INDIAN CAMP ANALYSIS

INDIAN CAMP

By Ernest Hemingway

SETTING

This story takes place on an Indian camp in Michigan. An Indian camp is a place where Indians live.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Nick Adams: The main dude of the story, he's a young kid. His dad is a doctor. He was the brave kids and very curious to new things.

Dr. Adams: Nick's dad. He is a medical doctor. a doctor who is very bold and careful in taking action. He was also very patient and loving his son.

Uncle George: Nick's uncle. He knew a lot about indian camp.

PLOT

Dr. Adams gets called to come to an Indian camp to treat a lady who is sick. So Dr. Adams brings his son Nick and Uncle George. They are brought by boat then led through a forest by some Indians. They get to the Indian camp and they go to the hut with the sick woman. Dr. Adams sees that she is pregnant. The woman is having A LOT of trouble giving birth. Then Dr. Adams decides he has to cut her stomach open and do a C-Section. All he has to cut though is his pocketknife. Dr. Adams tells Nick what he is doing and Nick helps him out (like an intern). So some of the Indian men and Uncle George hold the chick down and Dr. Adams starts cutting her open. Dr. Adams has nothing to giver her for the pain and she screams real loud because it hurts like hell. Dr. Adams finally delivers the baby and everyone is happy. Dr. Adams gets pretty cocky because he did a C-Section with a small little knife. But then everyone sees the woman's husband. They find he has committed suicide because he couldn't take his wife's screaming. Dr. Adams tells Uncle George to take Nick out of the hut. The doc feels bad that he brought his young son and his son had to see the bloody pregnancy and the guy's suicide. On the way back, Nick is curious and asks a lot of questions about the childbirth and the suicide.

THEMES

"Indian Camp" is an initiation story. Nick's father (Dr. Adams) exposes his young son to childbirth and, unintentionally, to violent death—an experience that causes Nick to equate childbirth with death. Hemingway critic Wendolyn Tetlow maintains that in "Indian Camp", sexuality culminates in "butchery-style" birth and bloody death, and that Nick's anxiety is obvious when he turns away from the butchery. The story reaches a climax when Nick's "heightened awareness" of evil causes him to turn away from the experience. Although Nick may not want to watch the caesarian, his father insists he watch; he does not want his son to be initiated into an adult world but rather to witness that world with toughness. "Indian Camp" is also about the fear of death, the story also shows the innocence of childhood.

MORAL LESSON

Moral lesson in this story is teaches us to give help to people who need a help, learn to make sense of a life and death and and always trying to solve a problem carefully and patiently.

IRONY

1.       The Indians rowed withquick choppy strokes.

2.       Ahead were the lights ofthe shanties where the Indian bark peelers live.

3.       But her screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important.

4.       Cursing her - no sense ofcivilized treatment offered - damn squaw bitch

5.       "That's one for themedical journal, George," he said.  "Doing a Caesarian with ajack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, taperedgut leaders."

6.       Uncle George and thethree Indian men held woman still. She bit George's hand and he curses -'damn squaw bitch'.