Hemingway offers his important cutting-edge short story, “Indian Camp” as third-person narrative exploring 12-year-old Nick Adam’s point of view, as he learns some hard facts of being the son of a country doctor who ‘treats’ Native Americans Indians who lived near his parent’s summer home in Northern Michigan. Hemingway narrates the Nick Adams stories as “rites of passage” memories, and they closely corresponded to several of the experiences that made deep impressions on him as a boy and young man. This story was first published in 1924 after Hemingway had returned home wounded as an ambulances driver for the Italian Army in World War I. See previous and future columns in this series.
In this story, young Nick reflects that he is securely in a canoe with His “arm around” his dad, completely trusting him, as an Indian rowed them furiously toward an Indian Camp in the woods. We later discover that the trip is to offer some emergency medical treatment to an Indian woman who had already been in labor for two days. His Uncle George is also being rowed in a second boat also by an Indian. The first boat moved “in a mist all the time.” We don’t know if there is some mist about the reason he accompanies them on this trip, but it is very curious that he is smoking a cigar and gives cigars to both of the Indian rowers after their boats land at the beach of the Indian Camp.
Once inside of an “old shanty,” father informs Nick: “This lady is going to have a baby.” He describes the screams of labor as natural and “nothing to worry about,” as they intensify during the delivery. Nick implores his father to make them stop. The doctor insists that he doesn’t hear them and that “they are unimportant.” Perhaps this explanation holds up medically, but it also seems to be harsh and cold since the doctor did not think to bring any anesthesia or pain numbing medicines. The doctor was, however, careful to wash his hands and make sure that he would be free from infection. Is this an act of cultural insensitivity, condensation, or prejudice toward the Indians? Did the doctor and Uncle George know the purpose of their trip in advance? Did they know that there was something was different about this women’s delivery that influenced their attitude not to be sensitive to her pain? These answers are not provided by the author through the characters and, and thus must be filled in by the curious reader.
The doctor tells Nick that the baby may need to be delivered via an emergency procedure with the head coming out first (a Caesarian). As the quick delivery begins, three Indian women hold down the women in labor in the lower bed bunk, as the husband appears to stay quiet in the upper bunk. Uncle George remarks that he would rather not touch the pregnant woman’s quilt. She reacts by biting him, and he quickly calls her a “squaw bitch,” further reinforcing the idea that there could have been some close associations between those two. The Doctor wants to make sure that Nick watches as he stitches up the woman with a “jack-knife” and some gut fishing line that he just happened to bring, but Nick chooses to look away. Perhaps this experience was intended to inspire Nick to want to become a doctor or to ‘stitch up’ Nick’s negative prejudices toward the Indians.
Both Uncle George and the Doctor are surprised that the husband has been so quiet during the delivery. George, perhaps sarcastically, offers congratulations to the “proud father.” But is he one? Upon further examination, everyone notices that he has faced the wall with an open razor lay on his bed and that he had cut his throat “from ear to ear.” The illustration that the mother gives birth in the lower bunk while death has hung around in the upper bunk symbolizes a major Hemingway theme, i.e., life and death are often closely associated with each other like two sides of a coin. This idea is carried forward in several of Hemingway’s later short stories and novels. Think particularly of A Farewell to Arms.
After this harrowing delivery, Nick runs out of the shanty even before his father asks to leave. The Doctor reacts by telling his son that he is “terribly sorry” that he put him through that “awful mess.” However, Nick is most curious about the woman’s childbirth pain and why the husband killed himself. His father speculated that “He couldn’t stand things.” This delivery he concedes was exceptional. Women, he explains, seldom commit suicide, but men “do sometimes. The most important question in this story is why the Indian husband killed himself. The Hemingway code of masculinity suggests that a man needs to face grace under pressure. According to that concept, the Indian committed suicide because he was not able to live up to the masculine ideal. However, this explanation appears to be insufficient, since men practically never kill themselves after their wives deliver healthy babies. It seems that this was also not a cultural reaction since suicide was not particularly common among Native Americans. Maybe there was a meaning to this story that lies below the surface, or beneath the tip of the Iceberg. Perhaps the Indian slit his throat because he was ashamed that he was not the real father. His wife’s screams, then, intensified his feelings of guilt and self-anger. If so, who might have been the father? We can’t say for sure in this post-modern indeterminate ending story. However, we do know that it was a common practice at that time for the father to smoke and hand out cigars after his baby was born. We are quietly advised at the end of the story that Uncle George disappeared after the incident and did not return home with Nick and the Doctor. Does that tell us anything? Did he, perhaps, stay behind at the Indian Camp to console the new widow?
On the way back home, Nick asks, “Is dying hard, Daddy?” The father quips, “It all depends.” That is an interesting remark from Nick’s father. As Ernest Hemingway’s father committed suicide in 1928, only four years after he wrote this story. Nick concluded from this experience that “he felt quite sure that he would never die.” Was this a normal remark of a boy who was feeling strong and invincible, or was it from one who was inordinately concerned about his death? It’s an interesting remark for Ernest Hemingway to write—who committed suicide less than forty years after he wrote this story. The next Litchatte discussion will focus on the Hemingway story, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” where, I will discuss some of the communications issues that Nick witnessed between his father and mother, as well as some other cultural divisions he observed between his family and the Native American Indians of Northern Michigan. Please keep the discussion going by offering a comment or reply in the dialogue box below. Thanks.
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