In the short story Indian Camp, a young boy named Nick visits an indian camp with his father and uncle. His father is a doctor and is there to help deliver a baby who's mother had been in labor for 2 days. Nick's father ends up having to operate on the indian woman because she needs a C-section. Everyone in the village moved away from her shanty because of the noise she made except her husband. After the baby is born, Nick's father and Uncle George find her husband and he killed himself with a razor. Nick's father tries to explain to Nick why the man killed himself.
My initial reaction to this story was one of confusion. After I read it a few more times I found some details that I had not caught the first time around that helped me understand the story better. Hemingway has a very subtle way of adding in detail of which character is talking and which character is being described. In order to catch all of those details I needed to read this story three times.
One interesting thing that I noticed in this story was that the character of Nick's father is never given an independent name. He is always only referred to as either "Nick's father", "Father", "Doctor" or "He". We never find out what his real name is.
Another thing that I noticed while reading this story was that in the beginning Hemingway drops very subtle hints of what time of day it is and what season it is. Throughout the book he adds on to these hints and then eventually says that "It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back to the lake." I figured in the beginning of the story that is was very early in the morning when they first arrived at the camp. I was correct with my assumptions since he finally said what time of day it was at the end of the story.
Lastly, the way that Nick's father took that time to explain exactly what was happening to Nick was very interesting. Nick's father was always extremely calm before, while, and after operating on the lady and finding the dead man.
No comments:
Post a Comment