A clean, well-Lighted place

In the story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway, one of the most important topics of this story has to do with loneliness. There are two waiters, an older waiter and a younger waiter. There’s also an old deaf man and a bartender. They are at an empty café late at night. The old man and old waiter are lonely. The young waiter is in a hurry to get home. The bartender is disinterested, but he’s like the young waiter, wanting to get home. The lonely characters would like to stay at the café to escape reality, whereas the characters that aren’t lonely want to go home.
The old man appears to be deaf and desires nothing more from life than just to get drunk. He drowns his sorrows in alcohol. The old man attempts to commit suicide because “he was in desp...