The story is from 1924 its take place in USA in Indian camp in shanties. It’s a poor society, because they live in shanties. And men work in forest.
Nick is a young boy and his father and his uncle George is on the way to an Indian camp on the other side of a lake. Nicks father is a doctor, and the reason why they are visiting this Indian camp, is because the father is call by the Indians to help a young woman who’s been in labor for 2 days, still unable to deliver her baby. When the father arrives, she is lying in a bottom bunk her husband, who cut his foot badly with an axe three days before, is lying in the bunk bed above her. The doctor performs a cesarean on the woman with his jackknife, delivers the baby. After the surgery, Nick’s father looks into the top bunk and discovers that the young Indian husband, who listened to his wife screaming during her labor pains and during her cesarean, has cut his throat. The violence and pain of the birth contrast sharply with the ease of the suicide of the pregnant woman’s husband, brought on by her screams, and introduces Nick to the realities of birth and death.
Indian Camp is told from the point of view of an omniscient 3rd person narrator. Hemingway begins the story with the in media re, which simply characterizes short stories. This turns into an instant beginning, and throws the reader directly into the story. He has used a lot of adjectives to make the story as simple as possible, and to show that we’re reading the story from Nick’s point of view.
Nick Adams is in the protagonist in the story, the main character, and is described in an implicit way. He’s the only person to be seen from the inside and outside. In the course of the story he goes from just having a slight idea of what it is to die, to experience the results of human suicide.He uses a simple jack-knife to assist the woman in giving birth to her child. It’s very obvious that the father cares about his son, but he does not consider him to be as developed and able to watch the on-going process as an adult would be. And he doesn’t tell Nick more than what is necessary about the trip, primarily to avoid making him nervous. Uncle George also joins Nick and his father on the trip to the Indian tribe. He doesn’t play an active role in helping the Indian woman.
The whole story is about the father-son relationship. The bond between Nick and his dad is obviously strengthened after the horrible suicide which they both had to experience.
Hemingway shows the effect of birth and death on young Nick Adams. And as mentioned, Nick develops during the story. For instance, on the way to the camp in the boat, Nick is sitting in his father’s arms: on the way back, Nick sits on the opposite end of the boat.
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