In our second Nick Adams story, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” Nick’s father, a doctor, hires Dick Bolton, a half-breed Ojibway Indian, to cut up some logs that washed up onto his property from a lumbering company after a storm. Such occurrences were common in Northern Michigan, and the companies often came by afterward to reclaim their logs. Knowing this, Boulton is hired by Dr. Adams to cut up the logs for his family’s use. But they engage in some contentious dialogue before commencing the work. One of the notable details of this story is that the narrative point of view switches from Nick’s naïve twelve-year-old reporting about his father to an omniscient narrator with a decidedly less than favorable view toward’s Nick’s mother. This story also reveals that the doctor exhibits a condescending attitude toward the Indians to his young son.
Boulton owes money to the doctor for previous medical services, and from this premise, the doctor likely thinks that he is entitled to the labor as compensation for the debt. However, Indians participated in the free exchange of goods and services as part of their traditions and resented the concept of indebtedness. Instead of directly bringing up the source of the disagreement, Boulton showed the doctor the lumbering company’s markings on the logs. This indicated that he was accusing the doctor of asking him to take part in the theft of the logs. The doctor is deeply insulted that Boulton makes this serious charge against him and concludes that he is just using it as an excuse to get out of the work.
From the doctor’s point of view, that argument is hypocritical because the Indian didn’t mind profiting from his medical knowledge and not paying for his service when it was rendered. From their bitter tone, we can conclude that there was little basis for respect or understanding between the Indian and the doctor. Both of their arguments are based on rationalizations, partial truths, and perhaps, some racism. Again, Nick reports on their interactions without any noticeable judgment but sees another example of negative communications and distrust between his father and the Indians. By writing about this in a simple journalistic style, the reader can decide on how he or she sees the situation.
The angry doctor retreats to his house, where an unknown narrator takes over from Nick (who went into the woods to read). This speaker reports that a stack of the doctor’s medical journals was left unopened. By not involving Nick with the reporting, readers get a more negative presentation of the wife then if Nick had continued narrating. It’s hard to find any other explanation for why the writing point of view switches away from Nick during the in-cabin dialogue. Afterall, even though Nick is not the narrator in this scene, his character has been created by Ernest Hemingway, and thus we might conclude that he reflects the author’s attitudes about his mother and father. Let us look at the next scenes:
The narrator reports that the unnamed doctor’s wife, “is lying with the blinds drawn.” Although the ambiguity of this statement may be open to interpretation, it is certainly not sympathetic toward the wife. That she is unnamed may show that the narrator thinks that her views are unimportant, are in the dark, or are untruthful? This scene is being reported mockingly when she tells her husband that she hopes he “didn’t lose his temper,” while her Bible and Christian Scientist periodicals are beside her on the table of a darkened room. With this dimmed view, she says that she hopes that her husband didn’t say anything to anger Boulton. Continuing, she preaches to him: “He who ruleth his spirit is greater than he who takes a city.” The doctor quietly ignores his wife’s adage while he is cleaning his gun. He calmly explains that Boulton caused the row to get out of doing the work, omitting Boulton’s accusation. His wife acts in a conciliatory manner by denying that Dick would do anything like that. This action suggests that her model of avoiding stress is to draw the blinds and pretend it doesn’t exist. The doctor is reluctant to engage in any further prolonged dialogue with her about his row with Boulton. Instead, he picks up his gun and tells her he is going out for a walk in the woods. On his way out, she asks him to send in her son, Nick so she could talk with him. The husband says he is “sorry” as he slams the door outside “with the blinds still drawn.” He informs Nick that his mother wants to see him, but the son is not interested, saying that he would rather go squirrel hunting with his dad.
In this story, judgments about the father’s point of view are withheld, both by Nick and the narrator, who, both, perhaps, represent Hemingway’s thinking. At the same time, the mother’s point of view is minimized and reported by the unknown narrator in a mocking tone. By writing about the situation in that anonymous way, Hemingway avoided having to take responsibility for the disrespect he felt for his mother. The story also reveals that the doctor was teaching his son to avoid dealing with stress by escaping from it and withdrawing into nature therapy. This same pattern is emphasized in both “Big Two-Hearted-River” short stories, as Nick returns from World War I and attempts to heal from his traumatic experiences with a camping and fishing outing. Readers are invited to keep the discussion of these issues going by offering comments in the dialogue box below.
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