Indian Camp Essay

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Rafia Iqbal Period 2 May-5-2014 Indian Camp Reflection In the short short Indian Camp, by Hemingway. Nick Adams and his father arrive at the reservation with Nick's Uncle George. There they meet two Indian men who take them across the lake in two boats. Nick asks where they are going and his father replies that they are going to the Indian camp because an Indian woman is very sick. When they arrive on shore and they all walk through a meadow to the woods. There, they follow the Indian men in the reservation. Inside, they find an Indian woman who has been in labor for two days. She is lying on the bottom bunk of a bed. Her husband is on the top bunk. Nick’s das operates with a “jack - knife and nine foot. tapered gut leaders”(Hemingway 94). When she cries out in pain, Nick’s father explains that she hurts because her muscles are trying to get the baby out of her body. Nick asks if he can give her anything to make the pain stop, but Nick's father answers that he does not have any anesthetic. Nick learns that pain is real, physical, mentally and emotionally. The fact that Nick’s father does not have anesthetic for the woman in labor shows that NIck’s father does not value the life of the Indian woman. Nick’s father know that the woman has been in labor for two days and would probably need an operation, but still he did not get anesthetic for the woman. This is an act of racism because if it was a white woman she would have different advantages and better surrounding than this Indian woman. After the baby is born, Nick’s father goes to woman’s husband to show him the baby, only to see that the father has slit his throat and is dead. On the way home, Nick then asks why the man killed himself, to which his father replies that he must not have been able to stand things. Nick asks if many men kill themselves. His father says no. This shows that Nick’s father
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