells a story--which isn't in a traditional Western civilization
form:

"Late at
night he sits in the dark. Watches the television until there's nothing but that white
noise. ..."

Alexie
uses
nothing here as a symbolic
representation of Victor's father's desire to run and hide. Presumably, this desire,
compelled by fear of his family and Victor, is the product of his knowledge of his weak
heart.

In Hemingway's story, the first use of
nothing occurs at the very beginning
when the younger waiter tell the older waiter that "Last week" the deaf, old man
customer "tried to commit suicide." When asked by the older waiter what the old man was
in "despair" about, the younger waiter replies, "Nothing," to which the other responds
with the query, "How do you know it was nothing?" Hemingway uses
nothing here (1) as an introduction to his theme
asking what constitutes and how to attain meaning and (2) to set up a juxtaposed
antithesis to his understanding about meaning via the younger waiter's unreasoned
response: "He has plenty of money," whereby the reader knows what does not
constitute meaning and what is therefore the first true instance of something
being
nothing.

The
meaning of
nothing in Alexie's story and in
Hemingway's story takes on differing aspects. In Alexie's story, the meaning is revealed
in the last instance of usage of the word. Victor and Thomas both wish to throw the
ashes into the waterfall at Spokane. Victor expects it will be like "letting things go
after they've stopped having any use." Thomas knows though that disposing of the ashes
at the falls will be like creating a salmon to jump over him and swim back home. Thomas
therefore replies to Victor by saying, "Nothing stops, cousin ... Nothing stops."
Therefore, the "white noise" that the father thought was
nothing, a place to run to and hide in, was really the
something of his fears and escape. "Nothing stops" can
signify the perpetuity of the bad in us and the good in us. Thomas closes the sad saga
of Victor's anger and loss by promising the perpetuity of the good in Victor's father
and therefore the perpetuity of good for Victor because his father will "find his way
home."

In Hemingway's story, the
meaning of
nothing is revealed in the old
waiter's soliloquy, his "nada y pues nada" speech. He makes Hemingway's thematic point
that personal dignity and human meaning in life is hard to attain because everything
that is purported as contributing to meaning is in fact nothing after all. The shocking
Great War had proved to many tattered hearts and minds that all, even man, had become as
nothing. Light and a clean and pleasant place, as the old waiter points out, helps to
foster some feeling of dignity despite the "nothingness." In the shadow of the vast
scope of nothing as described in the
nada speech, Hemingway asks what
constitutes and how is a man (humanity) to attain meaning.