Compare and contrast the tone and style of both Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" and Kincaid's "Girl."

While the two writers couldn't be more different in terms of background and perspective, there are some interesting stylistic commonalities between Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" and Kincaid's "Girl". Both stories have a terse, staccato tone that is matter-of-fact yet also attentive to detail, bringing things to life.
Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" takes place in a café in France and is a beautiful slice of life, exploring loneliness and the existential. The title refers to the importance of having a "place" where one belongs. It's written in simple, unadorned language, yet conveys deep meaning.
Similarly, Kincaid's "Girl" also uses simple language in a short story told as a "to-do list" in one complete, lengthy paragraph. Through the list, Kincaid conveys layers of meaning, offering a host of practicalities about how to get on in the world as a poor, young black woman in the American south.
While the privileged perspective of "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" is very bourgeois, male, and white, the perspective of "Girl" is quite different—it is of a young black woman reflecting on her mother's advice through a "to-do list". Yet both stories share stylistic similarities in their elegant, tightly written simplicity.

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