tai lieu van hoc my cuoi ki 2

The Old Man - A deaf man who likes to drink at the café late into the night. The old man likes the shadows of the leaves on the well-lit café terrace. Rumor has it that he tried to hang himself, he was once married, he has a lot of money, and his niece takes care of him. He often gets drunk at the café and leaves without paying. The old man is a regular in the café, and though he sometimes forgets to pay, he's generally a good customer. We mostly learn about the old man from the conversation of the two waiters; we're not sure what their relationship is to him, but the older of the two waiters seems to know quite a lot. We learn that the old man once had a wife and possibly a family, but now is alone with his niece, who saved him from a suicide attempt. We wonder what the old man was like before he was an old man – are his dependence on alcohol and his suicidal depression merely consequences of his age and solitude, or have they plagued him for his whole life? Ultimately, though, these questions are irrelevant: the old man is something of a mystery to us, albeit one that doesn't have to be solved. Hemingway presents him as a representative of all people nearing the end of life, weary and hopeless, but still dignified. The key here is dignity – Hemingway wants us to see that even when life gets you down, you should accept it and try to keep it real.
The Older Waiter- Like the old man, the older waiter likes to stay late at cafés, and he understands on a deep level why they are both reluctant to go home at night. He tries to explain it to the younger waiter by saying, “He stays up because he likes it,” but the younger waiter dismisses this and says that the old man is lonely. Indeed, both the old man and the older waiter are lonely. The old man lives alone with only a niece to look after him, and we never learn what happened to his wife. He drinks alone late into the night, getting drunk in cafés. The older waiter, too, is lonely. He lives alone and makes a habit of